🚀 go-pugleaf

Robert Froese quotes the Vancouver Province, which quotes the 1993 State of
the Environment Report for British Columbia:

>- 5.1 million hectares (12.6 million acres) or almost 65 per cent of the
>7.9 million hectares of the productive coastal forest-land base are over
>120 years old.

>- Two million hectares are considered suitable for timber harvesting.

>- Three million hectares are inaccessible and will remain as coastal old
>growth.

>- About 200,000 hectares [1/2 million acres] of old growth are protected as
>park and wilderness, and another 400,000 hectares have been identified for
>possible protection.

This information is from page 52 of the report, where it also states that:

  "A large proportion of [the 3 million hectares of inaccessible old growth]
  is at higher elevations" and "low elevation, highly productive old-growth
  forests are under-represented in existing protected areas."

In short, the point being made by the report is the opposite of what Robert
(and perhaps the Province) have tried to suggest. The report clearly states
that we have protected too little of the stuff the forest industry likes to
cut.

Here's another illustration of that same point. The following is quoted
from the government's "Clayoquot Sound Land Use Decision Background
Report" (p. 9). It shows how inadequate current protection is:

  "However, two biogeoclimatic variants are at present not well covered
  either in the Western Vancouver Island ecoregion or indeed, in all of 
  Vancouver Island. These are:

    o  very wet maritime coastal western hemlock, submontane (CWHvm1); and

    o  very wet maritime coastal western hemlock, montane (CWHvm2).

  The newly protected areas in Clayoquot Sound increase the percentage of
  CWHvm1 on Vancouver Island from 3.4 percent to 5.7 percent, and CWHvm2
  from 5.6 percent to 7.7 percent."

So we're currently protecting 5.7 percent of something. Big deal! I say
it's not enough.

   ...Art Pope