14 February 2008 - Vancouver,
Canada — We've launched a new website to
ensure 'good wood' is used to build the
villages and venues
of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
The new website, GoodWoodWatch.ca,
will track use of environmentally and socially
responsible Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)
certified wood.
In its bid to hold the
Games, Vancouver 2010 committed that new
buildings and infrastructure required for
the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games will be
a showcase of the best in green building
design and construction techniques. And
we're holding them to that promise.
Greenpeace and a coalition
of environmental groups behind the website
are calling on the Vancouver Organizing
Committee (VANOC) and all Olympic venues
to use FSC-certified wood in their building
construction. The FSC is an internationally
recognized standard for environmental and
socially responsible management of forests.
For over two years, environmental groups
have been in contact with VANOC, regional
municipalities and venue architects to educate
and advocate for the use of wood from responsibly
managed forests with mixed results.
Will VANOC get a gold
medal for sustainability? The coming months
of construction will lay the foundation
for the Games’ environmental record. The
world is watching and the time to use FSC-certified
wood in the Olympic venues is now.
The launch of GoodWoodWatch.ca
marks the beginning of a Greenpeace survey
of FSC wood use in Olympic venues. The results,
to be released in the coming months, will
give Canadians and the international community
a way to assess the footprint of the Vancouver
Olympic Games on the world’s forests.
The Canadian public
deserves to know the environmental footprint
its Olympics are making on the forests of
British Columbia. This website is a way
to reward the leaders and expose the laggards,
in Olympic fashion.
More than ninety million
hectares of forest are FSC-certified, with
the largest forest area here in Canada.
Forest Stewardship Council Certification
is currently the only way to guarantee that
wood, paper and other forest products come
from sustainably managed forests.
More information on the FSC can be found
at www.fsc.org.
+ More
Polar bear paddle boat
protest
Bush Administration delaying listing as
endangered
01 February 2008 - Washington,
DC, United States — What's a polar bear
to do? Your ice is melting, politicians
won't listen, and the government is dragging
its feet about listing you as endangered...
Off to Washington, to start your own floating
vigil! Uh oh, here comes the fuzz.
OK, it was one of our
activists in a costume - peacefully protesting
the Bush Administration's delay in issuing
a final Endangered Species Act listing for
the polar bear due to global warming. Yesterday,
the activist, dressed in a polar bear suit,
sat quietly in a paddleboat in a park pond
in front of the Department of Interior.
(Until the police took him to jail, where
he remains as of writing.)
Full steam ahead for
new oil
While the Department
of Interior is dragging their feet on protecting
polar bears, they are moving full steam
ahead on plans to drill for oil in prime
polar bear habitat. New oil leases are opening
up in the Chukchi Sea and oil companies
are lining up quickly to obtain licenses
to drill. A fifth of the remaining Arctic
polar bears depend on Chukchi Sea ice in
their hunt for food.
In December of 2005,
Greenpeace and two other conservation groups
sued the Bush administration when it missed
its first legal deadline to respond to the
petition for an endangered species listing.
On December 27, 2006, the Service announced
its proposal to list the species as "threatened"
and had one year to make a final listing
decision. The legal deadline for doing so
was January 9, 2008.Every week it seems
there is new evidence that the sea ice is
melting and that the polar bear’s habitat
is disappearing. The US Geological Survey
released a report this past September predicting
that if current warming projections continue,
two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will
likely be extinct by 2050, including all
of the polar bears in Alaska. With a timeline
like that, it is hard to understand how
the polar bears aren’t already protected.
Why Listing is So Important?
If the polar bears were
listed under the United States Endangered
Species Act - a safety net for plants and
animals on the brink of extinction - they
would be granted a broad range of protection.
The protection would include a requirement
that United States federal agencies ensure
that any action carried out, authorized,
or funded by the United States government
will not "jeopardize the continued
existence" of polar bears, or adversely
modify their critical habitat.
