Panda Porn: The Marriage of WWF and Weyerhaeuser
by Jeffrey St.
Clair
Dissident Voice
December 5, 2002
Back in the good
old days, a corporation with an unappetizing relationship to the natural world
would often try to burnish their image by luring an executive or top staffer
from an environmental group onto their board or into their public relations
department, where they could offer testimonials to the toxic firm's newfound
reverence for Mother Earth.
But times have
changed.
Now it's the
environmental groups who seem to be on a shopping spree for corporate
executives. For the latest example of this repellent trend let us turn to the
World Wildlife Fund. Last week, WWF announced that Linda Coady, now a senior
executive at Weyerhaeuser Co, will become vice-president of the World Wildlife
Fund's newly created Pacific regional office in January.
Weyerhaeuser is
the great behemoth of the timber industry, which has rampaged through the
rainforests of the Pacific Northwest leaving ruin and extinction in its wake.
Weyerhaeuser has operated in Canada for many years, but in the last decade it
has dramatically picked up the pace of its clearcutting in British Columbia--
partly because it has largely liquidated its vast holdings in Washington and
partly to flee the constraints of US environmental laws and lawsuits.
Before advancing
to Weyerhaeuser, Coady sharpened her teeth at Macmillan-Bloedel, aka Mac-Blo.
Macmillan Bloedel made billions by clearcutting all but the tiniest sliver of
Vancouver Island before being bought out by Weyerhaeuser. (That sliver was
spared only after 900 people got arrested for blocking logging roads in 1993.
Needless to say, no World Wildlife Fund execs soiled their Gore-Tex rain jackets
in those stormy protests.)
Neither company
has ever shown the least regard for the rights of the First Nations of Canada,
who lay claim to much of the remaining coastal forests of British Columbia. And
the Canadian government has chosen to allow the timber companies to clearcut
those lands before the claims have been settled. Indeed, Weyerhaeuser is now
being sued by the Haida Nation for illegally clearcutting their land in the
Queen Charlotte Islands, which they call Haida Gwaii.
"They've come
and wiped out one resource after another," says Guujaaw, chief of the
Haida in British Columbia. He notes that Weyerhaeuser logs the old growth and
ships it straight to its mills in Washington State. The Haida get no money and
no jobs. "We've been watching the logging barges leaving for years and
years," says Guujaaw. "And we have seen practically nothing for
Haida."
The moss-draped
forests of British Columbia are even more vulnerable than those of Washington,
Oregon and Alaska. There are few environmental laws to restrain the appetite of
the timber companies and the environmental movement itself is understaffed and
overwhelmed. Now, defenders of Canadian ancient forests must contend with a
conservation group run by a timber executive.
The result of this
mismatch shows up starkly on the ground, where the clearcuts ramble farther
than the eye can see and the salmon, bears and birds of the deep forest are
vanishing at a heartbreaking rate. At the top of the list is the northern
spotted owl, the very symbol of the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest.
In the US, the owl is afforded a minimum level of protection under the
Endangered Species Act-though George W. Bush recently pronounced his desire to
jettison the guidelines and resume logging its nesting grounds once again.
But in Canada
the reclusive raptor enjoys not even the pretense of such a safe harbor; its
nesting and foraging habitat-200 to 800 year-old stands of Douglas-fir and
Sitka spruce-are leveled without quarter or regret. As a result, scientists
expect that the bird will soon go extinct, perhaps within the next decade.
"It feels
like we are taking care of the dodo," said Ken Macquisten, a veterinarian
and managing director of the Grouse Mountain Refuge for Endangered Wildlife.
"We have gone from managing owl populations to managing individual
birds."
With a
Weyerhaeuser honcho now running the biggest conservation group in the region,
the prospects for the owl-and nearly every other creature that calls the deep
forest home-seems bleak indeed.
Of course, it's
hard to work up too much of a froth about this latest merger of clearcutters
and self-advertised nature defenders. After all, the World Wildlife Fund
functions more like a corporate enterprise than a public interest group. It
practices retail environmentalism and has made millions upon millions hawking
its panda logo, a brand as zealously marketed as Nike's "swoosh".
But, of course, it's done almost nothing to save the panda, penned in by
rampant deforestation and poaching, except peddle pictures to trophy wives and
innocent third graders. Call it panda porn.
But the panda
cash machine isn't the group's only source of money. The World Wildlife Fund
also rakes in millions from corporations, including Alcoa, Citigroup, the Bank
of America, Kodak, J.P. Morgan, the Bank of Tokyo, Philip Morris, Waste
Management and DuPont. They even offer an annual conservation award funded by
and named after the late oil baron J. Paul Getty. It hawks its own credit card
and showcases its own online boutique. As a result, WWF's budget has swelled to
over $100 million a year and its not looking back.
Where does all
the money go? Most of it goes to pay for plush offices, robust salaries, and a
tireless direct mail operation to raise even more money. WWF's CEO, the icy
Kathryn S. Fuller, pulls in a cool $250,000 a year, including benefits. This is
the remorseless logic of modern environmentalism, in which non-profits are more
obsessed with fundraising than the corporations that they are supposed to be
battling. Indeed, the relentless cash hunt leads them serenely right into
corporate boardrooms, hands out, mouth gagged.
Remember it was
only a couple of years ago that WWF outraged many environmentalists and human
rights activists by giving an award to Shell Oil, the company that stood mute
as its partners in the murderous junta of generals that ran Nigeria lynched Ken
Saro-Wiwa and 8 other environmentalists fighting Shell's foul operations on
Ogoni land in the Niger River delta.
This
self-induced moral blindness is par for the course. The World Wildlife Fund is
one of those outfits that believes capitalism is good for the environment. It
has backed nearly every trade bill to come down the pike, from NAFTA to GATT.
WWF has also sidled up to some very unsavory government agencies advancing the
same neo-liberal agenda across the Third World, including US AID.
The World
Wildlife Fund is so paranoid about its image that it recently sued -- and won
-- to force the World Wrestling Federation to change its name, lest it sully
its "WWF" trademark. Of course, if you really care about the
environment your money would probably be better spent by watching some World
Wrestling extravaganza on pay-per-view rather than in a membership to WWF. At
least, the wrestling provides some laughs. Your contribution to WWF will fatten
the salary of a timber executive such as Linda Coady parading around in the
guise of an environmentalist. It gives cross-dressing a bad name.
When the Haida
launched their battle against Weyerhaeuser and its rich army of lobbyists and
lawyers earlier this year, Guujaaw observed: "You cannot buy the lifestyle
we have with money."
It's a lesson
that the environmental groups like World Wildlife Fund should take to heart
before they discover that they've become little more than the well-paid zombies
of the corporations they have gotten into bed with. I'm not holding my breath.
Jeffrey St. Clair is the co-author of Five Days that
Shook The World: The Battle For Seattle and Beyond with Alexander Cockburn,
and is a co-editor of Counterpunch, the nation’s best muckraking
newsletter. Email: counterpunch@counterpunch.org