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Our View: B.C. needs long term plans, limits for old growth logging

How do we manage the trade off in jobs versus preservation?
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Shail Wolf admires the ancient tree the protesters have dubbed the grandmother. (Zoe Ducklow/News Staff)

The B.C government needs to make a clear statement on whether or not it favours logging old-growth forests in B.C.

On Monday, traditional chiefs of three Vancouver Island First Nations, the Pacheedaht, Ditidaht, and Huu-ay-aht, announced they want the province to defer any logging in and around the Fairy Creek area while they create their own stewardship plans.

Premier John Horgan has said the government will honour that with a two-year deferral while First Nations work with B.C. – but it’s not a pledge never to log the area, with or without the participation of the local First Nations.

It’s similar to the language the NDP used in its last election campaign.

“I’m committed to protecting old growth and biodiversity while supporting forest workers and communities,” Horgan wrote.

Okay, but when it comes to specific stands of trees, which one is it? Old growth and biodiversity, or forestry jobs?

Later in the same campaign promise was this sentence: “Many of our old-growth stands are worth more standing up than they ever could be cut down…”

“Many” is the load-bearing element of that sentence. Many doesn’t mean all! But it was an implicit promise to protect forests, to chart a new economic path that relied less on extracting a resource that, on the Coast, takes 800 years to grow back.

This government needs to consult with First Nations, consult with coastal resource-dependent communities, and then announce a long-term plan. That plan should set hard limits on how much old growth, if any, can ever be harvested again in B.C.

Someday soon, we’ll have to phase out large-scale old growth logging, or risk destroying unique habitats. The debate we’re having now is about whether we do it sooner or later, and about how we chart an economic course for our province when we stop cutting down 800-year-old trees.

– M.C.