Southeast Green - Speaking Of Green

Southern activists formed Dogwood Alliance in November 1996. Originally, Dogwood Alliance focused on stopping the expansion of chip mills - facilities that grind whole logs into wood chips for making paper and chipboard -- across the South. Beginning in the mid-1980s, large pulp and paper industries shifted the main thrust of their activity from over-cut forests of the Pacific Northwest to recovering forests in the South. This shift resulted in a proliferation of chip mills and unprecedented industrial-scale clear-cutting of forests. Over the last two or three years as citizen concerns about Southern forests escalated into the national spotlight, only a few chip mills have applied for permits in Southern states. While this possibly signals the end of an era of aggressive expansion by the paper industry, it is most definitely not the end of the destruction of the region's forests for paper production.