GREENPEACE BLOCKADES WESTERN FOREST PRODUCTS TO SAVE THE GREAT BEAR RAINFOREST
Forest Actions Coincide with Austrian Protests and Ottawa Legal Action

RODERICK ISLAND, British Columbia - 21 May 1997

Greenpeace activists have stopped Western Forest Products (Doman Industries) from continuing a clearcut logging operation in an area of the Great Bear Rainforest. The Great Bear Rainforest, which stretches along British Columbia's mid-coast region, contains some of the world's largest intact areas of temperate rainforest - a forest type that has been logged to the brink of extinction elsewhere in the world.

Eight activists have stopped the operation by locking themselves onto logging equipment and hung a banner reading: "Protect Canada's Great Bear Rainforest." In nearby Green Inlet, the thirty member Greenpeace team, supported by the Greenpeace vessel the MV Moby Dick, have also constructed a mobile floating base camp which can be used to maintain an ongoing presence in the rainforest.

"Greenpeace is taking a stand at the frontier of destruction in the Great Bear Rainforest," said Tzeporah Berman, a Greenpeace forest campaigner at the site of the blockade. " If logging companies like Western Forest Products carry through with their current plans, most of this rainforest will be lost forever in the space of ten short years."

Satellite mapping recently carried out by the World Resources Institute shows that half the world's temperate rainforests have already been destroyed and that temperate forests are more endangered than tropical forests. (1)

Information recently obtained by Greenpeace under the Freedom of Information Act reveals that Western Forest Products (Doman) has been found guilty of non-compliance with British Columbia's Forest Practice Code on 96 occasions since 1995. (2) On Roderick Island Western Forest Products is already active in at least five different locations, according to observations made by the Greenpeace team. The company also has plans to move into Green Inlet, as well as the Mooto/Ingram valleys.

Today's rainforest action coincides with a Greenpeace protest vigil at the Canadian Embassy in Vienna, Austria where activists have hung banners outside the embassy reading, "Clearcutting Kills" and "Canada....Save Your Rainforest". And in Ottawa, Greenpeace, along with other groups, launched a complaint against the federal government under the North American Agreement on Environmental Co-operation for its failure to enact Endangered Species Legislation and comply with the Convention on Biological Diversity. British Columbia's temperate rainforest contains a number of species considered threatened or vulnerable to extinction such as the grizzly bear and the marbled murrelet. But because neither British Columbia nor the Canadian government have enacted meaningful endangered species legislation, companies like Western Forest Products, are able to continue clearcutting these species' habitat.

NOTE TO BROADCASTERS: Footage of today's action will be flown out of the area and uplinked to the ANIK SATELLITE. More details to follow when available.

B-roll footage of other threatened areas also available.

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Editor's Notes:

1) World Resources Institute, "The Last Frontier Forests", Washington D.C., 1997 back to text

More detailed documentation available by calling Greenpeace Vancouver.
Contact: Karen Mahon 604-253-7701; 604-220-7701;

Mary MacNutt 604-253-7701

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