Editor:
We all want wood and paper: every one of us.
Rick O’Neill (“Value of the forest,” Letters, Sept. 2) expresses dislike for what he calls “tree farms,” the term lifted from a legal definition of authorized, temporary, and conditional logging and silviculture access to a given tract of land. He should be advocating for more tree farms; that’s where well-bred, healthy, tended, even-aged trees grow, to everyone’s benefit. Yet the nearest tree farm licence is over 80 km away.
Community forests are not the answer. Community forests were a diversionary strategy cooked up by the provincial government, with the intent of co-opting potential protesters into spending their energy wrestling with local governments rather than hampering Victoria’s plans. Community forests are essentially hobby forests that keep locals harmlessly busy. They can never supply more than a tiny fraction of the wood we need.
Without large-scale and mechanized forestry and sawmilling, Rick O’Neill and I and 35 million Canadians could not afford the privilege of our furniture and fixtures and homes and newspapers and books. God forbid we should revert to the dreadful era of horse and hand logging: may those cruel, dangerous, and miserable conditions remain in history books. And without sound forest roads built to industrial specifications, only physically fit enthusiasts could venture into the woods while the rest of us ordinary folk would be disenfranchised from the back country.
As for the negative connotation applied to “farm”: I grew up on one and it fed the country I was born in, because wild harvests of watercress, sea kale, sorrel, and nettles – exquisite foraging activities though they be – frankly did not put food on the table.
David Kipling, Gibsons
