Illegal Timber

Our campaign to stop National Lottery funded projects using endangered rainforest timber took another step forward on 21st March when the Heritage Lottery fund agreed to source all timber from legal and well-managed sources for projects they fund.

In July 2003, a Greenpeace team helped the indigenous Deni Indian communities in the Amazon to demarcate their homeland. The land was under threat from a Malaysian logging company.

The Ancient Forests is a short film commissioned by Greenpeace, directed by Julien Temple and narrated by Ewan McGregor and Sir David Attenborough. In 2003 it appeared in selected cinemas and was also on general release accompanying 'About a Boy'.

At 7.30am, on September 6th, almost 100 activists from Greenpeace's Forest Crime Unit halted construction at the National Lottery funded refurbishment of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, the most visited museum in the UK outside London.

The volunteers removed packs of timber, which is being used for new flooring, and replaced it with timber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), guaranteed to be come from environmentally and socially responsible sources. At the same time, four Greenpeace climbers scaled the front of the museum before dropping a banner reading 'The National Lottery: Funding Rainforest Destruction'.