Premier Campbell announced on Wednesday to the Truck Loggers Association Convention that he has instructed Forest Minister Pat Bell to start developing plans for a Commercial Forest Reserve where “forestry is the priority” and “harvested land will not be set aside for other uses” (Press Release, Ministry of Forests and Range, January 14, 2009)

“For a fleeting moment, I thought Campbell was talking about keeping out suburban sprawl from destroying private forest lands where he deleted the Tree Farm Licenses on our coast,” states Ken Wu, campaign director for the Wilderness Committee’s Victoria office. “Then I realized to my horror he was talking about public lands – about preventing future forest protections on Crown lands, such as for drinking watersheds, scenic viewscapes, deer and elk wintering ranges, endangered species protections, new parks, and old-growth management areas.

This revived push to keep out ‘other uses’ on public lands to benefit private logging companies is fundamentally about eliminating the public’s right to choose what to do with their own public lands, specifically when it entails choosing options that keep trees standing for conservation. It’s a form of pseudo-privatization for the exclusive benefit of the major timber companies that hold logging tenures on our public lands”. Forest Minister Pat Bell has stated that the Commercial Forest Reserve would be different from their previous Working Forest proposal in that it wouldn’t include all of BC’s Crown lands, but instead would at first be limited to areas that are “particularly productive” and “start small and grow” (Prince George Citizen, January 14, 2009) Satellite photos show that about 75% of Vancouver Island’s productive old-growth forests have already been logged, including 90% of the valley bottoms and 99% of the coastal old-growth Douglas firs. Only 6% of Vancouver Island’s original productive old-growth forests are protected in parks.  See maps, stats, and photos at http://www.viforest.org and http://www.wcwcvictoria.org The movement to protect Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland’s old-growth forests and to ban raw log exports is the largest movement in the province. Almost 3000 people showed up at the last Wilderness Committee rally in October and last week over 30,000 signatures had been gathered on the petition http://www.viforest.org & http://www.wcwcvictoria.org