old growth logging

The province's progress report and latest action plan to reform forestry is a hollow effort with none of the needed steps, specific details, or deadlines urgently required to keep what little old growth remains from being cut down, say environmental groups.

The inventory of loss in British Columbia’s forests is long and includes accelerating declines in stored carbon, salmon populations and irreplaceable ecosystems like the inland temperate rainforest.

The public online mapping system and database, employs satellite imagery, remote sensing technology, and government data to detect and alert users to logging and road-building in the most at-risk old- growth forests in the province, said project lead Angeline Robertson, a senior investigative researcher with Stand.earth.

Carrie Saxifrage ventures seven kilometres down a logging road to see the last remaining camp at Fairy Creek and witness the Bridge of Matriarchs, a structure where four women in their 70s have chained themselves.

The B.C. government announced Friday that it is protecting nearly 1,000 acres of Coastal Douglas fir ecosystem, a move lauded by the Ancient Forest Alliance. It’s one of the top four endangered ecosystems in Canada.

It is incumbent upon the B.C. government to stop the arithmetic trickery and to bring intellectual honesty and scientific thinking to a resolution of the old-growth issue on Vancouver Island.

Environmentalists have accused the B.C. government of lying about the amount of majestic, centuries-old trees left standing in the province. The National Observer reported last month that the B.C. government, through B.C. Timber Sales, had approved permits for logging that saw some of the world’s biggest red cedar and Douglas fir trees cut down in the Nahmint Valley on Vancouver Island.