A Rainforest Action Network report confirms that Weyerhaeuser building products and new homes marketed in the United States as “environmentally friendly” use wood clear-cut without consent from treaty-protected indigenous territory within Canada’s threatened Boreal Forest.
The report documents the movement of wood from massive clear-cut operations on the traditional territory of the Grassy Narrows First Nation community into new American homes marketed as “Built Green” by Quadrant Homes, a subsidiary of Weyerhaeuser, the largest lumber company in the world.
Weyerhaeuser has not sought FSC certification of its forestlands, nor has it gained FSC Chain-of-Custody certifications for its vertical markets, says Lynne Barker, Healthy Building Network. “Weyerhaeuser has instead chosen a defensive strategy and invested in costly and backward thinking efforts to discredit FSC and LEED (premier, national green building standard) and promote less rigorous alternatives. In addition to potential loss of market share in the green building industry (by far the fastest growing segment of the construction industry) Weyerhaeuser is squandering its reputation and leadership role, and risks long-term damage to its corporate reputation. Weyerhaeuser is being left behind as the real industry leaders are distinguishing themselves, expanding market share, and gaining profits.”
“Home buyers should see red when they hear green claims from Weyerhaeuser and industry greenwashing programs like the Sustainable Forestry Initiative and Canadian Standards Association,” says Daniel Hall, Forest Ethics Corporate Action program Coordinator. “This ecologically devastating and socially irresponsible logging would not be allowed under a credible forestry program. Consumers should look to the Forest Stewardship Council for environmentally responsible forest products, and to the US Green Building Council for credible green building standards.”
Despite decades of negotiations, environmental appeals, protests, and what has become the longest running road blockade in Canadian history, industrial loggers like Weyerhaeuser continue to use wood systematically extracted from ecologically sensitive old growth areas and destroy the traditional way of life of the Grassy Narrows indigenous community who have lived on the land since pre-Columbian times.
The report cites an independent, three year review of logging plans and practices on Grassy Narrows’ territory which found that current harvesting levels within the Whiskey Jack Forest cannot be sustained for even 20 years; the company’s estimate of available wood is based on unrealistic assumptions about how much the forest can produce each year; and harvest levels are too high to protect existing wildlife habitat, or to allow the restoration of degraded habitat conditions in the forest. One planned cut alone will clear 52,000 acres of forest. Forest Management plans filed with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) and excerpted in the report, attest that Weyerhaeuser uses half of the total volume logged from Grassy Narrows every year to make Timberstrand laminated strand lumber (LSL), an “environmentally sustainable” engineered wood product distributed widely throughout Canada and the Western United States. Builders including at least two Weyerhaeuser subsidiaries use LSL for flooring, structural, window, and door applications in new home construction nationwide. Photographs from the report show LSL products from Weyerhaeuser’s Kenora mill used in new homes advertised under Quadrant’s “Built Green” program near Seattle, WA.
A February 28, 2006 letter from the Grassy Narrows First Nation community demands that the chief executives of Weyerhaeuser (NYSE: WY) and Abitibi-Consolidated “immediately cease and desist from all logging and industrial resource extraction on our territory” without consent and asserts that decades of unsustainable logging has “poisoned our waters with mercury and other toxins, nearly eliminated our ability to practice our way of life, and robbed us of economic opportunities.”
On March 27, 2006 Amnesty International submitted a briefing to the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which affirms the Canadian government’s “obligation to uphold the rights of indigenous people.” Amnesty criticizes Canadian officials for allowing logging to proceed in Grassy Narrows over the clear opposition of the community and in violation of Indigenous rights protected by Treaties and other international law.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763, Treaty #3, and the Canadian Constitution outline the rights of indigenous people to their traditional lands. An ongoing lawsuit between the members of Grassy Narrows First Nation, the Minister of Natural Resources and Abitibi-Consolidated claims that the community was not properly consulted or compensated by the company, and that Abitibi’s clear-cut practices are infringing on the ability of the people of Grassy Narrows to exercise their Treaty 3 right to hunt and trap on their traditional territory. The lawsuit, if successful, would revoke all current cutting rights on Grassy Narrows land north of the English river.
The people of Grassy Narrows First Nation have lived on 2,500 square miles of land north of Kenora, Ontario for thousands of years. Nearly 50% of the community still sustain themselves from the land by hunting, trapping, and gathering medicine and berries. The old-growth habitat provided by these areas also supports animal species like the pine martin and woodland caribou which are critical to the ecological integrity of the area.
In the 1990s Weyerhaeuser fiber-supplier Abitibi dramatically increased logging rates in Grassy Narrows without the consent or proper consultation of the community- regularly clear-cutting huge tracts of land, spraying the land with herbicides and pesticides, and replanting with monoculture tree plantations.
Representatives from the Grassy Narrows community will be present at Weyerhaeuser’s annual shareholder meeting in Seattle on April 20 to raise these and other concerns.
“American Dream- Native Nightmare” outdoor ads, which began appearing Monday in Seattle, Montreal, and Toronto, highlight the link between “green” homes and environmental destruction and human rights violations on Grassy Narrows’territory began appearing on the streets of Seattle, Toronto, and Montreal on Monday.
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