International Paper’s Southern Presence
The impact of the business as usual production of paper packaging at these mills on the rich, diverse forests of the American South is serious. In the last 50 years, the acreage dedicated to pine plantations has gone from virtually zero to about 32 million acres. The South, once a vast landscape of the most bio-diverse temperate forests in the world, now is home to 32 million acres of sterile pine plantations interspersed throughout this precious ecosystem. Because millions of years ago the glaciers did not make it this far South, we have some of the highest concentration of tree species anywhere in the world—which attracts a high number of plant and animal species in the native Southern forests landscape. When natural forests are converted to monoculture pine plantations, we loose that abundance and biodiversity that make the Southern U.S. a hotspot for species diversity and cultural heritage.