PRESS RELEASE
Rainforest Action Network Denounces Weyerhaeuser’s Environmental and Human Rights Abuses at Builders Conference
For Immediate Release: November 16, 2007
LONG BEACH, Calif. – Members of Rainforest Action Network (RAN) protested the environmental and human rights practices of Weyerhaeuser Corp. at the Building Industry Show today, deploying a balloon banner in the atrium of the Long Beach Convention Center that read, “Weyerhaeuser and iLevel: Clearcutting Human Rights. Ask Me How!” Weyerhaeuser was permitted to exhibit its iLevel “green” wood in the show’s green pavilion, despite the fact that the wood was clear-cut from the traditional territory of Canada’s Grassy Narrows First Nation against the community’s wishes.
RAN’s protest was part of a solidarity campaign with the Grassy Narrows community of northwestern Ontario. In January, Grassy Narrows leaders called for a moratorium on any industrial activity on their traditional territory occurring without the community’s free, prior and informed consent. Weyerhaeuser is the only forest products company that continues to purchase hardwoods logged in Grassy Narrows. The clear- cut logging Weyerhaeuser supports interferes with First Nations’ constitutional and treaty rights to engage in traditional activities such as hunting and trapping.
In late October, Grassy Narrows began talks with a negotiator appointed by the province of Ontario to address the community’s longstanding environmental and human rights concerns. However, the province has made no moves to enforce the community’s demand for a moratorium on industrial activity.
“We wanted to remind Weyerhaeuser in front of its peers that what this company is doing to the Grassy Narrows community is unconscionable and unacceptable,” said Brant Olson, director of RAN’s Old Growth Campaign. “We know that American consumers—especially green consumers—wouldn’t buy Weyerhaeuser’s wood if they knew how it was obtained.”
RAN also objected to the conference organizers’ choice to allow Weyerhaeuser into the green pavilion.
“Exhibiting Weyerhaeuser’s iLevel line in the green pavilion takes greenwashing to a new low,” said Olson. “To call products green when they come from clear-cuts on Indigenous land over the community’s strenuous objections is just absurd.”
