Letter: Forestry industry needs investment

The campaign to stop logging old growth forests in B.C. is skillfully done. It targets emotions by including pretty forest pictures, and voila, it goes viral with support. Hey, we should stop using oil, plastic, and other non-renewables too, so what gives?

Our forest sector needs in-depth study and objective consideration.

We need to simplify the forest balancing act. These two things matter:

Developing forestry further into the carbon capturing, renewable plant-based economy; and

Minimizing biodiversity loss.

The rest of our wants will fit in around these priorities. Think biodiversity. Some old growth is critical in ecosystems, some is not. Consider carbon; a typical middle aged second growth forest will capture more carbon annually than an old growth forest will.

We put significant resources into saving forest viewscapes, designing cutblocks and leaving stands of timber for our pleasure, propping up our supernatural B.C. image, this is disingenuous. Our forests are limited. Whatever forests that are designed out and reserved for our personal wants will take away from good design and reserved forests for critical biodiversity and our plant-based economy.

We are ferocious resource consumers doing our part in supporting a growth and consumption-based economy. As a society we import much, stimulating massive heavy industry elsewhere, while we move further into entertainment type lifestyle products and services. We are becoming global NIMBY’s creating jobs supporting the well off to stay and play in supernatural rural B.C., therefore widening the gap between the rich and the not so rich.

We should do our share of heavy industry, produce as much as we consume through existing and emerging wood-based technologies, replacing polluting and non-renewable materials while creating middle income careers and upward social mobility.

B.C. has a massive forest land base and the opportunity to be real environmentalists while creating a more equal society, but we’ve got some reprogramming to do.

The Forest Bioeconomy is seriously developing in other countries.

B.C. has also put significant effort into advancements here, but its stalling. We must cooperate, stabilize, and invest in our forest industry.

Dan Talbot

Talbot Logging Ltd.

Merville, B.C.