Day 292 - 01 Nov 96 - Page 22


     
     1        environment partly because it involves the destruction of
     2        trees.  Theo Hopkins, for us, for the defence, who is an
     3        independent researcher involved in forestry management, and
     4        he also has hands on experience of forestry management,
     5        particularly had studied the degradation and destruction of
     6        temperate and boreal forests.  He said that "Large scale
     7        commercial forest exploitation has led to the progressive
     8        reduction of natural old growth, or ancient forests, which
     9        are still being logged all over Europe, North America and
    10        elsewhere.  This has generally continued despite protests
    11        and official so-called protection measures."
    12
    13        He explained how mono-culture plantations have tended to
    14        replace natural forests, but could not match such forests
    15        in their biodiversity or in social, ecological, cultural or
    16        spiritual value.  Therefore, for him, they could not be
    17        described as sustainable forests, even under official
    18        international guidelines.  I think it would be fair to say
    19        that the way industry views 'sustainable' would be turning
    20        the whole planet into one big resource factory that they
    21        keep on using indefinitely, which is not how the public or
    22        anybody else, certainly all the experts, could view the
    23        importance of forests; that the biodiversity has to be
    24        sustainable, the spiritual value has to be sustainable and
    25        just the nature of forests, variety and types, has to be
    26        sustainable.  I think that has become an international
    27        recognition.
    28
    29        Mr. Hopkins said the use by McDonald's of products
    30        utilising paper sourced from such forests was, quote,
    31        "self-evidently damaging to the environment".  Only since
    32        the late '80s has the forest industry publicly had to
    33        recognise these problems, faced with publicity and pressure
    34        from the public.  "In particular", he said, "in contrast to
    35        the ecologically rich natural forests, plantations have
    36        very few tree species and less variety of insects, fungi,
    37        animals, plants and birds.  This is due not only to the
    38        character of commercial plantations but also to damaging
    39        techniques of forest management.  The effects, for example,
    40        of planting non-native species, the age uniformity of the
    41        trees, the clear cutting, the use of machinery and the
    42        removal of decaying trees all contributed to the damage to
    43        the forests, on top of the fact that it was also a
    44        mono-culture plantation."
    45
    46        One thing that I quote him directly, he said, "In 1989,
    47        1990" -- at the time of the alleged libel -- "there was
    48        virtually no concern by government and forest industry for
    49        ecological sustainability."  The point he was making was
    50        that whilst some problems are now being recognised this has
    51        only just started to have any effect on the forest floor,
    52        as he called it - the forest floor, i.e., in reality, the
    53        authorities have been forced to become aware of the need to
    54        rectify the problems that the forest industry was causing,
    55        and that is only now beginning to have some kind of effect
    56        on the ground.
    57
    58        Mr. Hopkins outlined some particular environmental problems
    59        in countries which provided the source for McDonald's
    60        packaging in North America and Europe.  Obviously, we did

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