NEW:  Letter to the Editor, Toronto Star, November 2, 2007

Can't see the forest for trees

While certainly laudable, the forest industry's claim to be carbon neutral by 2015 needs to be seen for what it is: largely based on technicalities. To the extent that these claims have any basis in efficiency gains per unit of product and recycled content, kudos should be extended. But peeling back the veneer of the claim by the Forest Products Association of Canada, it becomes apparent that this is not primarily about conservation measures but about interpretation of rules.

Click here to read the entire letter by Trevor Hesselink, CPAWS Wildlands League's Director of Forests Program.

No other activity has a bigger impact on wild places than logging.  Each year more than 210,000 hecatres of Ontario's public lands is cut.

South of the current cutting limit (at approximately the 50th parallel) almost all forests outside of parks are allocated for industrial logging and most of that logging is clearcutting - today, almost 94% of the land area cut each year in Ontario is clearcut. (click map to enlarge)

But that isn't the entire story.  Our landscape is further subjected to mining and hydro-electric development and common to all is the building of roads, a threat to nature in itself.