GREENPEACE STOPS WORLD'S LARGEST LOG BARGE

Vancouver/Amsterdam, August 2nd, 1996

Yesterday Greenpeace activists boarded and stopped the world's largest log barge, owned by multinational logging company MacMillan Bloedel, at Haida Gwaii in the Queen Charlotte Islands of Canada. The action, carried out off the Coast of British Columbia by 3 activists, is aimed at preventing further destruction of the remaining ancient Canadian rain forests.

As logs were being loaded onto the barge, two Greenpeace inflatables approached the loading operation by water and three Greenpeace activists climbed onto the barge. The activists locked themselves onto the cranes of the barge and unfurled a banner that read " MacMillan Bloedel - Number 1 Rainforest Destroyers." The operators were forced to stop all loading operations for several hours before they could cut off the activists.

Haida First Nation natives supported the Greenpeace action and joined in the protest in their war canoes, thus blocking the barge and preventing it from continuing its work. The Haida have accused the company and the Canadian Government of ignoring the concerns of the local people and stealing and plundering their forests. "MacMillan Bloedel is tearing down irreplaceable Canadian rainforests and shipping them out at a rate that will destroy the Haida Gwaii forest within 5 - 10 years", said Ralph Stocker, a local Haida activist at the site of the barge occupation.

Greenpeace is calling for permanent protection of all the remaining ancient rainforest areas that are still intact in the Haida Gwaii area. "At a time when the Brazilian Government has recently announced a 2 year ban on the logging of all mahogany in the Amazonian rain forest, Greenpeace urges the Canadian Government to announce a moratorium on all industrial logging in the threatened Canadian rain forests", said Thilo Bode, Executive Director of Greenpeace International.

The barge, called the Haida Monarch, can carry a log load equivalent to 400 logging trucks. MacMillan Bloedel is one of the largest timber companies in the world and is the number one destroyer of Canada's threatened rain forests, cutting an annual 1.2 million cubic metres of wood on Haida Gwaii alone.

The Haida Monarch loads up with logs two or three times a week from Haida Gwaii, British Columbia. This means that over 30,000 cubic metres of timber are logged every week from the rain forests in the region and transported down the coast to mills near Vancouver for processing.

Canada's coastal temperate rainforests, which comprise 25 per cent of the remaining coastal temperate rainforests in the world, are found exclusively in a narrow band along British Columbia's coast. This type of rainforest once found on every continent except Africa and Antarctica is one of the most endangered forest types in the world.

Less than 6 per cent of Canada's ancient rainforests are protected from logging and approximately one third of this rainforest has already disappeared. These forests are home to countless plants and animals including endangered grizzly bears and wolves, otters, eagles and salmon and trees that are hundreds of years old.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

Tim Birch Campaign Coordinator in London ++44 1 433 651 776

GPI press desk, Holger Roenitz ++31 20 5249 545

Greenpeace Vancouver, Tzeporah Berman ++1 416 505 1792 (cellular phone) ++1 604 253 7701

betacam footage is available through Reuters TV Washington and AP TV