found the SFI deficient (Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC), 2002). According to the NRDC, the SFI fails to: o prevent the clearing and conversion of diverse natural forests to ecologically barren plantation monoculturesa process that has destroyed much forest habitat in the Pacific Northwestern United States and is now destroying forests and forested wetlands across the Southeast at an alarming rate; o protect intact old growth forests in the US and high conservation value forests globally; o protect sensitive, rare, and state-listed threatened and endangered species; o adequately control clearcutting and specify retention of tree cover in clearings to help maintain ecosystem function. (SFIs average allowable clearcut size is 116 football fields!) An even more recent study (Tan, 2003, p.1) of the British Columbia forest industry released by ForestEthics, Greenpeace Canada, and the BC Chapter of the Sierra Club of Canada strongly criticized both the SFI and CSA certification programmes. The report found that CSA and SFI standards allow a proliferation of large clear-cuts; continued logging in forests inhabited by endangered species; damages to drinking water, fisheries and streamside forests; ongoing use of chemical herbicides; accelerating losses of natural forests; and expanding tree farms.