Thread by @Lidsville

Here's a quick & dirty review of the situation in BC's forests - environmentally, job-wise, etc. Forestry issues used to receive a lot of attention in BC, but oddly they have fallen off the radar & that's suspiciously convenient for multinational timber corps & govts too. #bcpoli

A great letter to the editor from Jim Cooperman was read out on CBC this morning. Jim, who once worked in the forest industry, was a key provincial forest activist with the BC Environ'l Network during the 1990s War in the Woods era & now works on forest issues in the Shuswap..

..."As a long-time forest activist who once worked in the forest industry, my message to the province re: the closure of sawmills & loss of jobs is “we told you so.” For years we have been repeating the same message: that the province’s forests are being overcut ...

.."& the result will be degraded ecosystems, loss of species, damage to fresh water supplies & loss of jobs. The industry is the architect of its own demise & while forest forest workers are but pawns in this travesty, the forest co's have taken their well-subsidized profits..

.."& invested the money into sawmills in the US where tree plantations grow faster than they do here. BC’s forests have been ravaged & while BC citizens are left with the mess, corps continue to profit S of the border. This travesty is so sad, so predictable & was so preventable"

I printed Jim's whole letter here because it encapsulates so well the dire situation of BC's forests, not only the ecological catastrophe that is underway, but the corporate welfare scam that lies behind it & the way forest workers are betrayed & used as pawns in the game #bcpoli

Here are some additional links and facts on BC forestry, but before I get into them, even famous B.C. timber magnate H.R. MacMillan himself predicted the current state of affairs in BC forests in his submission to the 1956 Royal Commission on Forest Resources: #bcpoli

Some excellent reading on the situation in BC's forests by Jim Cooperman:
Longer analysis: shuswappassion.ca/shuswap/the-fi…
Shorter version:
thegreengazette.ca/the-final-liqu…
Wikipedia on Jim: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Coope…
#bcpoli

Excerpt: "Despite the election of what we often thought would be a more enviro-friendly govt, BC’s public forests continue to be disappearing at an alarming rate, w/ inadequate stewardship for all values inc fish & wildlife habitat, community water supply protection & recreation"

...And have a look at this recent article in the Prince George Daily News: "Forestry workers being used as pawns". What we learn from this article is that the NDP govt is NOT standing up to the forest corporations. Workers suffer, ecology suffers. #bcpoli pgdailynews.ca/index.php/2019…

The tl;dr: NDP govt made some tiny moves to regulate forestry & the corps rebelled, saying that the stumpage (a royalty corps pay for our logs) is too high & they'll close mills & put workers out of jobs. They were doing that already! Yet rumour is @jjhorgan is going to cave.

@jjhorgan You may remember the story about forest companies playing nasty political games to retain overly high allowable cuts - like whipping up racism against First Nations in order to keep cutting ancient forest regardless of caribou extinction: #Canfor

https://twitter.com/Lidsville/status/1122615672310091776?s=20

#bcpoli

... and using forestry workers as pawns, spreading fear and scapegoating First Nations, when they've been looking out for their shareholders' profit and closing mills *even with* the ridiculously high Annual Allowable Cut (AAC) that they long ago forced the BC govt to give them.

We need to face facts in BC. Old growth is virtually all gone. We must save ALL the old remaining forest. We've virtually deforested the whole province, an area larger than France & Germany combined. Replanted trees aren't natural forests; they can't support key species. #bcpoli

..Vicky Husband, the BC environmentalist who won the Order of Canada & UN Environment 500 award for her work saving BC forests, is one of several forestry experts calling for drastic change in BC forest management... #bcpoli

Vicky Husband: "The industry has ruled the forests since Campbell’s day, to the detriment of our public forests..The BC govt must roll down the AAC immediately to a much more sustainable level, & give more control of forests to communities but with strict rules to manage them..."

Vicky Husband: "We must change the forest tenure system: the forestry agreements companies have with the province to log our publicly owned forests. Tenure agreements = Timber Supply Areas, Tree Farm Licenses, or Timber Licences. We're just giving forests away to the corps..."

Vicky Husband: "We gave away our public forests for very little return to the public, and very little control over how they log...Now Interior communities have had enough too. They want the tenures taken away from the companies if they close the mills, and that must happen."

Vicky Husband: "And then there is BC Timber Sales, which is directly controlled by the BC gov't and has 20% of the cut. It auctions off forest areas to be logged and it does some of BC's most destructive logging. BC needs to be rid of BCTS completely." #bcpoli @DonaldsonDoug

@DonaldsonDoug Everyone knew this day would come, when all BC's forests had been cut, & huge corps, whose concentration of ownership long ago ate up all the smaller co's, would try to cut the last stands which ensure species survival incl salmon, clean water & protection from floods. #bcpoli

@DonaldsonDoug BC must: drastically reduce the forest cut, fix forest tenure system, return control of forests to communities (under strict rules), radically reduce raw log exports, pursue value added, retrain forest workers & help affected communities. It's time. #bcpoli

@DonaldsonDoug Lastly, I'm distinguishing between forest workers here & their US-based Steelworkers union, a biz union that's been the dog of the timber corporations (as the IWA was before it) & will keep opposing proper regulation of our forests (as it fought for #SiteC). NDP too in thrall.

@DonaldsonDoug I'll stop here, but I welcome any and all discussion. This is not an environment vs workers/jobs problem. This is a problem BC has to solve together, as @TorranceCoste recently pointed out. The current setup is serving neither of these values. End. #bcpoli
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PS Thanks for bearing with me through yet another "what I learn at work that BCers might want to know but the media's not really covering" thread. I know it's too long. You guys are great.

@DonaldsonDoug @TorranceCoste @threadreaderapp unroll please

@DonaldsonDoug @TorranceCoste ...And to add more evidence to this thread on the B.C. forestry crisis:

https://twitter.com/commonsbc/status/1180272267671920640

#bcpoli #deforestation #caribou #ExtinctionRebellion @XRVancouverBC