Day 073 - 13 Jan 95 - Page 17


     
     1        their forests do have problems.  Previous to this sort of
     2        date they were saying: "Everything was wonderful", and
     3        partly because of international pressure and international
     4        spotlight falling on them, instead of running away,
     5        saying:  "Everything is wonderful", they have addressed the
     6        situation and at least in their rhetoric they are doing
     7        something about it and on the ground they are doing
     8        something about it as well.
     9
    10   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  How does that statement tie in with the words
    11        which immediately follow it, Mr. Hopkins?
    12        A.  Right, the words that immediately follow it?
    13
    14   Q.   Just read them out.
    15        A.  "'At the same time, however, we are firmly convinced
    16        that effective and efficient forestry operations can
    17        successfully -- can be successfully combined with highly
    18        demanding nature conservation goals'."   They seem to be in
    19        conflict, and I think maybe you need to consider nature
    20        conservation as something different than the biological
    21        qualities.  In a way they seem to want their cake and eat
    22        it here.
    23
    24        I think you have to take the first paragraph as the one
    25        which really puts the situation, and what they are saying
    26        is:  "Yes, we can do something about it".  Nature
    27        conservation might be something different than preserving
    28        biodiversity.  Nature conservation tends to be seen more in
    29        terms of preserving, you might say, the more charismatic
    30        animals, the moose, the deer, the fluffy ones, the pretty
    31        birds, and biological conservation; biodiversity is more
    32        about the entire range of animal and plant species,
    33        including the ugly ones like slugs, fungi, worms, and
    34        beetles, the things people do not find very attractive and
    35        might often step on it as they were going past them.  I
    36        think that is often the situation.  Nature conservation is
    37        about the prettier animals.
    38
    39   Q.   It occurred to me a possible construction is that you have
    40        the words which you first quoted about a "cultivated and
    41        tended forest cannot contain all the biological", and
    42        I stress "all" -- that is my stress -- "the biological
    43        qualities and variations that are to be found in the
    44        natural forest".  But then it is going on to say:  "We
    45        cannot have perfection unless we abandon forestry
    46        altogether, but we can meet the highly demanding nature
    47        conservation goals".  In other words:  "We can meet
    48        standards which are high enough for most
    49        conservationists".
    50 
    51        The reason I raise that now is that (and I am not going to 
    52        ask you about it, but Mr. Morris or Ms. Steel may) if one, 
    53        for instance, looks at the bottom of page 28 of your
    54        statement, paragraph 7.4.2, you say, "Paper sourced from
    55        the USA" -- I have picked that because the First Plaintiff
    56        has incorporated in one of the States of the United States
    57        of America -- "is thus damaging to the environment".
    58
    59        What may help me is whether, even in your own terms, it is
    60        damaging to the environment in the sense that a cultivated

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