Irish forest certification system submitted for assessment

Greenpeace International has informed the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) that it will discontinue its international membership with FSC for the year 2018. In line with its overall decentralization approach, Greenpeace will allow national offices to determine if and how to best engage with FSC and forest management more broadly. In some countries – Canada, the United States and New Zealand for example – Greenpeace will remain members of FSC International.

How many trees are there on Earth? It sounds like an impossible question, but researchers at the Crowther Lab have come up with a number: 3.04 trillion – or roughly 422 trees per person. That may seem huge, but it is a far cry from what it used to be. Collecting data from over 400,000 forest plots worldwide, the Zurich-based ecological lab setup by British ecologist Tom Crowther estimated there are 46% fewer trees today than when human agriculture started 12,000 years ago, but humans could reset the dial and tackle the climate crisis through mass tree planting. According to Crowther’s report, planting one trillion trees globally could remove up to 200 billion tonnes of carbon over the next 50-100 years.

This summer, Zac Wagman of Project Learning Tree (PLT) Canada embarked on a cross-country adventure to celebrate and promote youth working in green jobs that include wildlife management, forest management, forest-based programs, conservation and environmental education. Wagman started his Green Ride for Green Jobs bike ride across Canada in May and is riding from coast to coast (more than 5,400 miles) for the rest of the summer. Wagman plans to make more than 100 stops, one of them being with Domtar Dryden employees, and highlight 2,000 green jobs in Canadian communities. “We want to raise awareness of the incredible jobs and career pathways that exist in forestry,” says Wagman. “Nobody I knew growing up worked in forestry or had anything to do with forestry, so I didn’t even know it was an option. Had I known back then how rewarding and fulfilling this industry is, I would have likely gone down this pathway a lot earlier.” Click Read More below for additional information.