No More Logging in Vancouver Watersheds
11/29/99
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Title: No More Logging in VANCOUVER Watersheds
Source: Environment News Service, http://www.ens.lycos.com/
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: November 29, 1999
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada, November 29, 1999 (ENS) - The Greater
Vancouver Regional District board has ended more than 30 years of
commercial logging in the watersheds on the north shore of Burrard Inlet
by unanimously voting for a management plan based on what they call
"minimum intervention."
The watersheds of Vancouver's north shore provide the drinking water for
the city of 1.25 million people. Logging has been suspended since 1995
pending the new plan.
The board also asked that areas disturbed by human activity be returned to
their pre-disturbance state to protect water quality, the Vancouver
Courier newspaper reported.
Paul Hundal, a director of the Society Promoting Environmental
Conservation, said the GVRD has finally acknowledged that logging is not
good business. He pointed out that the GVRD is spending C$150 million for
a filtration plant in the Seymour watershed to handle the sediment getting
into Vancouver's drinking water.
Bob Cavell, administrator for the GVRD's water management division, said
he interprets minimal interference to mean no logging.
In its report, the scientific review panel noted that eight years and $6-
million has been expended on revising the district's watershed management
plan -- more than on any other such plan in Canada.
Koop, the review panel and the regional water advisory committee all
identified flaws in an April ecological inventory and analysis report. The
report concluded that most of the fine sediment in the Capilano reserve
comes from natural landslides, but Koop said it failed to mention that the
slides occurred in logged areas.
The GVRD has logged about 126 hectares a year in the watersheds since
1961.