In all the numerous articles in local papers and ads for the public hearings now taking place, the question always asked is how can timber supply in BC's central interior be increased?
The question should the timber supply be increased is not asked and nothing is ever mentioned about what the negative effects will be of continuing an unsustainable timber harvest into the foreseeable future.
The Liberal Party's forest management policies of reckless abandonment over the last decade has brought us to no timber inventories, few replanting/restocking requirements, doubling and tripling of the sustainable harvest and underfunding/gutting the Forests Ministry. Now we are faced with a double tragedy our mill burns down and our forest landscapes are in ruin, not
all caused by the mountain pine beetle.
In our quest to salvage as much beetle kill as possible over the past decade, we have set ourselves up for a catastrophic future of epic floods. Smithers, Houston, Burns Lake, Vanderhoof, Prince George, all the communities down the Fraser River and perhaps the communities that will be the most devastated in the years to come will be the Fraser Valley to Vancouver corridor. As we speak, the Fraser River is flooding in PG and south to the Fraser Valley.
So now in that quest to increase the cut levels in several communities in the BC Interior to feed an unsustainable harvest for several mills, we are promoting even more aggressive salvage logging around rivers and lakes, accelerating timber availability, shifting to more area-based tenures and associated more intensive forest management and increasing the level of
intensive forest management.
Can you imagine what the landscapes ravaged by the above aggressive salvage logging techniques and recurring 40-year floods over the next several decades will look like? Not to mention the havoc and grief severe flooding will bring to many peoples lives.
Judy Stratton
Burns Lake
