GBlist: Home Depot, Certified Lumber, etc.

["chalice" <chalice@wco.com>]

Greetings, Greenbuilders,

Consumers should be wary of certified lumber and the certification process
for a number of critical reasons:

1.) The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is the umbrella group that defines
certification guidelines for many certifying groups world-wide. The FSC
guidelines allow the cutting of old growth and cutting in stream zones.
Environmentalists across the board find this UNACCEPTABLE for the COAST
REDWOOD FOREST, where COHO SALMON, which rely on shaded streams (they
require cold, clear water), and MARBLED MURRELETS and NORTHERN SPOTTED OWLS,
which require dense old growth forests for habitat, are on the BRINK OF
EXTINCTION.

Certified timber companies, such as BIG CREEK TIMBER out of Santa Cruz, who
sit on the FSC Advisory Committee, have successfully blocked the FSC from
creating regional guidelines for the coast redwood forest that would ban
old-growth redwood logging (less than 3% left!) and logging in stream zones.

2.) Certification is private--the Public is shut-out. This makes it
vulnerable to corruption.

Our environmental laws have failed to protect our public trust resources,
but at least these laws require that the public have access to information.
In California, CEQA--the California Environmental Quality Act--incorporates
public scrutiny as a critical check in the process. Unfortunately, at this
dark hour in history, instead of upholding the public trust, the Government
is allowing corporate interests to usurp it and blatantly destroy our
resources and trample our rights--while they treat us, the public, with
utmost contempt. The solution, however, is not to privatize a public
process, and keep all documents secret (as the FSC does).  The solution is
to reclaim our government.

3.) Corporate interests--including non-certified timber interests--influence
the decisions of the FSC. For example, the Natural Resources Defense Council
(NRDC), notorious for pandering to corporate interests (check out Non-profit
Watch), and on whose Board Bob Fisher (The Gap Fishers own a liquidation
logging company in Mendocino County) sits, helped to form the FSC. For this
reason, I find them suspect.

4.) Certifying groups are often for-profit. This makes them vulnerable to
corruption. But whether non-profit or for-profit, they have a vested
interest in certifying timber companies--their existence depends on it--and
have admitted that in order to promote certification they often loosen their
already loose guidelines--for example, they allow applicants to be certified
if they meet 5 out of the 10 criteria on a wink and a promise that they'll
try to meet the others in the future.

Two certifying groups--Scientific Certification Systems and
ISF/Smartwood--denied the Gap Fishers' logging company, Mendocino Redwood
Company, certification last year. Since then, the Fishers have formally
abandoned the Sustained Yield process and have continued to overlog their
holdings, to damage the watersheds with clearcutting and the application of
herbicides, to destroy wildlife habitat by taking the very last of the old
growth, mature second growth, and late-seral forest, and to promote
even-aged management (tree farms instead of forest). The Fishers will try
again to get certified; if they succeed after destroying our forests and
watersheds in Mendocino and Sonoma counties--and they probably will for the
reasons listed above--the credibility of certification will be destroyed for
many of us.


Mary Bull
Save the Redwoods/Boycott the Gap Campaign
252 Frederick Street, San Francisco, CA 94117
chalice@wco.com 415-731-7924 www.gapsucks.org





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