BC Forests

by Julia Prinselaar

Nearly two decades after the last of 10,000 protesters packed their bags and left Clayoquot Sound in the final days of a summer-long logging blockade in 1993, the fight to protect the region’s ancient temperate rainforest continues. 

In some ways the demonstrations were a success.

When the province announced a Land Use Decision

The most endangered ecosystem in Canada – the Coastal Douglas Fir Ecosystem – has less than 2% remaining in a wild condition. But despite a constant stream of people coming to see the rare plants and animals found there, Premier Clark’s government still OK’d the logging destruction.

by Joe Foy

Everybody loves a cute baby. As our bus wound up the steep mountain road I found myself eye to eye with a beautiful little girl who was looking intently at me from the safety of her mother’s arms. Something was bugging her and she would alternate between smiles and spates of crying as we bumped and swerved ever higher into the mountains.  

We were headed for the town of Dalat, which is in the central highlands of Vietnam.

Vancouver Island alone has lost more than one million hectares of productive old growth rainforest.

by Delores Broten

Cortes Island old growth appears to be the next in a series of controver­sial logging disputes to plague the BC coast in 2011. The unrest is forecast to continue in

Shuswap flooding and impacts of development & clearcut logging.

by Jim Cooperman

Preface

Federal and provincial government staff operate under a gag order that restricts the flow of information to the public. Communication staff manufacture the only information allowed to be disseminated. Consequently, it is difficult for the

by Jim Cooperman

In 1985, the rapidly growing amount of not-satisfactorily-restocked (NSR) land in BC forests became a crisis. This resulted in a joint provincial and federal $300-million funding plan, the Forest Resource Development Agreement (FRDA) that restocked many thousands of hectares.

A similar crisis is again occurring in BC's forests, but this time the cause is not logging by irresponsible forest companies. Instead, the massive amount of NSR land is a result of climate-change fuelled fires, diseases and beetle kill.

 by Joyce Nelson

Most of BC's public land forests, and all of BC's private land forests, are owned by two huge companies, known as TAM and BAM [see diagram]. TAM is Third Avenue Management of New York, and BAM is Brookfield Asset Management, based in Toronto.

As Briony Penn wrote for Focus Magazine (Feb. 2011), "Look out your window anywhere from Crofton to Sooke and you'll be gazing at a piece of real estate owned in some fashion by BAM or TAM ... [which] form a many-headed hydra that has been devouring most of the private forest lands on southeast Vancouver Island."