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30th January 2020
EDITOR
continued from Part 1

Companies will need to be compensated for the loss of profits, while no compensation has ever gone to communities for lost jobs, lost salmon streams, forest soils lost to roads, erosion, landslides, loss of cultural sites etc..

It is time to begin to decolonize our view of the forests as a source of dead resources that exist for the sole purpose of economic growth and to pay forward what cannot be paid back by respect for the role these forests play in protecting life and the sacred ecological balances of the biosphere as a whole.

To this end, Forests4Climate! urge this panel to support:

1. An immediate moratorium on the industrial logging of the last old-growth temperate rainforests of Vancouver island.

2. The shutdown of the BC government's own British Columbia Timber Sales program, accounting for 20% of the Province's Annual Allowable Cut. This agency operates without oversight and in routine violation of the Province's own weak regulations around old-growth forest management.

3. Legislated protection of the 485 hectare Central Walbran valley

4. A ban on raw log exports

5. Public and private re-investment into sustainable forestry infrastructure, re-training and jobs including commercial thinning of tree plantations and re-tooling mills for the production of second and third-growth quality finished wood products; and small business development in the sustainable harvesting of non-timber products

6. Just transition into sustainable forestry and value-added wood manufacturing jobs for workers displaced by forest protection

7. Revoking large corporate tree farm licenses in favour of First Nations and local community forest tenures

8. Re-placing the gutted Forest Service and professional reliance model with Regional Forest Boards that provide oversight and implementation of strong laws to protect endangered biodiversity, salmon streams and carbon capture.