State of the Great Temperate Rainforests

June-July 1996

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.

BC has bulk of intact forest ecosystems

by Valerie Langer

Paddlers seeing Clayoquot Sound for themselves

How much temperate rainforest is left on the planet?

In the temperate rainforest zones of the lower 48 States, England, Ireland and Scotland, not one single watershed of any size is intact. In New Zealand, 90% of the temperate rainforests have been logged. In Chile at least half have been logged.

That's the world picture outside British Columbia. BC has most of what's left. On Vancouver Island, of 170 large watersheds, only 12 are intact, and just five are protected. Half of these remaining intact watersheds are in Clayoquot Sound, as are both of the intact islands (and neither is protected).

All the unprotected areas have logging slated to happen in them in the next few years, except Meares Island which is under a First Nations moratorium.

Imagine if there were only twelve of Vancouver Island's orca whales left. Would it make sense to hunt half of them, or even to protect 12% of them, or 'manage' them as a resource by taking a fin here and a fin there?

That is what we are doing to our forests, not to just one species but to entire ecosystems. We have five of the intact watersheds off limits to industrial logging and the rest are going to be "managed" for forest industry profit.

Eighty percent of the forests logged in BC were logged in the last 30 years. Almost half of BC's forests are now gone. If the industry has had the audacity to clearcut 93% of the watersheds on Vancouver Island, now is not the time for them to begin experimenting with a slightly 'kinder' logging in the remaining intact watersheds. If the logging there goes awry, there is no other place to discover what a functioning ecosystem is like, and nowhere else to go to try things a different way.

Back in the old days when it seemed the forests were endless, devastation was committed out of greed and ignorance. What's our excuse now?

We need to keep up the pressure to stop logging companies from sacrificing these rare ecosystems.

Tell the BC government that the intact watersheds are out of bounds. Write Premier of BC, Legislative Buildings, Victoria, BC V8V 1X4.