Just winding down from a great event in Toronto this afternoon. RAN teamed up with the Christian Peacemaker Teams to influence the elections coming up here in Ontario. Volunteers worked on the massive banner for weeks. Today it found a home on the lawn of Queen’s Park, the provincial legislature. The message was simple: “native land rights now”.

The politics, of course, are more complicated. Candidates for the Premier’s office debated yesterday, but they didn’t say a word on native rights. Pretty shocking considering the spread of occupations and blockades throughout the north. Recent court rulings are (finally) beginning to recognize that First Nations hold real power over land use decision making in the province meaning big changes for the future of industrial development.

But the candidates prefer to quibble over whether creationism should be taught in school. We hope coverage of today’s event will get a real conversation started over how to bring meaningful change toward Ontario’s relationship with First Nations. At the least, we’ve sent the candidates a message too big to ignore!

Thanks to everyone who turned out–especially Judy DaSilva and Steve Fobister from Grassy Narrows First Nation, John Cutfeet from KI First Nation and Alvin Fiddler from NAN. It’s been an honor to work with all of you, not to mention the great team from CPT.

I’ve been laughing all morning over Weyerhaeuser’s new website GrowingIdeas.com. It’s comically evil—and illustrates better than we ever could just how out-of-touch they are with reality.

I clicked on “What Can a Tree Be?”, wondering why being a key part of a diverse ecosystem, like providing shelter for animals, preventing erosion and producing oxygen was evidently not good enough. More »

Good news. Today, a US District Court in Seattle stopped Weyerhaeuser from logging in endangered Spotted Owl habitat in western Washington (AP Story link).

Frequent readers of the Understory will remember our report on the how the suit filed by Washington Forest Law Center late last year could expose the forest industry’s “Sustainable Forestry Initiative” greenwashing scheme.

Weyerhaeuser trotted out the Spotted Owl as proof of the program’s green credentials in 2003. According to its press release touting the “rigorous requirements” of the SFI, “Some of the forestry practices employed by Weyerhaeuser that meet certification standards include… special measures to protect rare, threatened or endangered species such as… the northern spotted owl in Oregon and Washington.”

Some standard! You’d think a “bold approach to sustainable forest management”–as SFI describes itself–would at least keep its participants from breaking the law.

We hear that SFI was waiting on the court to decide whether to kick Weyerhaeuser out. Considering that the company’s CEO sits on the SFI board however, we’re not holding our breath.

Domtar announced today that it will certify all of its logging operations in Canada’s Boreal Forest to the environmental standards of the Forest Stewardship Council. This includes sensitive Woodland Caribou habitat in Ontario and Saskatchewan transferred to Domtar from Weyerhaeuser in a deal closed earlier this year. These are the same areas Weyerhaeuser refused to certify to the FSC in negotiations with RAN just prior to the deal.

It’s a sign that the tables are turning in Canada’s Boreal Forest, and that Weyerhaeuser is on the wrong side.

Background and my thoughts on the implications of this announcement after the jump… More »

A couple of activists up in Seattle along with our old growth team sent a strong message to Weyerhaeuser and their doting subsidiary Quadrant Homes: stop logging land and forests that belong to first nation’s communities, like Grassy Narrows. Checkout the footage at Seattle’s King 5 website:

http://www.king5.com/video/news-index.html?nvid=136719

Nicely done folks. More info on this coming soon.