forests

New Maps Reveal Enviva’s Ahoskie Wood Pellet Facility Threatens Southern Wetland Forests, Surrounding Ecosystems and Wildlife

- August 27, 2013. Source: Dogwood Alliance

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"121","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 300px; height: 224px; margin-left: 7px; margin-right: 7px; float: left;"}}]]AHOSKIE, N.C. (August 27, 2013) – New maps and a report released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Dogwood Alliance reveal the ecological threat a major wood pellet manufacturing mill in Ahoskie, North Carolina, poses to surrounding endangered forests. The facility, operated by the South’s largest exporter of wood pellets, Enviva, produces approximately 400,000 tons of wood pellets per year to ship to Europe as fuel for biomass electricity.

European Biofuels Vote Delivers 'Desperately Weak Compromise'

- by Karl Mathiesen, September 11, 2013. Source: The Guardian

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"119","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 244px; height: 190px; margin-left: 7px; margin-right: 7px; float: left;"}}]]The European parliament has delivered a "desperately weak compromise" on the future of biofuels in Europe that industry says will "curtail jobs and investment".

In a tight vote on the use of biofuels in transport fuel, the parliament approved a 6% cap on the contribution of biofuels to Europe's renewable transport energy target of 10% by 2020.

The policy of replacing petrol and diesel for cars and other vehicles stems from efforts to reduce carbon emissions from Europe's transport sector. But critics argue that while biofuels can look green, they come with unintended consequences. Growing biofuel crops displaces food crops, pushing up food prices, and some biofuels can actually lead to higher carbon emissions than fossil fuels when changes in land use are fully accounted for.

Biofuels Project Pushing Thousands of People into Hunger in Africa

- September 4, 2013. Source: ActionAid

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"118","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 231px; height: 218px; float: left; margin-left: 7px; margin-right: 7px;"}}]]A biofuels project praised by the European Commission as environmentally and socially responsible is pushing thousands of people into poverty in one of the poorest countries in the world, a new ActionAid report said today.

The report comes as MEPs prepare to take a critical vote on EU biofuel policies next week.

When Addax Bioenergy shortly begins exporting ethanol from a sugar cane plantation in Sierra Leone to the EU to be used in petrol, it will be the first biofuels to be exported from Africa to Europe in commercial quantities.

The EU claims that it does not import biofuels crops from Africa’s poorest countries because of the potential impact that its biofuel policies have on decreasing the amount of land that can be used to grow food and therefore increasing hunger.

Florida Forest Service Report on Forest Sustainability Challenged

- by Bruce Ritchie, September 6, 2013. Source: The Florida Current

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"117","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 240px; margin-left: 7px; margin-right: 7px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Bruce Ritchie"}}]]A Florida Forest Service report required by 2012 legislation found that the state's forests overall are sustainable but there are some counties where some types of trees are being harvested faster than they are being grown.

The report was required by HB 7117, a comprehensive energy bill, amid concerns that proposed new biomass energy plants could increase costs for existing sawmills, pulp mills and others in the forest product industry.

“The study indicates that most counties in Florida have highly sustainable forests that meet or exceed the demands of our forest products industry," Agriculture Commissioner Adam H. Putnam said in a press release issued this week.

Dirty Air for Power We Don't Need

- by Dick Stokes, September 19, 2013. Source: Gainesville-Sun

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"60","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 222px; height: 222px; margin-left: 7px; margin-right: 7px; float: left;"}}]]The “big lie” method involves making a claim so preposterous people assume it must be true.

Gainesville Regional Utilities made the preposterous claim that the air will be cleaner after the biomass incinerator (the Gainesville Renewable Energy Center) starts burning tons of wood daily, or more than 1 million tons annually. According to GRU, much of that wood is currently burned in the open with no pollution controls.

Just don't ask GRU for the hard evidence. State records show only a fraction of the amount claimed is actually burned in the open annually. Good foresters know wood “waste” replenishes the soil for future trees, so they haven't been burning it all away.

