Re: “Eco-activists urge halt to logging plans near Juan de Fuca park,” April 19.
If these rare and endangered forests are logged, threatening the Juan de Fuca Provincial Park, an incredible asset for tourism and recreation and a protected area for wildlife and biodiversity, it would be a tragedy for us all.
These public forests belong to us.
The Ministry of Forests has never had adequate numbers or inventory of what still remains of our ancient, big-tree forests on Vancouver Island. I have spearheaded the mapping of Vancouver Island’s ancient forests since 1990, when I was working for the Sierra Club, and I am still helping to produce up-to-date maps for all organizations.
We have protected a mere 5.5 per cent of the original extent of our big-tree forests on Vancouver Island. Not those totally erroneous figures that the ministry is spouting.
B.C. Timber Sales, run by the B.C. government, has a rock-bottom reputation, provincewide, for logging the best of the last of our ancient forests. BCTS is threatening the integrity of our protected areas, community watersheds, sacred areas, tourism and recreation sites, and critical wildlife and salmon habitat.
This logging proposal must be stopped, now. Citizen action on this is critical. These big trees are some of the last of the best of the ancient forests remaining on Vancouver Island. We have only fragments left of our once-prolific ancient forests. We will never see them again.
The time to act is now.
Vicky Husband
Victoria
