Chilean Government Weak on Native Forest Protection and Illegal Logging

Contact: Aaron Sanger, (541) 738 9238

San Francisco, CA - Environmentalists from several countries converged at Chilean consulates today, challenging Chile's government to stop illegal logging and to outlaw the conversion of its rare native forests into non-native tree farms. Chile has signed but not enforced a treaty prohibiting the sale of wood from the endangered Alerce tree, known as "Chilean redwood." Converting native forests into tree farms is condemned and not permitted according to the historic agreement signed last year by Chile's two largest wood products companies, U.S. company Home Depot and ten environmental organizations led by U.S. environmental group ForestEthics.

"Chile's forests are unique in the world. Unfortunately Chile's government is not acting accordingly," said ForestEthics spokesperson Pat Rasmussen at the Chilean consulate in Vancouver, British Columbia. "If the government wants to sell more wood products internationally, it will have to take action to protect its endangered forests."

The head of Chile's forest agency was recently arrested on corruption charges surrounding the illegal logging of the Alerce, whose lifespan can exceed 4,000 years. Chile's President Lagos has spurned environmental groups' requests for a meeting to discuss the illegal logging problem and the broader controversy over the government's failure to protect the country's native forests. These forests include the so-called "monkey puzzle tree"--at 200 million years, it is the world's oldest surviving tree. They are home to the world's smallest deer, the pudu, which stands only 15 inches tall when fully grown.

"We in British Columbia know how fragile the world's temperate rainforests are, and we know how weak governments can be in protecting them," said Tamara Stark, Forest Campaigns Coordinator for Greenpeace Canada.

"Chile's government has betrayed our trust by refusing to protect rainforests located in Chile," said Brant Olson, Director of the Old Growth Campaign for Rainforest Action Network. "We join our Chilean friends in demanding that the government act to restore that trust."

The temperate rainforests of Chile are biologically related to forests as far north as Alaska and as far south as Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America. Temperate rainforests also exist in New Zealand and Tasmania, but they are globally rare, covering less than 0.2 % of Earth's land mass. Environmental groups led by ForestEthics, scientists, and First Nations have joined together in a World Temperate Rainforest Network committed to the protection of these ancient, endangered forests.

According to a report prepared by Chilean experts and published by ForestEthics, the Chilean Government does not have information about where new tree farms are replacing native forests in the region containing the world's second largest temperate rainforest. In that same region, which contains most of the country's remaining Alerce trees, for every 900,000 acres of forest, there is only ONE person who is "principally devoted" to enforcement of native forest regulations.

For more information on the ForestEthics campaign to protect Chile's endangered forests, visit www.forestethics.org/forests/chile.html.

ForestEthics protects endangered forests by transforming the paper and wood industries in North America and by supporting forest communities in the development of conservation-based economies.

Download a copy of the new ForestEthics repot on Chile's forest. 

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