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Future in concrete?

Letters

Editor:

Re: “Once there was a forest” by Ross Muirhead, Letters, March 23.

Ross Muirhead must know, being familiar with the last 80 years of published forest science research, that logging clearcuts create open space that many plants and animals need to flourish. Yet he and ELF will not publicly accede to this fact of nature. 

Because a clearcut receives more sunlight, it creates optimal growing conditions for shrubs, herbs and grasses that provide forage for animals such as deer, elk, and black bears – you can go and look – as well as habitat for pollinators such as moths, butterflies and bees. The number of different vascular plant species in clearcut openings is usually double that of mature forests, something confirmed over and over in both North America and Europe. What is so upsetting about this that it must be denied or kept out of sight? 

ELF’s letter last week expresses strong dislike for tree farms and for the logging of 60-to-80-year-old trees.  Logic leads me to assume they therefore propose logging only mature forests but “not in front of the children, dear.” 

Or would ELF prefer no logging whatever, so that we live and work only in concrete buildings, and excavate triple the number of gravel pits?

David Kipling, Gibsons