Human Flower Project

Thursday, July 14, 2005

A Cumberland Cheer

One of the largest manufacturers of newsprint in the U.S. has agreed to stop clear-cutting hardwood forest, good news for lady slippers and hundreds more wild species of the Cumberland Plateau.

Yellow lady slipper
Cypripedium calceolus

In her off hours, between cleaning fireplaces and attending royal balls, Cinderella must have worn these: lady slippers. A species of orchid, the pink Cypripedium acaule and its rarer yellow relative Cypripedium calceolus are both native to the Cumberland Plateau, an ancient woodland that stretches across seven states in the SE United States.

As most North Americans know too well, this region has been ravaged by more than a hundred years of coal mining and timbering. Cinderella’s dainty house shoes are just two species among scores squashed by the boot of industrialism.

Cinderella’s got good news though. Under pressure from the National Resource Defense Council and the Dogwood Alliance (and no thanks to Prince Charming), paper-giant Bowater has agreed to curb its clear-cutting of hardwood forests, limit its use of pesticides in the region, and stop buying timber from suppliers who have destroyed old forest for pine plantations.

The company is the largest supplier of newsprint in the South and “owns approximately 380,000 acres of forestland in the southeastern United States, of which about 100,000 acres are native hardwood forests” on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. Even after 100 years of depredation, this region is one of the richest and most diverse wildlife areas in the U.S., “including hundreds of forest and aquatic species found nowhere else on earth.”

Lady slipper, Cypripedium acaule
Photo: Merkels Orchids

Under the agreement signed June 29, the company has also pledged to map 7,000 acres of particularly sensitive lands, declaring a moratorium on logging or selling these properties while the study is underway, and working “to protect these lands once identified.”

Scot Quaranda of the Dogwood Alliance writes that the effects of this agreement will reach as far as flowers: “Some of the herbaceous flowers that will receive further protection include trillium, mayapple violets, delphinium, phacelia, phlox, bloodroot, spring beauty, fire pink, wild iris, anemone, and many others. The area also contains two of my favorites, the yellow and pink lady slippers.”

Two of Scot’s favorites, Cinderella’s, and ours.

Congratulations to the Dogwood Alliance, NRDC and Bowater for reaching this historic agreement.