GP VP Defends Forest Boycott
The Alabama Forest Owners’ Association, Inc. [here] produces podcasts as part of their excellent Capital Ideas – Live! program. Many SOSF kudos are extended to AFOA for the tremendous job of forestry education that they are doing.
On January 19, 2011, Capital Ideas – Live! moderator Hayes D. Brown, attorney and forest owner, interviewed Deborah Baker, Vice President - Sustainable Forestry, Environmental and Community Outreach at Georgia-Pacific. The podcast may be downloaded [here].
The discussion related to GP’s declaration, made in February 2008 [here, here, here] that it will no longer purchase trees from endangered forests and special areas, or from new pine plantations established at the expense of natural hardwood forests. [here]
* Georgia-Pacific will work actively on the definition and mapping of endangered forests and special areas. As endangered forests are identified, Georgia-Pacific will not source fiber from these areas. Georgia-Pacific will prioritize its efforts to identify endangered forests and special areas in its key supply regions, including the Southern US.
* Georgia-Pacific will not procure pine fiber from plantations established after July 1, 2008, on sites that were natural hardwood forestlands immediately prior to their conversion. Additionally, Georgia-Pacific will continue to offer information and education on natural regeneration options to forest landowners.
* Georgia-Pacific will closely monitor its supply chain so that customers can be assured that wood and paper products are not sourced from endangered forests or plantations established on sites that were natural hardwood forests immediately prior to their conversion as set forth above.
The following questions regarding GP’s boycott of hardwood growers were NOT addressed by Ms. Baker:
1. How much money has GP donated to the Rainforest Action Network, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Dogwood Alliance over the last 6 years?
2. GP has announced their intention to boycott 600,000 acres of private tree farms. How would they feel about a boycott of their wood products company, Dixie cups, Brawny paper towels, Quilted Northern bath tissues, etc.
3. GP’s partners in this boycott make the claim that deforestation in the U.S. is a “significant problem” exceeding (by percentage) forest loss in Brazil and Indonesia. Does GP agree with that contention?
4. GP’s partners in this boycott claim 90 million acres of Southern hardwood forests need “protection” from forest management. Does GP agree with that contention?
5. GP has failed to define “natural hardwood forests”, or describe their development. They do not define why they are better left without active management, so much so that GP has decided to boycott working hardwood forests. Later on in the podcast Jeffrey W. Stringer, Extension Professor – Hardwood Silviculture and Forest Operations at the Univ. of Kentucky, points out that hardwood forests regenerate naturally and that pre-harvest treatments can enhance the success of preferred hardwood species. If hardwoods forest regenerate naturally, what is gained “environmentally” by GP’s boycott?
6. GP claims to have reached “agreement” with “academia and environmental groups” in justification of their boycott. To what extent and in what ways did they attempt to reach agreement with the landowners they are boycotting?
7. GP’s “environmental” partners in this boycott claim the boycott will not harm GP’s profitability. How profitable is GP? How will the boycott affect the profitability of the 600,000 acres of private tree farms?
8. After two years GP has ground-truthed only one area in the Mid-Atlantic. Is that adequate “science” to support their boycott of 600,000 acres, most of which they have never visited?
9. What other initiatives are anticipated from GP’s partnership with the Rainforest Action Network, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Dogwood Alliance?
10. To what extent will GP be actively joining with as well as funding the Rainforest Action Network, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Dogwood Alliance in their numerous litigations against active forest management?
AFOA asks the rhetorical question: “Wouldn’t nearly all of Alabama be home to natural hardwood forests if pre- and post-Columbian settlers hadn’t burned the land extensively, thereby creating the conditions favorable for the growth of pines?
Indeed it would be.
Georgia Pacific has a lot of explaining to do.
by Foo Furb
Larry: I don’t think that GP is trying to bribe the eco-groups in order to get forgiveness, so much as they are trying to make an under-handed profit under the guise of self-righteousness and concern for “the planet” and for “future generations.” The same kind of counter-intuitive self-serving thing when Weyerhaeuser supported the tree-huggers and their litigant log-truck chasers in order to eliminate competition from federal forests (and the family sawmills and gyppo loggers that depended on them) in the West. Big government, big business, big money, and big facade. Who really cares what the Dogwood Alliance really thinks, when their public sentiments can be easily purchased?
