FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Sierra Club BC Senior Policy & Science Advisor Jens Wieting offers the following statement:

“Sierra Club BC is very concerned about Forest Minister Ravi Parmar’s announcement to increase the volume logged through BC Timber Sales (BCTS) by another 800,000 cubic meters. Such an increase will result in clearcutting thousands of additional hectares of forests—including at-risk old-growth forests recommended for deferrals five years ago that are still being targeted by industry, including by the B.C. government’s own logging agency BCTS.

“Reports and forestry experts, like the members of the Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel, have been warning that B.C.’s forests are already at a breaking point and that current provincial forest management allows unsustainable overcutting across vast parts of B.C.

“The minister claims that the proposed changes to BCTS will support jobs for logging contractors, local mills and value added products, but the government does not explain what steps will be taken to reduce the amount of wood that leaves the province in the form of raw log exports, without processing and adding value.

“Increasing the rate of logging to an even more unsustainable level can only translate into short-term relief for industry instead of a sustainable shift and will result in even more severe long-term pain and ecological, economic and social costs.

“Sierra Club BC is especially concerned about Minister Parmar’s promotion of “salvage logging.” Industrial clearcutting in response to climate change impacts like beetle outbreaks and wildfires has added a second industrial disturbance to already damaged forests in many parts of the province, removing critical habitat like deadwood and compacting soils undermining natural regeneration and slowing ecological recovery. Expanding this practice will further reduce biodiversity, and increase erosion, flooding and drought, amplifying the very climate risks government and industry claim to address.”

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