Conservation North held a short rally in front of Mr. PG on Friday afternoon to call for more protection for the province's primary and old-growth forests.
Conservation North director Michelle Connolly said the new plan the provincial government unveiled for managing primary and old-growth forests doesn't do enough to protect the important ecosystems.
"There are lots of reasons to protect old-growth forests," Connolly said. "We've never figured out how to replicate old growth. These forests are really special and irreplaceable."
When old growth and primary forests are logged and replanted, valuable habitat is lost for many species of birds, insects and mammals like bears and weasels, she said. Fallen and dead standing trees are an important part of a forest ecosystem.
These forests also represent a snapshot of the region's ecosystem before extensive logging was done, she said. Some of the trees in old-growth spruce forests in the Parsnip and Anzac areas are up to 400 years old, she said.
Those older forests were once the most common type of forest in the northern interior, Connolly said, but now the landscape is dominated by secondary growth forest – forest that has been logged and replanted by people.
"We believe we can have a sustainable economy based on harvesting those secondary-growth forests," Connolly said.
Looking at community forest management model could be one way to get more value out of those already-disturbed forest stands, she said.
The provincial old-growth forest plan was unveiled earlier this month, along with a report by the Ministry of Forests prepared by forestry experts Garry Merkel and Al Gorley, entitled A New Future for Old Forests. Merkel and Gorley made 14 recommendations, based on significant consultation throughout B.C.
"The panel report is not perfect, but it had those recommendations in it," Connolly said. "The provincial old-growth plan ignored those recommendations. If they had not ignored that, we would have got some temporary deferrals of logging up here."
