Editor:
As a community organization, guided by a professional and volunteer board of directors, the Sunshine Coast Community Forest is proud of our successes, our business practicesand our integrity. Last Thursday, (Oct. 29) we held our semi-annual public meeting in Sechelt to outline our recent activities and to answer questions from the public.
During the meeting, we were fortunate to have fascinating presentations from Tony Greenfield on biodiversity and from Brian Smart, on the 250-year analysis of the timber supply in our chart area which is currently being finalized.
A few items your readers may find interesting: we have sold about 90 per cent of our 2009 harvest to local and other Canadian buyers (mostly in B.C.). For the first time ever, we sold 2,163 m3 of our harvest for export in October (equal to three per cent of our total harvest since 2006). As I reported at our meeting, this information will, once and for all, dismiss the unsupported allegations that your community forest is exporting most of our harvest. It's simply not true. We answered every question raised by the public.We released a video on the community forest's activities. This will be available on our website soon.
A challenge for the community forest is to balance the values of our diverse community in a way that creates as many benefits as possible for our community. I encourage anyone interested in our activities to search our great website and, if the information isn't there, to just ask us. We're open and prepared to answer all questions.
John R. Henderson
Chair and president/Sunshine Coast Community Forest
