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Comment: Join the fight to save B.C.’s public forests

Have you taken a walk in a forest recently? If you have, you’ll know how fortunate we British Columbians are to have access to these amazing ecosystems that protect our soil, clean our water and our air, and provide habitats for an incredible array o

Have you taken a walk in a forest recently? If you have, you’ll know how fortunate we British Columbians are to have access to these amazing ecosystems that protect our soil, clean our water and our air, and provide habitats for an incredible array of animals, plants, insects, fungi and microbes.

If you haven’t, then I hope you do so soon. Visit a local forested park or protected area, or just go for a hike in the nearest public forest. Unplug from your electronic gadgets and open yourself to the full experience of the forest: the sights, the sounds, the smells, and the feel of the soil and the moss under your feet. You’ll find it an enriching and soul-satisfying experience.

Forests are complex ecosystems, full of intricate relationships that keep the forest alive over longer periods of time than we can imagine. Fires, pests, disease and rot are all part of this natural cycle. Animals, insects and microbes are necessary players in prolonging the plant life they, in turn, depend on for their own nutrition and survival. And we depend on healthy, complex forest ecosystems to keep our world habitable for us.

British Columbians are uniquely privileged to be co-owners of 94 per cent of the land base in this province, including all of the forests that are in our parks and protected areas, and the forests our government grants rights to private corporations to cut down.

Our government is supposed to manage B.C.’s vast forest ecosystems in trust for present and future generations, and it is our government that decides which forests will be protected, which will be cut down and how they will be logged.

For decades, I joined with hundreds (sometimes thousands) of like-minded people to force our government to protect some of B.C.’s unique and special forested areas. Valley by valley, watershed by watershed, we fought not only to get whole areas set aside for parks and wilderness, but for less damaging forest-cutting practices as well. I know we made a difference, because I can walk in many of those areas today and they are still old-growth forests, not clearcuts.

However, our current government has proven to be a poor steward of our public forests. In 2004, the B.C. Liberals enacted legislation that has effectively turned all of our unprotected forests into timber farms that a few large corporations are rapidly clearcutting. Recent reports and court cases have told the government that even the minimum standards in its legislation cannot be enforced and that all of the values that make forest ecosystems healthy and viable are at risk because the Liberals made “timber” the pre-eminent value under the law.

This session, the B.C. Liberals passed a new law that now puts forests in our parks and protected areas at risk by opening these places up to commercial activity, including logging, resource-road building, mineral exploration and pipelines.

Our government has failed to respond to any of the multiple reports (including ones from its own government-funded watchdog organization) that are calling for dramatic changes in our forest practices and a halt to the unsustainable clearcutting of our public forests.

The only action the government appears intent on taking is to further privatize our public forests by giving corporations exclusive rights through what are called tree farm licences. The companies want these TFLs for one reason only: to increase the number of trees they can cut down each year.

It’s your forests that are at risk. It’s your government that is putting them at risk. It is your obligation as a citizen to get involved and help put a stop to the further privatization of our public forests and the overcutting that is going on everywhere in B.C.

I know from experience that just one determined citizen can make a difference. I also know it’s easier to make a difference when hundreds and thousands of citizens get involved.

Please, take a walk in a forest — then get involved in helping to preserve and protect these critical ecosystems. Send Forests Minister Steve Thomson an email (FLNR.Minister@gov.bc.ca or steve.thomson.mla@leg.bc.ca) telling him you don’t want B.C.’s forests privatized through more TFLs and that you want an end to the unsustainable logging that the government is enabling.

Vicky Husband is a Victoria environmentalist.