Forest policy failures evident from air

Times Colonist
Flying over Vancouver Island, it appears our forests have been completely devastated.
Vast areas are bare. Thousands of hectares are covered in tiny trees that are decades away from being ready to harvest. Our forest industry lies in ruins.
The companies now complain they can’t make enough money, and have the audacity to request we allow them to sell off the best land as real estate.

Minister’s response pathetic

Times Colonist
If it wasn’t so pathetic, it would be funny.
Forests Minister Pat Bell, instead of taking the wise course of keeping his mouth shut, manages to insert both feet.
The auditor general’s report was professional and said exactly what we have known for a long time — the public interest is of no interest to the government.

TFL lots call for public hearing

Times Colonist
The auditor general’s report, and even former forests minister Rich Coleman’s statements, indicate that large tracts of land were removed from three Western Forest Products tree farm licences for the company’s financial interest without compensation or, just as importantly, without any consideration of the public interest and the environment.
This is unsatisfactory. Our legacy to the future, as citizens, is this land. We have an obligation to use it with care, often choosing to leave in its natural state.

Rich Coleman, minister of real estate development

Iain Hunter, Times Colonist
Since everybody else seems to be doing so, I’d like to talk about trees.
It’s always the case in this province, where forestry is such an important contributor to our way of life, that there’s as much public controversy when mills are idle and loggers are adrift as there is when the industry is humming and the cutting is clear.

Protecting species is everyone’s job

-Williams lake tribune
The lamentations began even before B.C.’s sweeping report on the state of its natural environment was released last week. The usual leaks from organized critic groups to friendly media laid the spin down for the city folks: nice scientific work and pretty maps but no endangered species law, so it’s logging as usual.
The poster animals for the environmental movement are well known: spotted owl, mountain caribou. A closer look at those reveals the complexity of the issues involved.

Forest firm takes issue with extraneous issues in land-use report

Vaughn Palmer, Vancouver Sun
VICTORIA – In the midst of a bitter exchange between the ministry of forests and the auditor-general, there were some telling comments this week from the forest company at the centre of the controversy.
Chief executive officer Reynold Hert from Western Forest Products was responding to a critical report on a government land-use decision that benefited his company.
But it should be noted that Hert did not attempt to challenge many of the key findings by Auditor-General John Doyle.

Campbell must abandon closed-door decision-making

Vancouver Sun
No one should be surprised by Auditor-General John Doyle’s finding that the Liberal government failed to consider the public interest in a major land decision. Policy-making without public input has become the modus operandi of the party in power.
Doyle examined the exclusion last year of 28,000 hectares of forest land from restrictions governing publicly managed tree farms to free up the land for private development.

Can the forestry industry grow again?

In the last decade, logging in British Columbia has suffered economic pains no one had ever imagined, from steep U.S. tariffs to a strong Canadian dollar. The wounds cut deep and cut often – and have so withered the once-powerful industry that some, inside and outside, now ask …
WENDY STUECK, Globe and Mail

Island’s future water supply made unfit by logging

It will take decades to make Leech River Valley suitable resource for Victoria-area communities, official estimates
JUSTINE HUNTER, Globe and Mail
July 19, 2008
VICTORIA — The Leech River Valley on Vancouver Island holds the future water supply for the rapidly expanding communities in and around Victoria.
But thanks to logging on private lands, the water is unfit for the city’s taps.
The watershed is scarred by clear-cuts. More than 20 landslides, many triggered by logging, mark the steep gulley leading to the Leech River.

Liberals’ bluster can’t hide botched forest-land file

Jack Knox, Times Colonist
So, what’s the difference between B.C.’s Liberals and Steven “Yeah, it’s cocaine” Page, the lead singer of the Barenaked Ladies?
Confronted with the evidence, police said, Page admitted the truth.
The Liberals, on the other hand, bleated and blustered with all the wounded indignation of a guilty man when faced with the auditor general’s report into the way they had messed up the Western Forest Products file.