Logging

A study on Quadra Island indicates wildlife survives group selection logging, but retention of second-growth trees is recommended.

by Tanya Storr

Small clearcut and pushover logging patch cuts in the Morte Lake area of Quadra Island, in northern Georgia Strait, were the subject of a recent study which looked at the effects of group selection logging on wildlife. The study took place over the past five-and-a-half years, and wildlife populations were sampled for two years prior to logging and one year after logging.

Residents continue to defend their watersheds and promote sustainable forestry.

by Kathy Loxam

Summer of 1999 finds Slocan Val ley residents facing the perils of ongoing logging and road building in many of their consumptive use watersheds and the threat of new logging activities in at least five more. Despite this threat, residents are gearing up for FLOW 99, a major conference in August which will bring together experts and activists from around BC and the US Pacific Northwest.

In spite of a "Summer of Discontent" in 1999, the inescapable feeling is that the battle to protect wilderness from clearcutting has just begun.

by J. Cates

The Upper Elaho Valley is one of British Columbia's few remaining pristine wilderness areas. Three hours north of Vancouver, in what the government's tourist brochures call Sea to Sky country, this area is host to hundreds of 1,300-year-old Douglas fir trees and is the southern most coastal habitat of grizzly bears. The area is within the proposed Stoltmann National Park Reserve, as well as Squamish and Lil'Wat First Nation territories.

Thirty years of organizing still hasn't protected the forests or the drinking water.

by Delores Broten

Entering the Slocan Valley in British Columbia's west Kootenays, after the drive along the "progressive clearcuts" and trashed and haltered lakes of the Arrow Lakes hydroelectric system, is like entering a magic corridor. Spectacular scenery and the large, clean, unmolested lake, bordered by numerous camp grounds, makes the valley corridor seem like a refuge. Halfway down the Valley, the signs of clearcuts on the west side are replaced by the deep green of Valhalla Wilderness Park.

Insects are as much a part of the forest as the trees, but they don't get no respect.

by Paula Rodriguez de la Vega

The real reason that clear cutting is prescribed for beetle salvage logging is purely economic. If beetle-killed pine is not harvested, the timber company does not get access to cheap timber (stumpage is roughly one-third of the usual), and the Annual Allowable Cut for the forest area will be lowered.

Mountain Pine beetles are killing millions of trees in BC's interior forests, but a forester recounts the forests' history and argues against "salvage" logging.

by Edo Nyland

The Prospectors Are Coming

When in 1840 the strike-anywhere match came onto the market, the new invention soon became standard equipment for the wave of prospectors that fanned out over BC and the Yukon, looking for mineral riches.

The 85th of 90 Primary Watersheds on Vancouver Island is targeted for industrial logging.

by Jody MacKenzie, Sierra Club of BC

They say that when you fly over northern Vancouver Island after a heavy rainstorm, only two rivers run clear into the ocean -- East Creek and the Klaskish River, both near the Brooks Peninsula. They are also the last two wild Chinook runs on the North Island, which is why Fisheries and Oceans Canada uses them as bellwether streams for determining Chinook trends for western Vancouver Island.

by Taylor Bachrach

Up until November, the road into the upper Goat River watershed crossed a bridge over the Milk River and ended abruptly in a pile of dirt pushed up against the edge of the forest. Beyond the pile lay 35,000 hectares of untouched wilderness -- one of the largest uncut, unprotected watersheds in the Fraser Headwaters region of northeastern British Columbia.