We submitted our letter to the Old Growth Strategic Review Panel today: Letter to Old Growth Review Panel

Send your letter to oldgrowthbc@gov.bc.ca by January 31st at 4:00 PM.

Here are some letters that we received permission to reprint:

Dear Garry Merkel and Al Gorley,

I send this message to offer my voice to the current Old Growth Strategic Review.

While other locations have “Wonders Of The World” like the pyramids in Egypt or the Taj Mahal in India or the Great Barrier Reef in Australia,the Wonder in BC is our remaining old growth forests.

I understand that some of the trees are thousands of years old. Aren’t they worth honouring and preserving? Aren’t they worth saving to ensure that future generations know and see them?

Forest companies complain about lack of timber supply while conveniently ignoring their part in the destruction of our forests, now at risk of total loss due to climate change fires and beetle kills. Forest companies conveniently leave out the fact they use more machinery now instead of humans for their labour crew, leaving human beings to strike for months for a living wage and safe working conditions. What does all this mean for the future of our forests and the communities that depend on them?

I ask for a thorough change in our current forestry system to ensure that communities have a strong voice in how their forest area is managed, that “crown land” becomes more than stolen forest land to enrich corporations at any cost, that small operators are included with a greater voice to contribute to our forest economy.

I offer Port Renfrew as a model of what a resilient forest community can look like. When thousands of tourists from around the world travel there to see our old growth monuments, I suggest they are sending you(us) a message about the importance of honouring and protecting those giants and ancestors. They come here because they no longer have old growth giants there, the places they travel from. I suggest that old growth trees are a bigger cash crop alive and towering above us rather than being cut down and shipped offshore for processing.

At a time of great climate change, old growth forests are a life line for the planet. They store carbon. They offer refuge to soon to be extinct plants and animals if we continue with current forest practices. They provide environmental stewardship by cleaning our waters and saving our land. Why is anyone surprised that a landslide happened at Johnson’s Landing after the hills around it had been logged? Why is anyone surprised that sink holes now appear in wealthy West Vancouver after steep hillsides were logged to build their mansions?

You have been tasked to Re View how the current system operates. I ask you to ensure that we have a different future, a future that offers us old growth giants to admire with respect and awe for generations to come.

With Hope For Real Change Now, Ms Onni Milne, Vancouver

Dear Old Growth Panel,

Please we have to fix what is happening in our landscapes properly. The huge, huge, aggregated clearcuts, some >90,000 ha with minimal retention are resulting in moose declines, fisher and goshawk on the candidate for further COSEWIC listing. When I went out in the bush 10 years ago I used to see game. Now I don’t.

Fixing will require sound science from landscape and wildlife ecologists. This means retain 50% of the range of natural variability. It means legal—not just professional reliance. It means spatial—not just on a spreadsheet where no one knows and the forest cover cant be verified. It means minimum sizes of 10 ha so “guts and feathers’ don’t just become predator banquets.

Old growth is a useful carbon sink and helps mitigate climate change. We need more science on the carbon flux in old growth and to include understory and below ground carbon storage.

We have to properly regulate how spruce beetle is harvested too, so they don’t just use the excuse of spread of beetle to log remaining spruce old growth without having to verify actual beetle %. This is all interlinked. So this comment is not off topic. Thank you for listening. Do your best. Speak from truth not political expediency.

Sincerely, Judy Thomas, RPF, Prince George