To the Editor,
I was quite struck by the choice and title of the article that ran online Aug. 11, 2020: “STANDING TALL: For some, B.C.’s forest industry is the best office in the world.” It’s ironic, as soon no trees will be standing tall!
While the story behind this hard-working forestry family is admirable, I would have preferred a more local, Vancouver Island-based article about the desperate need for a moratorium on the scant remaining old-growth forest. There are only 35,000 hectares left of old-growth, high-productive forests left in all of B.C., and it’s being cut at 10,000 hectares per year, therefore, all gone in less than four years.
Yellow cedars are the oldest living thing in BC, and they are destined to be logged if Teal Jone’s TFL No. 46, near Port Renfrew, gets its way.
For more than 50 years, I have witnessed the scarred hillsides slowly creep up steep, unstable, erosion-producing terrain. Our provincial government is stalling on the results of the old-growth forest review panel, as they are already aware that the forest industry in our province is not being run in a sustainable manner. Our Island is full of iconic species, slowly losing their habitat.
If we continue at this rate, there will be nothing left.
Jane Dunnett,
Comox
Editor’s note: ‘Standing Tall’ is a three-part series by graduating Langara College journalist Kristen Holliday highlighting aspects of the forestry industry, which WorkBC estimates represents 2.1 percent of British Columbia’s workforce. The series ran online on all Black Press Media websites.