The Boreal Forest And Clearcutting
| August 25, 2009 | Posted by Lisa Sharp under Uncategorized |
The Boreal Forest or Taiga covers most of inland Alaska, Canada, Sweden, Finland, inland Norway, Highland Scotland and Russia. Parts of it reach in to the continental US as well,
This beautiful forest is being clearcut and exploited for oil and natural gas. In Canada less than 8% of the Boreal Forest is protected.
“Since 1975, logging companies have cut down 65 million acres of the Boreal, an area the size of the United Kingdom.” -Forest Ethics
The Boreal Forest is home to animals like Caribou, Bobcats, Elk, Siberian Tiger, Lynx, 1/3 of all of North America’s song birds, Gray Wolves and more.
Some of the companies currently clearcutting the Boreal Forest are Sears, XEROX, and Procter and Gamble.
But there has been good new for the Boreal Forest this month. Kimberly-Clark, best known for the Kleenex brand, has finally agreed to stop buying wood fiber from the Boreal by 2011 unless it’s FSC-certified. They also will be increase their use of recycled fiber. This is a huge victory for Greenpeace and everyone that worked on the Kleercut campaign!
What can you do:
- Use the Greenpeace shopping guide for paper products.
- Tell Sears to stop using clearcut paper for their catalogs.
- Tell the Ontario government to protect the Boreal Forest.
- Opt out of catalogs and junkmail.
- Buy recycled paper products.
- Recycle your paper.
The Kimberly-Clark victory shows us we can make a difference. So do the things above and leave your ideas in the comments! Together we are strong.
