in the trenches/forests
4. Voices
"There is no clear evidence that a global forest convention is either necessary or desirable. Until more governments implement their existing commitments to protect forests and use them sustainably, it is difficult to have any confidence that they will effectively implement a new convention, whatever its contents." Bill Mankin, Director, Globel Forest Policy Project"WWF believes there is currently no intergovernmental process which is capable of catalyzing the rapid changes needed to slow the rate of forest loss." World Wildlife Fund
"With deforestation rampant across the globe and worsening in many countries, the InterGovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF) has failed to recommend targeted actions to governments. Instead it offers a mishmash of platitudes and weasel words. While the IPF has been talking, more than 66 million acres of forest have disappeared." Michael Rae, Worldwide Fund for Nature
"There are three areas where the Earth Summit failed: forests, forests and forests". Anonymous British civil servant
"You know, we're not a Third World country. We're not so poor that we have to destroy our ancient forests. And we're not so rich that we can afford to." Andy Kerr, Oregon Natural Resources Council
"A glut, not a shortage, of timber is the greatest danger to the U.S. timber industry." Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics
"No Forest Service program has dominance over another; timber is not more important than wildlife and fisheries; nor is wildlife and fisheries more important than timber or recreation or cultural resources..." Mike Dombeck, Chief of the U.S. Forest Service (January 24, 1997)
"The annual rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased by over 34% since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro." Dr. Claude Martin, Director General, World Wildlife Fund International
"Deforestaton in the Americas was probably greater before the Columbian encounter than it was for several centuries after." Competitive Enterprise Institute
"The decline of tropical forests represents the biggest land-use change of its scale and speed in human history." Norman Myers, Oxford University
"Replacing old-growth, natural forests with plantations gives the impression that forests are being restored. But, a plantation is about as similar to a natural forest as a football pitch is to a flower-rich meadow" Nigel Dudley, WWF consultant
"Just using the forest as a source of carbon and nutrients for the soil is a waste. It's too much like mining what could be a renewable resource." Dan Nepstad, Woods Hole Research Center
"Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste." George Perkins Marsh
"In Wildness is the preservation of the World." Henry David Thoreau
"All the evidence suggests that nature consists of perfectly attuned linkages stretching out of our sight and out of our understanding in all directions. Yet, we imagine we can destroy this forest and build another." David Kelly and Gary Braasch, Secrets of the Old Growth Forest.
"What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another. As Gandhi said, 'An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind.'" Chris Maser, Forest Primeval
"One of the great dreams of man must be to find some place between the extremes of nature and civilization where it is possible to live without regret." Barry Lopez
More on Forests:
Table of Contents | Twelve Hundred Words or Less... | Web Resources
Activist Groups | Voices | New in the Literature
Hotspots | On the Other Hand... | Funders