Clearcuts adjacent to Mountain Caribou habitat support increased moose and deer, and so bolster predator populations that also prey on caribou. Mountain Caribou are the world’s most southerly reindeer and Canada’s largest old-growth dependent animal. Resident almost exclusively in British Columbia, their population has declined precipitously in recent decades.
“This is a disappointing flop of a forestry platform, ecologically-speaking. It continues the unsustainable status quo of resource depletion in this province that is causing the collapse of species, ecosystems, and human communities. Nowhere does it mention the need to protect endangered old-growth forests and to ensure sustainable second-growth forestry, the central forestry land-use conflicts. All it says is to plant more trees. Tree farms do not replicate ancient forests for supporting endangered species, tourism, the climate, clean water, or wild salmon,” stated Ken Wu, Ancient Forest Alliance executive director.
The New Democratic Party's forestry platform released this morning is a major disappointment, said Ken Wu, the executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance environmental group. "I'm just looking at this with rage here," he said in an interview. "This is a minor deviation from the unsustainable status quo."
New Democrat Leader Adrian Dix has released a multimillion dollar election plan that he believes will help grow and improve B.C.'s forest industry, but critics say the proposal makes promises that will be hard to keep.
The following is a summary on the positions of BC’s main political parties on old-growth related forest policies and some additional forest policies. The Ancient Forest Alliance is calling on BC’s political parties to commit to a science-based “Old-Growth Protection Act” with targets and timelines to end old-growth logging in endangered regions and to ensure a sustainable, value-added second-growth forest industry instead.
A proposed BC “Old-Growth Protection Act” has just been released by the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria. The science-based plan would incorporate timelines to immediately end or quickly phase-out old-growth logging in endangered regions of BC.
The proposed Old-Growth Protection Act was produced by the clinic at the request of the Ancient Forest Alliance. The group’s executive director, Ken Wu, hopes it will spur the government to action.
The Clayoquot land-use decision of April 13, 1993, sparked a mass protest that put Clayoquot Sound’s ancient temperate rainforests on the international map. Over a period of six months, the region became an icon for an environmental awakening.
The Environmental Law Centre of the University of Victoria is proposing a science-based Old Growth Protection Act for British Columbia with timelines to immediately protect critically endangered old-growth forests and to quickly phase out old growth logging in highly endangered forests.
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