By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Environmentalists aligned themselves with the U.S. timber industry yesterday, arguing lax conservation standards in Canada are part of the reason Canadian lumber can undercut U.S. timber prices.
The argument supports the U.S. timber industry's charges that Canadian provinces give their loggers unfair subsidies that should be taken into account in a new softwood lumber trade deal.
A 5-year-old agreement on softwood trade, set to expire March 31, governs how much lumber the country's northern neighbor can ship across the border duty-free.
Conservationists, the U.S. timber industry and U.S. officials have argued that the Canadian provinces give their industry unfair subsidies because they charge low fees to companies that harvest timber on provincial land. In the United States, companies must bid competitively for standing timber.
But in addition, conservationists say, the Canadian industry gets a bonus because it doesn't have to grapple with costly environmental protections.
"The economic subsidies and ecological subsidies in Canadian forestry practices are flip sides of the same coin," said Bill Snape, vice president of Defenders of Wildlife. "This mythological notion that Canadian wilderness is pristine, beyond reproach, is just flat wrong."
For instance, Snape said, Canada does not have a federal endangered species act to protect imperiled species such as Pacific salmon and the grizzly bear. Nor does it have strong enforcement of environmental provisions, which means forests can be clear-cut.
The issue is aligning U.S. conservation groups with an industry they usually oppose: timber. Environmentalists plan to join the industry's expected lawsuit if the Canadian industry starts flooding the U.S. market with lumber after the trade agreement expires.
Conservationists have allies in Congress, including Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who joined House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt in a letter to President Bush yesterday asking him to make environmental protections a priority in any new agreement.
"If Canada continues to pursue such a shortsighted forestry policy, everyone loses," Baucus said yesterday. "Clearly, they are dumping lumber."
Canadians say that the U.S. industry is just trying to limit their share of the U.S. market. They argue they protect their environment with regulations and they simply want free trade.
"Canadian policies do not encourage over-harvesting," Canada's ambassador to the United States, Michael Kergin, wrote Baucus. "Canada limits harvest levels to the forest growth rates, so that the forests are not depleted."
Softwood lumber comes from cone-bearing trees and is often used for home construction. The United States got about one-third of its supply, or $7 billion worth, from Canada last year.
The 1996 agreement allows Canada's four major lumber-producing provinces - Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta - to export 14.7 billion board feet duty-free annually, enough to build about one million homes.
Beyond that, sliding fees are charged. About 18.5 billion board feet were shipped last year. A board foot is the equivalent of a board one foot long by one foot wide by one inch thick.
Snape and other environmentalists see the expiration of the softwood trade agreement as a perfect opportunity for the United States to encourage Canada to improve its forestry practices.
But Snape said he's only "marginally confident" the Bush administration will take the environment into account at the negotiating table. Even so, he and his peers say any limits on Canadian logging, environmental and otherwise, can help the forest.
"Just because there is a chance the Bush administration will not take the environment into account does not mean we should not push it," said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Even if only the economic subsidies are addressed in Canada, that still helps the environment."
