I attended the Enterprise Creek Old Growth Forests logging protest rally with West Kootenay Last Stand, Sinixt elders and locals, despite it being one of many logging sites by Interfor. Why hang outside in the cold winter? “We are here to take a stand for our last stands of trees/All over the land people start to care, when we start to see/The environment sustains us, not the economy/If we don’t use good judgement, there’ll be no forestry!”
I wrote this song after logging blockades at Bonanza Creek (Hills), Hasty Creek (Red Mt. Road), Perry’s Ridge (Winlaw) 30 years ago! Nothing’s changed, but our predictions have come true! We advocated for selective logging and partial cuts of mature stands of trees, versus mowing down all the young trees, and burning them in slash burn piles. Now, since all of the accessible and economically viable trees have been creamed from the back country, they’re after highway visual tourism and safety corridors, and community watersheds!
We have seen the massive flooding linked to clear-cut logging and atmospheric rivers, of Merritt, Princeton and formerly Grand Forks destroying homes and towns, and extensive damage to highways, all at taxpayers’ expense! There should be watershed logging liability insurance, just like every other high-risk business in B.C. pays for, to cover damages to water systems, homes and properties, or loss of life.
Logging jobs loss can’t be blamed on environmentalists, but on fellerbunchers, automated and closed mills going to the U.S. or overseas, whole log exports, no-value added production, etc. It is said that planting one trillion trees could save Earth from the climate emergency. But old growth forests carbon sequester at 1,000 tonnes per hectare, equal to Amazon rainforests. Save forests, save ourselves!
Marion Bergevin
Nelson