By Roy L Hales
The great stands of Douglas Fir that many of our ancestors saw are largely gone. Isolated pockets persists. IN the following interview Ross Muirhead, of the Elphinstone Logging Focus, talks about the attempt to save 98 ‘Old Vets’ on Mount Elphinstone. ” is an ECO Radio interview broadcast on CKTZ (Cortes Island Community Radio) , CJMP (Powell River Community Radio) and CFSI (Green FM – Salt Spring Island Radio).
Continue reading 98 ‘Old Vets’ on Mount Elphinstone
There are 466 watershed in British Columbia. More than a quarter have problems with logging activities. The requirements to protect drinking water are not always clear or enforceable. In the interview that follows, Hans Penner of the Elphinstone Logging Focus talks about logging Impacts in the Chapman Creek Watershed.
Continue reading Logging Impacts in the Chapman Creek WatershedThere have been 150,000 visits to the Global Forest Watch website since it went online Thursday and for good reason. The interactive map is an an online forest monitoring system, created by the World Resources Institute and more than 40 partners, that allows you to examine changes in the forest cover anywhere in the World. They drew upon many databases, including Google Maps , data from the University of Maryland and satellite imagery. Global Forest Watch has already shown that the World lost 2.3 million kilometres of tree covering between 2000 and 2012. My concerns were more specific, I wanted to know if the forests in Canada and the US are presently emitting, or storing, carbon.
“We don’t have that data yet,” said Forests Communication Officer James Anderson, who then proceeded to show me some of the data the site does have.
The health of BC’s forest cover is not good. In many parts of the province, our forests are emitting carbon, rather than absorbing it.
According to a story in the Times Colonist, “the province’s own data (shows that) net carbon dioxide emissions from forestland in 2011 were 34.9 million tons, equivalent to more than half of B.C.’s total official emissions for that year. However, only carbon emissions from deforestation and afforestation (new or replanted forests) are included in the province’s official total.”
