Saving the rainforest at home

Saving the Amazon rainforest is a popular rallying cry for environmentalists, and a cause that's gained wide appeal thanks to the efforts of pop stars, politicians and environmental conservation organizations. In terms of preserving precious ecosystems and mitigating global warming, it's incredibly crucial to stop the devastation of rainforests that harbor untold numbers of species and absorb a significant portion of the world's carbon dioxide.

The missing cry in the fight to save the Amazon rainforest is the lack of recognition - at least among many environmental groups - that while U.S. citizens shake their finger at Brazil and neighboring countries for failing to enforce environmental restrictions and preserve their precious natural resources, we're guilty of the same widespread rainforest devastation in our own country.

In the temperate rainforests of California and the Pacific Northwest, logging companies have for decades raped the land with impunity, leading to massive soil erosion (and frequent landslides), rivers choked in silt and the loss of crucial habitat for endangered species. Clearcutting - the same technique used by soybean farmers in the Brazilian rainforest - continues on a massive scale in this country, without any restriction other than a prohibition of clearcutting on federal lands. Weyerhauser and other logging companies argue for clearcutting as a 'sound' forestry practice, which sounds suspiciously like the Brazilian corporate farmer's justification for leveling thousands of acres of pristine rainforest.

I've watched the devastation practiced in the rainforests of this country for far too long. It's high time we started practicing what we preach (to countries outside our borders) and protect our own precious rainforests. For information about clearcutting, visit http://www.nrdc.org/land/forests/fcut.asp, as well as http://www.snowwowl.com/rltreesclearcutting.html for photos of the devastating results.