Public interest environmental lawyers in Chile and environmentalists in the United States are calling the decision a victory for Chile's ancient forests. Boise Cascade said the company would have purchased wood from several thousand forest landowners in the region. It had planned to market the oriented strand board in the United States. FIMA estimates that more than 1,200 acres of forests would be cut every year to supply the factories.
Chile is home to one-third of the world's remaining temperate forests.
Environmentalists warn that as U.S. timber companies deplete North American forests, they are turning their attention to Chile. Lawyers at FIMA have been calling on legal assistance from E-LAW, an international network of public interest environmental lawyers based in Eugene, Oregon. E-LAW points out that the environmental impact assessment for the project only assessed the impacts of the facilities themselves, ignoring the impacts on the forests that would supply the facilities. When FIMA brought a lawsuit to challenge the project, the trial court and Chile's Supreme Court accepted the company's argument that Cascada did not have to assess the impacts of cutting local forests. This commission was created by a trade agreement between Canada and Chile.