Per capita consumption of paper and paper products in North America ranges from 120 kg up to 300 kg per year. People in developing countries consume an average of 12 kg a year each.

In Newfoundland ant Labrador we clear-cut, on average, 24,000 flares of our forests every year.  That is an area the size of 96,000 soccer fields.

That rate of logging translates into consumption of a little less than 3 million cubic meters of wood per year. Imagine a pile of wood two meters wide, one meter high and 1,500 km long. The pile would stretch from Port aux Basque to St. John's, plus Deer Lake to St. Anthony, and then some.

Sixty-three percent of productive forest land in insular Newfoundland is controlled by Abitibi Consolidated and Kruger Inc. The forests of Labrador are on Crown Land.

Labrador is probably the largest roadless tract of Boreal Forest on the planet. Yet not one square meter of these forests has any protection from industrial logging.

Resource road construction in Newfoundland is accelerating at an alarming rate: 
Total forest resource road construction 1990-1998 = 96 km
Total forest resource road construction 1996-2001 = 1,346 km

Total logging road construction in this ten-year period is 1,742 km!  At least half of this is through forests considered to be "old growth" or primary forests, forests that contain by far the highest number and variety of species" -- not just trees but animals, birds, and a whole range of vegetation.

The Swedish Model, used in Newfoundland, of plantings and pre-commercial thinning creates monoculture forests. This technique reduces biological diversity significantly, and in Sweden a total of 1,487 forest dwelling species are on the Red Data Lists as endangered species. Essentially no research has been done on forest biodiversity in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Since 1979 pre-commercial thinning operations and planting have taken place on approximately 155,000 hectares of the forests of Newfoundland. These areas are now monocultured tree farms  with an inherent need for protection from insects and diseases. This past summer the province reverted to the use of the chemical pesticide DYLOX in some thinned areas, ostensibly to protect investments in silviculture.

These monocultured forests with short rotation periods (40-50 yrs.) eliminate species such as the Newfoundland Pine Marten, and many others which depend on older forests with standing snags and coarse, woody debris to carry on their life processes.

The government of Newfoundland and Labrador has yet to protect any significant representative area of a forested ecoregion in the province from industrial forestry, mining, or hydro.

Of the 35 ecoregions (including subregions) in the province, 20 ecoregions are forested.  Despite this fact, not one forest ecoregion has a representative protected area, either on the Island or in Labrador.

Forests on the Island portion of the province are being overcut: "Demand, defined as the desire for timber, currently exceeds supply by 27% for the island....  Actual timber consumption controlled through limiting allocation, is estimated at 12% greater than the 1995 annual allowable cut"  Pg. 84, 20-Year Forestry Development Plan 1996-2015, Nfld. Forest Service, 1996.

The-climate-limited forests of Labrador are less adaptable, less resilient to the onslaught of industrial forest practice than most other foraged regions of Canada.  The dense fibre from these slow-growing forests makes high quality paper and is sought by the pulp and paper industry, using clear-cut plant and spray management regimes. Yet still no examples of these unique forests are protected.

On dry ground many mechanical harvesting systems do less environmental damage than traditional line skidders.  However, mechanical harvesters and associated equipment can weigh as much as 20,000 kilograms and on wet ground (eg. most of Newfoundland) these machines leave wheel ruts up to two meters deep. Besides the resulting environmental degradation threatening the sustainability of forest lands, mechanical harvesters are decreasing the sustainability of forest-dependent communities through job loss.

The shortage of timber supply on the Island portion of the province has recently resulted in the implementation of cable logging to harvest timber from steep slopes, a method previously considered uneconomical. The shallow soils, steep slopes and high precipitation will be contributing factors to increased erosion and landslides on these sensitive sites.

Old growth forest with dead fallen trees and standing dead trees are essential to the survival of a great variety of plants and animals which cannot survive in intermediate type forests. There arc very few watersheds left on the island with intact "old growth" forests. Sweden has only 5% of its old growth forests remaining, with 1,487 species endangered. It has been estimated that Newfoundland has less than 8% of its original old growth remaining, with an unknown number of endangered species.