Archived press release

Destroyers of last old forests exposed

21 February 1997

Friends of the Earth will today name some of the leading publishing, manufacturing,retailing and forestry firms implicated in the destruction of the European Union's last old,natural forests. Top people from the companies concerned will attend a special briefing to hear about campaigner's demands for a moratorium on logging in old-growth forests or purchasing logs from such areas.

The companies are identified in a new report [1], which sets out how the last 5% of wildlife-rich, old forest in Sweden and Finland is still being logged and how hundreds of forest species are threatened as a result [2]. The companies doing the logging, or buying the logs,supply a range of products to the UK including newspapers, magazines, sanitary products, photocopy paper and food packaging. Friends of the Earth has traced many high profile connections between the companies dealing in old-growth timber and UK products.

Dr Georgina Green, Forests Campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said:

"UK firms are buying massive amounts of wood and paper from companies that are chopping their way through Europe's last old forests. If these big British spenders insist that their products are 'old-growth-free', then their Swedish and Finnish suppliers will have to listen."

The level of forest protection in Sweden and Finland has been widely criticised [3], many old-growth areas remain unprotected and several have been logged in the past few months. For example, Finnish Government surveys identified 180,000 ha of state-owned,old-growth forest in the north of the country but in June 1996 undertook to protect just 63,000 ha, leaving two thirds open to logging.

Examples of recently-logged and threatened forest, and companies whose products may contain old-growth

NOTES TO EDITORS:

[1] Scandinavian forests and forest product companies, produced by Friends of the Earth,January 1997.

[2] Over 1,700 forest-dependent species in Sweden and over 700 in Finland are listed as threatened. Many of these are dependent on old-growth forests, now reduced to less than 5% of the forest land (the remaining 95% has been converted to intensively-managed commercial forests, which are far less rich in plants and animals).

[3] Over 80 of Sweden's leading scientists have issued a statement saying:"The biodiversity of Sweden's forests is in crisis......Areas that ought to be preserved for future generations continue to be logged. The current rate at which such areas are being placed under protection is completely inadequate." Sweden's forest protection was also heavily criticised by their own parliamentary auditors last year, although the auditors' report was never published.

In Finland, the Finnish Environment Institute has said: "The present network of forest reserves is inadequate in most parts of Finland (excluding Forest Lapland) in maintaining the biodiversity of the forests". (Reserve network of forests in Finland and the need for developing the network - an ecological approach. Finnish Environment Institute, Nature and Land Use Division, May 1996.)

[4] National standards for forest certification under the Forest Stewardship Council are currently being developed in Sweden. However, the forest companies involved (with the exception of Assi-Doman), have not made any commitment to an old-growth moratorium,and they continue to log in, buy logs from, or plan to log, old-growth areas.

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust