In response to Alex Atamanenko’s claims in his Aug. 2 and Aug. 16 columns, I believe the readers of your newspaper deserve and need to know the facts. While there have been changes in the provincial government’s natural resource ministries over the last year, what hasn’t changed is this government’...
SFM in British Columbia
Minister responds to MP’s columns
New Report Shows B.C. Lagging Behind in Creating Sustainable Forestry Jobs
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is calling out B.C.'s forest industry for lagging behind developing sustainable jobs. A new report says the province risks losing further ground on the processed wood market if efforts are not made to both renew our forests and create more long-term jobs...
Herbicide’s collateral damage in B.C. forests under attack
Each year in British Columbia about 16,000 hectares of forest are sprayed with a herbicide that contains glyphosate. It is one of the most popular weed killers in the world, according to the manufacturer, Monsanto. But using it in B.C.’s forests appears to be a mistake on several levels, and...
Forests require flexible management
For more than a century, British Columbia's forests have been the cornerstone of the province's economy. At 60 million hectares, equivalent to 148,000 Stanley Parks, the province's publicly-owned forests are a vast and valuable asset, sustaining rural and first nations communities, providing...
We're losing key knowledge about our forests
If you're a clerk in the produce department at the local supermarket you have a big task on your hands. Not only must you track how quickly the bins of apples, lemons, lettuce, radishes and dozens of other fruits and vegetables are depleted, but you must constantly root out the rotten from the...
Foresters alarmed by neglect and deterioration of timber
Bravo to Professors Simard and Lewis for speaking out on declining stewardship of B.C.'s public forests, a trend many foresters have observed with growing alarm over the past decade. Re: New policies needed to save our forests, Opinion, April 8 The issues are three-fold: First, cumulative effects...
New policies needed to save our forests
April 8th, 2011: The administration and care of British Columbia's publicly owned forestlands - some 60 million hectares, an area larger than France - is unstable and in deep trouble. The shifting of forest governance among three ministries in less than a year, following a decade of deregulation,...
Inadequate reforestation goes from bad to worse
British Columbia is blessed by nature with a vast, ecologically rich forest estate that also has been a source of sustained economic wealth for more than a century. But today there are troubling signs that the most important of natural assets is facing challenges never before seen. The area of...
Certification fails to protect B.C. forests
In response to increasing public outcries over his complete mismanagement of forests in the public interest, Forest Minister Pat Bell is frequently taking refuge behind forest certification programs. But are third-party stamps of approval really, as Bell claims, a guarantee that our forests -- a...
BC Forest Service felled by bureaucracy
With two provincial ministries performing the work of one, inefficiency is inevitable and sustainable-use policies will be ignored. After bleeding like a wounded pig for almost a decade from cutbacks to reforestation to constraints on spending its voted funds, Premier Gordon Campbell and Forest...
Neglect in the woods
A decade of cuts has left a priceless resource facing a homemade crisis... There is an old saying that if the forest service is not planting trees, then it is not doing its job. When reforestation was the law in British Columbia, the forest ministry reported in its 2000-01 annual report that the...
The Big Burn
The combination of a gutted Forest Service, vast areas of not sufficiently restocked forestlands, a quirky loophole in the Kyoto Protocol and a provincial government ideologically driven to sell off public assets has created the perfect opportunity for forest industrialists to burn down the last...
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