Editor:
The Sunshine Coast Community Forest (SCCF), a logging company owned by the District of Sechelt, states in their 2021 Operating Plan Guideline, “As stewards of our forests we have a responsibility to ensure that our ecosystems, our forests are resilient to the ever growing concerns of climate change but acting in balance and harmony with our community needs and aspirations.”
In light of this current and ongoing unprecedented heat wave, our “community” forests serve a critical role as natural air-conditioning units, shading the soil so moisture is retained, while the trees continue to draw up groundwater 24/7 releasing moisture through their needles and adding to the cooling of the air. As anyone who has walked through an exposed clearcut and then under a forest canopy can attest, temperature variation can be as much as 10 degrees. Each clearcut produced by SCCF not only affects the microclimate of the landscape in a negative way, but also results in our forests becoming hotter, drier, more fire prone, biologically compromised and less resilient.
This leads to the argument that the SCCF Board and its owners ought to temporarily close down this logging operation until they actually have tree farms to harvest. It’s important to realize that every tree SCCF falls is a mature native tree that has evolved from specific site conditions. Now that’s what we call resilience. The only immediate threat to them is from the blade of a chainsaw.
This community needs to keep every natural air-conditioning unit intact and functioning. Logging them should not be part of our collective “aspirations,” unless we’re in climate change denial.
Before any community group blindly accepts money from SCCF they should first ask: what type of forest was sacrificed in this exchange?
Ross Muirhead,
Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF)