GP: Bought most of the private low elevation old growth forests in Oregon, California and Washington, not owned by the likes of Weyerhaeuser, I-P, Crown Z, and Simpson. In less than 20 years, it was all gone. The logs either used or sold. Or left to rot. “Creamed” is the word loggers used. GP, a company so aggressive and monopolistic that it was forced to divest assets enough to create another huge company, Lousiana Pacific. That GP.
Until 1968, GP reforestation was nothing more than flying over clear cut land and spin spreading conifer seed for a random chance that a seed would land in an advantageous place where it could germinate and maybe grow without a lot of competition. The result, of course, was regrowth land with fir on ridge tops and high lead troughs, and the rest an alder maple second growth hardwood forest which got logged for pulp and the land hand planted with site selected conifers in the last two decades. Slow to come to the real world of forestry, that GP. And then they sold the land to Plum Creek Timber, a REIT, and their name and physical plants to Koch, an oil well service company. Koch is calling the shots now. PCT is a known quantity.
A little late to the table of responsible forestry, this GP. The kettle calling the pot black. Their blather is about a self serving attempt to gain favor with TNC so that TNC will provide fiber for their former GP plants. A Goldman Sachs deal, I guess. GP was predatory, has been predatory, and is now being predatory, and that is their business plan. They are out to destroy value in order to later buy it on the cheap. Pigs, really. Rooting around in an area in which their expertise is that of environmental ruin. I would not buy a used car from GP… or insurance. Not with the track record of land husbandry we have seen on the West Coast. I have to wonder if there is a mineral or petroleum issue under the land in question. That is the area of expertise of Koch. Use a “green” issue wholly fabricated by innuendo and bad faith to gain access to whatever is below the ground in those forests they are stalking. As they once said in the woods of Oregon “Don’t turn your back on the rigging or a GP forester.” That might be true today.
Reply: Creamed is the truth. GP stripped every stick off their 600,000 acre Siletz holding in the 1970’s. Right to the water’s edge. Completely denuded the Siletz River watershed. And then locked the gates. Deadly, too. Worst safety record of any company in America. Logging is dangerous enough without the corner-cutting ways of GP.
I remember when they had one forester overseeing the entire tract, just sipping coffee in the office. The rampant poverty in Lincoln County today can be traced directly to GP’s absentee “management”. A monster of a company. I was so pleased when they left the state. To bad Georgia didn’t send them packing, too.
by Forrest Grump
This is blackmail from the Dogs and Nuts. And of course, it’s a limp-wristed response from GP. Rather than make their case, just bend over.
I suppose it’s not so bad considering that the cutoff date is 2008, not all time. The other cheeze in this was, oh, we won’t use Tongass or Canadian Boreal wood. This is all about avoiding stinky hippie protests. What a shame.
Reply: Please think again. This was orchestrated by GP. They fund the Dog and Nuts. The enviros are GP’s puppets. GP’s purpose is market manipulation, not caving in to extortion. Think Enron.
It’s important to see through the media charade. Just as in the Global Warming Hoax. The oil cartel funds the Alarmists, not the Skeptics. Bought any gas lately? Who do you think is anti-drilling of new oil wells? Follow the money.
When I did stand exams in the piedmont of South Carolina, Sumter NF, the “Swate-gummm” trees were in almost all the stands, including the older plantations on the former cotton fields. I’m quite sure that the eco-groups consider any stand containing Liquidamber styraciflua to be a “hardwood stand”, regardless of the actual stand composition. The species list I made from my 6 months of work there includes 44 hardwood species and just 3 conifer species. I tend to think there are much fewer hardwoods on private lands. Yep, GP is willing to bribe the eco-groups so that their past eco-sins can be forgiven.