Vancouver, BC, December 6, 2006 – ForestEthics announced today a major milestone in its environmental campaign to transform the catalogue industry. Limited Brands (parent company of Victoria’s Secret) signed a new forest policy that ensures it will no longer work with suppliers who source from the Rocky Mountain Foothills near Hinton, Alberta, and will no longer use suppliers who source paper from any caribou habitat range in Canada unless it has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Caribou range includes 34% of Ontario, 16% of British Columbia, including the Inland Temperate Rainforest, 56% of Newfoundland and Labrador, 32% of Quebec and caribou range in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

“There is no question this announcement has serious ramifications for Alberta and the Canadian forestry industry as a whole,” said Tzeporah Berman, program director for ForestEthics.  "The ecological damage from the impacts of logging, oil and gas development and mining on Canada's Boreal Forest is becoming extreme and North American business leaders are watching. Canada’s Boreal Forest is one of our greatest defenses against global warming and it’s absurd it should be destroyed for catalogues.”

“We believe that working together we can set a new standard for the catalogue industry and help to protect critical regions like the Canadian Boreal,” said Tom Katzenmeyer, Senior Vice President, Community and Philanthropy. “The growing controversy about logging in caribou range is of serious concern to us, and we want to ensure that our paper consumption does not contribute to the demise of endangered species.”

Limited Brands’ new policy states a strong preference for fiber from forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Limited Brands also announced its support for the Boreal Forest Conservation Framework, a multi-stakeholder agreement that seeks to protect at least 50% of the Boreal Forest through a network of large interconnected protected areas and strict environmental standards for the remaining landscape. The Boreal Forest provides one of the first lines of defense against global warming, representingthe largest terrestrial carbon storehouse on the planet.

With the new policy, other changes include:

• Eliminating suppliers sourcing from logging company West Fraser, responsible for the destruction of caribou habitat and Endangered Forests in the Boreal Forest (Alberta’s Rocky Mountain Foothills) and British Columbia (Inland Temperate Rainforest)
• Shifting their flagship catalog to 10% PCW content beginning in 2007
• A commitment to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, the only credible certification for sustainable logging
• Overall catalogue paper reduction
• Annual independent audit of environmental progress
• A commitment to phase out of Endangered Forests
• One million dollars committed to research and advocacy to protect Endangered Forests and ensure leadership in the catalogue industry

Berman also stressed that while the new policy is a significant milestone, work remains.

“Limited Brands has outlined an excellent policy, but any policy has to be successfully implemented in order to be effective,” said Berman. “They have come a long way in two years. We congratulate Limited Brands and look forward to working in partnership with them to protect Endangered Forests and ensure a greener catalogue industry.”  

ForestEthics, a nonprofit with staff in Canada, the United States and Chile, recognizes that individual people can be mobilized to create positive environmental change—and so can corporations. Armed with this unique philosophy, ForestEthics has protected more than seven million acres of Endangered Forests. Their “Victoria’s Dirty Secret” campaign featured over 750 protests and events, and over a million unique visitors to VictoriasDirtySecret.net. Visit www.ForestEthics.org for more information.