“Brazil’s government rejected accusations on Tuesday that its settlement of poor peasants in the Amazon was fueling the destruction of the world’s largest rain forest but promised an investigation.”

“Greenpeace said it blockaded a ship Friday slated to carry a cargo of wood pulp from a Canadian freshwater port to a German plant operated by Stora Enso in protest over what the environmental group said are destructive logging practices.”

Rainforest representatives from the Democratic Republic of Congo will appeal to the World Bank in Washington to complain about logging practices.

The forest industry in Canada is pledging to be carbon neutral by the year 2015. Forest companies are hoping their activities including logging, pulp and paper operations and products production will not be sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

“Just three weeks into the job, Natural Resources Minister Donna Cansfield has angered environmentalists over whether to curb, or even ban, logging in Algonquin Provincial Park.” Logging practices threaten birds, animals and old-growth trees in Ontario’s oldest Provincial Park.

The Canadian Press

Leaving British Columbia’s old-growth forests standing may make more economic sense than cutting them down for timber, especially as the province looks to strategies to cut global warming, a new B.C. study suggests.

The report from Simon Fraser University challenges the status quo and uses Ministry of Forest data to show that conservation wins out over logging when forests are valued for their role in capturing carbon from the atmosphere, protecting endangered species and providing opportunities for recreation.