Photo: Council of Canadians Williams Lake chapter activist Ross McCoubrey (left) talks with Husband and Britneff. Photo by Monica Lamb-Yorski.
The Council of Canadians Williams Lake chapter, the Cariboo Chilcotin Conservation Society, Williams Lake Field Naturalists, Stand Up For the North, and United Steelworkers Local 425 organized a public forum about the future of forestry earlier this week.
The featured speakers were Anthony Britneff, a retired senior policy analyst with the BC Forest Service, Vicky Husband, a conservationist who has worked on forest management issues for thirty years, and Peter Ewert from Stand Up for the North.
The Williams Lake Tribune reports, “(Britneff) suggested the forest and range practices act gave control to the private sector and replaced law and regulation with the notion of professional reliance, and the downsizing, budget cuts, reorganization, and office and branch closures within the Ministry of Forests, all compounded the problem. …(And) Husband warned a stumpage rate of 25 cents a cubic metre is ‘throwing away our forests’, resulting in very little revenue for the people of B.C.”
In terms of a way forward, “Britneff suggested local forest trusts are the way to go… There are no examples in B.C. or in Canada, but there are in Scandinavia. The local forests are 100,000 or more hectares run by a local board that’s elected and community run. They would be overseen by a provincial assembly to ensure the lands are managed sustainably, he continued.”
The article concludes, “Presently the province is conducting consultation meetings on whether some forest licenses should be rolled over to area based tenures… (But) Britneff said government should be asking what is the best way to govern public forest resources to ensure sustainability for future generations instead.”
