Activists Protest Canoga Park Firm’s Use of Rain Forest Wood

About two dozen environmental activists, many smeared with mud or wearing masks, demonstrated Monday at the Canoga Park branch of the nation’s third-largest wood- products company to protest imports they say are depleting the world’s rain forests.

The protesters, most of them members of LA Earth First, held 10-foot banners across the entrance to Georgia-Pacific Corp., 7891 Deering Ave., during most of the hourlong demonstration.

Robert Pendergast of the Rainforest Action Network said activists are starting to focus on lumber companies around the country that import materials from rain forests, hoping the public will boycott their products. Georgia-Pacific’s retail and wholesale outlet in Canoga Park is the only business targeted in the Los Angeles area.

Scientists have predicted that the destruction of rain forests will create a disastrous global warming trend and lead to the extinction of many plants and animals.

Georgia-Pacific employees said the protest was misguided. Sheila Weidman, manager of corporate communications in Atlanta, said the company uses rain forest lumber only as backing for plywood and attributes much of the decline of rain forests to agricultural programs.

She did not have figures available showing how much lumber the company imports from rain forests but said countries that are involved plant trees to replace those harvested.

At Monday’s demonstration, a handful of protesters wore colorful monster masks signifying the “demon killers” of trees, while others were plastered with mud to signify “oneness” with the earth.

The only tense moment occurred when protesters tried to stop a truck from entering the property. About eight demonstrators tried to push the truck backward as it inched into the company lot.

As a demonstrator yelled “tree and people killers,” the truck driver, who worked for another company, got out of the cab and pushed a man who had climbed up and opened the passenger door.

About the same time, an employee who was upset about being called a pig angrily invited a protester to fight. “What about the unborn babies?” yelled forklift driver Mike Cormier, one of several Georgia-Pacific employees who said it was more important to fight human abortions than to save trees.