Communities, take forest responsibility

Re: “Scrap the old B.C. forest industry, build a new one,” commentary, Feb. 4.

Anthony Britneff, a 40-year veteran who worked for the B.C. Forest Service, has stated that “we need to move from ‘fibre exploitation’ to forest reparation when forest companies have used clear-cut practices for most of the province’s primary and old-growth forests.”

The biodiversity of our forestlands is suffering and Britneff suggests legislation must be repealed and rewritten for ecosystem management.

As an environmentalist who seeks solutions to environmental problems, the following from National Geographic might be a solution to the regrowth of B.C.’s forests, where African leaders have promoted tree-planting since the 1970s to combat tree loss.

Planted trees were the wrong species or needed too much maintenance or goats dug the tree roots. Local communities with little at stake pulled trees out to sell the wood. Mostly, planted trees died.

Our B.C. forest replanting isn’t using the community workers to do the replanting and the tending of the new forests and preserving the biodiversity of the surrounding ecosystem.

Only through communities taking on the responsibility for a sustainable yield in their forestlands will B.C. forests thrive. In a time of climate change, our forest lands must be tended responsibly and not clear-cut for the temporary profits of some foreign corporation. Our forest-dependent communities can only succeed if the government takes steps to ensure their continued stewardship of their forest lands.

Rafe Sunshine Victoria