Editor:
The headline in your Sept. 30 paper that reads “Judge ends logging protest injunction” is misleading. To better reflect what actually happened in BC Supreme Court on Sept. 27, when Judge Bowden denied Peninsula Logging’s application to extend the injunction against the roadblock, it would have been more accurate to say: “Judge rules against extending Peninsula Logging’s injunction against protests.” The majority of the article goes on to sound like a timber industry PA that holds environmentalists and protesters to the highest standards versus the clearcut logging that’s decimating an intact, natural forest. The $1.3 million in stumpage fees are not all going back to our local schools or medical services, as the Truck Loggers’ director claims, but gets awash in all sorts of provincial spending, to things like Premier Clark’s $1-million photographic budget. The $1.3 million figure is a gross profit – not accounting for BCTS’s costs of planning the block.
This logging probably registers as a negative cost to our community – i.e., losses to the tourism industry and losses to our collective bio-diversity. When visitors come from California, Oregon and Washington to mountain bike the many wonderful trails like Twister (which will get logged across, losing its protective canopy and then turning it into a stream bed), they will laugh at how in B.C. we’re so quick to squander our natural assets for short-term, quick cash sales.
Ross Muirhead, Elphinstone Logging Focus
