GREENPEACE BLOCKADES CANADIAN LOGGING OPERATION TO SAVE THE GREAT BEAR RAINFOREST

Vancouver, 22 May 1997

Greenpeace activists from Germany, Austria and Canada have stopped Western Forest Products (Doman Industries) from continuing a clearcut logging operation in an area of the Great Bear Rainforest in Canada. Eight activists have stopped the operation by locking themselves onto logging equipment and have hung a banner saying: "Protect Canada's Great Bear Rainforest." The area is home to Grizzlie, black and the rare white Kermode bear.

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.

Western Forest Products belongs to Doman Industries, which controls 680,000 hectares of ancient rainforest in British Columbia, making it the the third largest rainforest ravager in the province.

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 Greenpeace forest campaigner Tzeporah Berman, at the site of the blockade. " If logging companies like Doman 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)

Today's rainforest action coincides with a Greenpeace protest at the Canadian Embassy in Bern, Switzerland where activists have dumped tree stumps and two and a half tons of British Columbian pulp in front of the Canadian embassy and demanded protection for the temperate rainforest.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

Greenpeace Vancouver; Karen Mahon or Mary MacNutt

tel:+1 604-253-7701 or +1 604-220-7701

Greenpeace International press desk; Holger Roenitz tel: +31 20 5249 545

For details of footage of the actions contact

Gina Walker on ++31 20 5249 509

Notes:

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

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