Editor:
Re: “Stop logging in old growth,” Letters, Feb 12.
I had to respond to Dhyana Bartkow’s letter to correct some significant errors that it contained. The letter mentions the Old Growth Strategic Review report’s 14 recommendations and then claims that “old growth forests now make up less than one per cent of forests in B.C.; yet 75 per cent of these old growth forests are unprotected and open to logging.” It’s too bad the letter writer didn’t read a little further in the report to get accurate numbers. The report states: “The total area of B.C. is nearly 95 million hectares, of which 60% is forest. Based on the government’s forest inventory definitions, about 23%, or 13.2 million hectares is “old growth”… Of the 13.2 million hectares of old forest, 33% (4.4 million hectares) is protected and 67% (8.8 million hectares) is not… Of the old forest that is not protected, 38% is in the Timber Harvesting Land Base, while 62% is not as it is assumed to be currently inoperable.”
The facts tell a far different story and I would encourage anyone interested in this issue to read the report rather than counting on biased local sources of information.
Alan Blattler RPF, Gibsons
