The new NDP majority government campaigned on an election promise to implement all 14 of the old growth review panel recommendations, which was received in April.
One of those recommendations was to ban logging in at-risk old growth forests within six months. These deferrals are overdue – they should have been implemented by the end of October at the latest. While the government delays, irreplaceable old growth forests are being logged and permanently lost.
Productive old growth forests, where big, old trees are found, now make up less than one per cent of forests in B.C. Despite their rarity and importance, 75 per cent of these old growth forests are unprotected and open to logging, and 99 per cent of remaining, productive old growth forests were excluded from this announcement.
Old growth forests provide beauty, enjoyment and habitat and take hundreds of years to grow. Old-growth trees store carbon and help mitigate global warming and climate change.
It’s time for the B.C. government to show some integrity and to ban all logging in all at-risk old growth forests, before these irreplaceable forests are all logged and permanently lost.
Sandra Hartline
Nelson