"Tree Plantations are not Forests" will be presented at Coastal Carolina University on Thursday, Sept. 21 from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. in the E. Craig Wall Sr. College of Business Administration, room 308. The event, sponsored by Coastal's Campus and Community Sustainability Initiative, is free and open to the public.

Eva Hernandez of Dogwood Alliance, Kim Marks of ForestEthics and Anne Petermann of Global Justice Ecology Project and the STOP G.E. Trees Campaign, will speak about the impacts of and resistance to industrial tree plantations in the southern region of the U.S., Chile and Brazil.

The speakers will discuss the rapid conversion of native forests to sterile, single-species pine plantations by the paper industry and the major threat this poses to the environment. One out of every five acres of Southern forests is a plantation, and there are more genetically engineered tree test plots in the South than anywhere else in North America.

For more information contact Dan Abel, associate professor of marine science at Coastal and director of CCU Campus and Community Sustainability Initiative, at 349-2257.