Globe & Mail -- Logging threatening Great Bear Rainforest
,June 28th, 2011
Excerpted from the Globe & Mail:
After years of negotiations, the government determined that ecosystem-based management promised “low-impact logging regulations that will conserve 50 per cent of the natural range of old growth forests.” An independent science team had set the target at 70 per cent. The terms are set to be reviewed in 2014, but environmentalists want to see that conservation target raised now.
“It is particularly in the south that we need the conservation agreements fully in place today rather than tomorrow, to pull us back from the brink and onto a solid ecological footing,” Valerie Langer from ForestEthics said in a statement issued Tuesday. “The years are ticking by, and now it’s time to make the change real.”
The photos were taken during a reconnaissance flight over TimberWest operations by the three environmental groups. They say the patchwork of clearcuts, amid both old growth and second-growth forest, shows that the company’s logging is surging in areas critical to the ecological health of the region.
Officials from Timberwest were not immediately available for comment.
