NRDC: please remove Gap's Bob Fisher - a redwood forest destroyer - - from your Board!
NRDC facilitates the Gap family's destruction of the last 3% of our redwood forests.

We appreciate the NRDC's good work on the NYC watershed issue, but unfortunately, they are compromising themselves and some of the last 3% of our redwood forests by remaining uncritical of the Gap owners' involvement in clearcutting redwoods -- probably because one of the Gap owners is on their board.

Bob Fisher, of the eleven billion dollar Fisher family (owners of the Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy), is one of the investors in the Gap-financed redwood-logging firm, the Mendocino Redwood Company (MRC), and sits on NRDC's Board of Trustees. This conflict of interest is made obvious by NRDC's greenwash of Bob Fisher as "a leader in our efforts to protect the environment. He has a strong commitment to forest conservation, and has been extremely valuable to NRDC in that area."

Yet another conflict of interest is NRDC's assistance in the establishment of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). The FSC defines guidelines by which timber companies are privately certified as sustainable. The Gap's logging company, MRC, is now pursuing a "green label" with NRDC's help - essentially, a public relations strategy.

In their official position paper on MRC, NRDC completely fails to address MRC's 140 logging plans. Half of these plans contain clearcutting that could be a death sentence for the already endangered marbled murrelet, spotted owl, coho salmon, and steelhead trout inhabiting MRC's 230,000 acres. Rainforest Action Network and numerous other environmental organizations, expert testimony, and thousands of individuals, condemn the plans and recommend no cut. NRDC even directs the inquiries of individuals concerned about MRC's logging to MRC's own website, instead of to environmental organizations concentrating on the campaign.

What you can do:
If you have an NRDC membership, tell them you are canceling it and will urge others to do the same until NRDC removes Bob Fisher from their Board of Trustees, or convinces him to save instead of destroy the redwoods. Ask NRDC to work with the grassroots organizations campaigning to save the last 3% of our redwood forests. If you are not an NRDC member, inform them that you are a concerned environmentalist who finds their greenwashing reprehensible and would never support the NRDC until they reform their ways.
Natural Resources Defense Council
40 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011
(212) 727-2700
mailto:nrdcinfo@nrdc.org