Biomass Industry Fans Flames of Wildfire Hysteria 

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"115","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"270","style":"width: 388px; height: 260px; margin-left: 7px; margin-right: 7px; float: left;","width":"480"}}]]California’s Rim fire, expected to be fully “contained” by October after igniting in Yosemite National Park on August 17, will ultimately benefit the forests it has passed through. While media accounts sensationalize such large wildfires as “catastrophic” and “disastrous,” science demonstrates that, to the contrary, fire is a vital component of western forest ecosystems.

Journalists mischaracterize the ecological function of wildfire as “devastation” or refer to forests that have experienced fire as a “barren wasteland,” exploiting emotions to sell newspapers. Yet media is only an accomplice to one of the masterminds ultimately responsible for fanning the flames of wildfire hysteria: the biomass energy industry.

Wildland-Urban Fire--A Different Approach

- by Jack D. Cohen, Rocky Mountain Research Station, U.S. Forest Service

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"114","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"480","style":"width: 346px; height: 480px; float: left; margin-left: 7px; margin-right: 7px;","width":"346"}}]]Wildland-urban fire occurs when a fire burning in wildland vegetation fuels gets close enough with its flames and/or firebrands (lofted burning embers) to potentially create ignitions of the residential fuels (Butler 1974). Residential fire destruction is the principal problem during wildland-urban fires, but homes that do not ignite do not burn. Recognizing the potential for wildland-urban home ignitions and preventing home ignitions is the principal challenge.

Understanding how homes ignite during wildland-urban fires provides the basis for appropriately assessing the potential for home ignition and thereby effectively mitigating wildland-urban fire ignitions. Fires do not spread by flowing over the landscape and high intensity fires do not engulf objects, as do avalanches and tsunamis. All fires spread by meeting the requirements for combustion—that is, a sufficiency of fuel, heat, and oxygen. In the context of severe wildland-urban fires, oxygen is not a limiting factor so this type of fire spreads according to a sufficiency of fuel and heat. Homes are the fuel and the heat comes from the flames and/or firebrands of the surrounding fires. Recent research indicates that the potential for home ignitions during wildfires including those of high intensity principally depends on a home’s fuel characteristics and the heat sources within 100-200 feet adjacent to a home (Cohen 1995; Cohen 2000; Cohen and Butler 1998). This relatively limited area that determines home ignition potential can be called the home ignition zone.

Wind Drives All Large Blazes 

- by George Wuerthner

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"112","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"247","style":"width: 400px; height: 290px; float: left; margin-left: 7px; margin-right: 7px;","width":"400"}}]]As large fires have spread across the West in recent decades, we hear increasing demands to reduce fuels—typically through logging. But logging won’t reduce the large fires we are experiencing because fuels do not drive large fires.

You can have tons of fuel per acre as occurs in Oregon’s Coast Range or the Olympic Mountains of Washington, and have virtually no fires because they are too wet to burn. On the other hand, we have seen some huge acreage charred on overgrazed grasslands that have little more than stubble to burn if there is a major drought and wind.

What makes the difference is not the available fuel, but the climatic/weather conditions. Logging forests does not change the climate/weather.

The Ecological Importance of California’s Rim Fire 

- by Chad Hanson, John Muir Project 

Photo: Doug Bevington

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"111","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"338","style":"width: 333px; height: 250px; float: left; margin: 5px 7px;","title":"Photo: Doug Bevington","width":"450"}}]]Since the Rim fire began in the central Sierra Nevada on August 17, there has been a steady stream of fearful, hyperbolic, and misinformed reporting in much of the media. The fire, which is currently 188,000 acres in size and covers portions of the Stanislaus National Forest and the northwestern corner of Yosemite National Park, has been consistently described as “catastrophic”, “destructive”, and “devastating.” One story featured a quote from a local man who said he expected “nothing to be left”. However, if we can, for a moment, set aside the fear, the panic, and the decades of misunderstanding about wildland fires in our forests, it turns out that the facts differ dramatically from the popular misconceptions. The Rim fire is a good thing for the health of the forest ecosystem. It is not devastation, or loss. It is ecological restoration.