Douglas Firs in jeopardy: conservationists
Posted November 1, 2013 10:34 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER ISLAND (NEWS 1130) – People on Vancouver Island fear a stand of old-growth Douglas Firs near Cathedral Grove is about to be logged.
Conservationists have seen evidence of a logging road being built into the patch of forest.
“We have already lost 99 per cent of the old growth coastal Douglas Firs,” says Ken Wu with the Ancient Forest Alliance.
He blames the province for failing to protect the forest, even though the logging activity is happening on private forest land, owned by Island Timberlands.
“These lands were protected. They were supposed to be off-limits to logging. That was until 2004 when the lands were deregulated by the BC Liberal government.”
He says the government should bring back regulations for private forest lands, or buy the cutblock to make Cathedral Grove bigger. The grove belongs to MacMillan Provincial Park.
He believes the grove’s survival depends on what happens at the cutblock.
“Logging adjacent to the park boundaries has all sorts of negative, or edge, effects, like blow down, increased erosion in the park, loss of wildlife populations.”
Conservationists are also calling for a provincial plan to protect the province’s old-growth forests, to ensure sustainable second-growth forestry, and to end the export of raw, unprocessed logs to foreign mills.
