fold. The industry also uses far more toxic chemicals than ever before, presenting intractable toxic disposal problems. The forest products industry is another culprit in the wholesale destruction of species diversity and ecosystem integrity, and as such is implicated in related problems such as CO2 emissions, climate change, flooding, soil degradation and the disruption of nitrogen cycles. Logging operations are usually the cutting-edge of industrial exploitation of the hinterlandsas logging roads pave the way for hunters, mineral prospectors, farmers and real estate developers. Deforestation is not only implicated in climate changewith the earth having lost over half of its forest cover in the last centurybut it is now causing the loss of an estimated 5 to 9 percent of the worlds species every 10 years. While wood can be a very durable and useful product, its current uses are suspect: almost 20 percent of all US lumber is used to make shipping pallets which are typically dumped after use; and nearly 40 percent of industrial timber goes into paper (Young, 2000). Equally implicated with extraction industry in the destructive River Economy is another form of primary industrythe petrochemical industry. Environmental problems here stem not just from the amount of resources exploited, but by the toxic character of many industrial materials. Our current resource use is not just an expanded version of traditional materials use, but it is far more complex and poisonous. In 1900, humanity used about 20 of the 92 naturally occurring elements in periodic table; today we use them all. The new synthetic chemicals made from hydrocarbon feedstocks today present major threats to both human health and the global environment. Organochlorines are a particularly prominent and destructive class of substances which have been linked,