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Letter: Politicians must urge stop to old growth logging

Our terribly mismanaged logging industry is so desperate
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Politicians must urge stop to old growth logging

Dear Premier John Horgan:

I urge you to read Larry McIntosh’s timely Sept. 23, 2021 letter to the Cowichan Valley Citizen newspaper.

Mr. McIntosh rightly suggests urgent political involvement in ongoing Fairy Creek protests, sadly involving increased violence used by our RCMP officers, armed with court orders allowing heinous old-growth logging to continue.

It is high time for our politicians of all stripes — including you, Cowichan MLAs Sonia Furstenau and Doug Routley, and Cowichan MP Alistair MacGregor — to visit Fairy Creek then comment about the looming, potential loss of our old-growth stands.

Our terribly mismanaged logging industry is so desperate for timber, old-growth trees are tragically on the block.

In fact, urge our NDP members to save all old growth in B.C. for ecological, educational, cultural and economic reasons.

It’s time for B.C. to move away from a logging-based, frontier economy and tap job-rich veins of an alternative economy — including timber-fibre alternatives displayed by Cowichan’s ECO Village.

Premier Horgan, it’s frankly ludicrous for our provincial foresters to merely work with logging companies on a few token timber set-asides.

Environmental heroes are bravely protesting to stop the chopping of our remaining stands of ancient trees.

The real answer is to change and modernize our provincial laws now to stop logging — ideally without citizens paying further compensation to timber companies awarded Crown tree-farm licences.

Those are the public’s trees. We have and need a loud voice in their future.

Such eco-based laws would allow judges, who must enforce our laws, to rule on the side of citizens protesting the destruction of our priceless ecosystems in the name of profits.

Peter W. Rusland

North Cowichan