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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Boise Cascade gets Holiday gift. |
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by gatito
(No verified email address)
Address: http://www.ran.org |
20 Dec 2001
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Santa Delivers Thousands Of Letters From Children To Boise Cascade Office Product Headquarters |
AMERICA’S CHILDREN PLEAD WITH BOISE CASCADE TO STOP DESTROYING OLD GROWTH FORESTS
Santa Delivers Thousands Of Letters From Children To Boise Cascade Office Product Headquarters
Itasca, IL – December 20, 2001 – Today students and environmentalists from across Illinois joined Santa Claus at Boise Cascade Office Products’ Itasca headquarters to deliver thousands of letters from children begging the logging company to grant them a single holiday wish; “Stop Destroying Old Growth Forests!”
The childrens’ letters were addressed to Christopher Millikin, CEO of Boise Cascade Office Products, and pleaded with America’s largest destroyer of old growth forests to stop logging and distributing old growth forest products and switch to 100% recycled and tree free paper.
Boise Cascade actively logs old growth forests throughout the U.S. and distributes wood products from endangered, old growth forests throughout Canada, Central and South America, and Southeast Asia and has been linked to human rights abuses in Guerrero, Mexico. Boise Cascade led the charge against the popular Roadless Policy, a measure that would have protected 58.5 million acres of America’s public wilderness areas and considered the most significant forest conservation measure of the last 100 years. The focus of a large consumer campaign, Boise Cascade has come under increasingly intense public criticism for failing to join its top customers and more than 400 hundred other companies, including Home Depot, Lowe’s and Kinko’s, in a pledge to stop the unnecessary destructive practice of selling products made from endangered, old growth forests.
There exists considerable public support for old growth forest preservation. The Los Angeles Times reported in April 2001 that 9 out of 10 Americans favor preserving our remaining wilderness areas and according to a Yankelovitch poll, nearly two-thirds of Americans support old growth forests protection.
“Children care about the world’s most endangered forests and their concern demonstrates the severe degree to which Boise Cascade is out of step with modern values,” said Jennifer Krill, Old Growth Campaign Director, Rainforest Action Network. “Ripping old growth trees from the forests is like hunting whales to extinction or slaughtering elephants for ivory and our children, like most Americans, want it stopped.”
A holiday theme ran throughout the delivery of the letters as students, accompanied by Santa Claus, asked Boise Cascade for what Santa can’t deliver – and end to old growth logging. In attendance were students from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale and University of Illinois, Champaign Urbana.
In July of this year, music legends Bonnie Raitt and John Densmore, environmental hero Julia Butterfly Hill and more than 20 national environmental and social justice leaders were arrested in Itasca after gathering at Boise Cascade Office Products’ headquarters to protest Boise Cascade’s crusade to silence critics of its old growth logging practices and expose Boise Cascade’s “Dirty Tricks” campaign to limit free speech and smear Rainforest Action Network. They pleaded guilty to a minor trespassing charge and were fined and placed under court supervision.
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