Timber Industry Wants 25% of British Columbia Forests
10/8/99
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Title: COFI Wants 25% of Br. Columbia Forests
Source: Environment News Service, http://www.ens.lycos.com/
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: October 8, 1999
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada, October 8, 1999 (ENS) - The
British Columbia Council of Forest Industries (COFI) released a plan
on Wednesday that the organization says will ensure a profitable
future for B.C. companies in the global market. "A Blueprint for
Competitiveness" features setting aside one-quarter of the province's
forested land base for logging.
"If you want to secure a future for industrial forestry, then you
have to identify a land base because you have seen the land base
picked apart over the last couple of years," said COFI president Ron
MacDonald. He noted that protected areas had doubled to 12 percent of
the province's land base in the 1990s.
The COFI plan was released in advance of the government's upcoming
forest policy review.
B.C.'s Shulaps forest near Lillooet in autumn (Photo courtesy Western
Canada Wilderness Committee)
The plan includes modernizing the province's environmental
forestry regulations, called the Forest Practices Code, to a
results-and-incentive-based code. It calls for setting an
allowable annual timber cut that grows on a sustainable
basis to 100 million cubic meters annually within 25 years. It
would enhance the right to cut timber on Crown land to
promote longer-term investment. And it would change the
timber pricing system so it "gives the government fair
economic rent but is also based on industry's ability to pay."
"We're saying the forest industry contributes 20 percent to the Gross
Domestic Product of the economy and we're important in more than 200
communities," MacDonald said.
Negative reaction to the COFI plan was quick in coming. "The Council
of Forest Industries is dead wrong in its analysis of policy
initiatives to take B.C. forestry into the next century," the David
Suzuki Foundation said Thursday. The Vancouver-based Foundation was
established by David Suzuki, geneticist and broadcaster, host of the
television show, "The Nature of Things."
"COFI's plan would keep us stuck in yesterday's economy, which has
led to timber shortages, mill closures, and the loss of critical
habitat for threatened species like salmon," Cheri Burda, the
Foundation's forestry strategist, said.
"This is the completely opposite direction forestry policy reform
should take in this province. We need to take the new path that is
advocated by many communities throughout the province," Burda said.
She sees the government's forest policy review as an opportunity to
move in a different direction, "one that conserves our forest
heritage for future generations and sustains forest ecosystems while
facilitating diverse local economies."
"Communities throughout B.C., including many First Nations, have been
working on ecosystem-based forestry solutions for years. Now is the
time to reform policy to allow for these healthy, sustainable
solutions." Tenure reform of our forests must occur while we still
have old-growth forests that will provide options to future
generations, said the Foundation's communications director, David
Hocking.
Jim Cooperman, editor of the B.C. Environmental Report, says "COFI
wants to turn the clock backward to keep B.C. as hewers of wood and
drawers of water, when transition is already occurring as we move
from a resource-based economy to a diverse economy where the quality
of life we have in this province attracts new, knowledge- based
businesses and people. It is a matter of doing more with less, not
doing more with more and planning for a new economy based on value-
added, tourism, culture and knowledge -- not more wood chips!"