Editor:
While I respect Elphin-stone Logging Focus's right to make the case for not logging in the Wilson Creek area, I do not respect what is either wilful ignorance at best or deliberate disinformation, at worst, to further their case.
In ELF's two page spread (Coast Reporter, Oct. 26) under the heading biodiversity suffers as we lose our remnant low elevation forests, there is a photograph of a sooty grouse, a fairly common species on the Sunshine Coast and throughout the Coast range. This is an extremely unfortunate choice of species if the intent is to demonstrate biodiversity decline after logging, but a perfect example of being "hoisted with your own petard" or "never let the facts interfere with your propaganda."
The Birds of British Columbia by Campbell et al is the definitive work on the birds of B.C. and I quote the relevant passages from volume two of this work: Sooty grouse are found "usually in or adjacent to openings such as logging slashes, forest burns most summer range is an open landscape with a variety of forbs, shrubs, grasses," and "logging can, in some cases, bring about rapid population increases by creating favourable breeding habitat until the tree canopy begins to close; then they decline to a low density or disappear altogether."
In modern forest management, fire suppression has largely removed the impact of fires from forest ecology. Logging entries approximate to this loss, which creates the diverse habitats and age regimes under which the range of biodiversity may flourish.
Long may the sooty grouse flourish in our diverse local forests!
Tony Greenfield, Halfmoon Bay
