Editor:
I write in response to the article “Community Forest set to log in Halfmoon Bay” in the Sept. 17 edition of the Coast Reporter, where the Sunshine Coast Community Forests (SCCF) explains why it is necessary to clear-cut the endangered forest, HM 50 block near Trout Lake. I say “endangered” because there is less than one per cent of this ecosystem type left in its older phase in our landscape. The SCCF board chair also explained how a website improvement project limits their ability to share watershed and ecosystem assessment reports, and how proud they are of moving towards an Ecosystem Based Management model. Unfortunately, the SCCF’s land management strategies continue to involve the use of clear-cutting, which eradicates our last remaining ecosystems.
While the community is no doubt most grateful for the financial gifts from past logging ventures, a standing forest is the greatest gift the SCCF can give us now, and for future generations who are going to need these forests as a critical life-support system.
The SCCF has served enough of its mandate. Now is the time to leave all of our coastal carbon-sequestering low elevation forests intact to serve as the natural warehouses of biodiversity that they provide.
At this time of climate emergency, when we need what little remains of our natural forests even more than ever, we are requesting logging be delayed until 2023 to allow time to consider dissolving the SCCF, or reinventing the organization by finding other ways to give to the community instead of money made from eradicating endangered ecosystems.
One more forest logged is one too many. Let’s not kill the golden goose and instead see the forest for the trees.
Sarah Lowis, President,
Living Forest Institute Society
