Editor:
Re: Eco-system is not a supermarket (letter, Feb. 20 issue)
Margaret Steel’s recent letter in the Gazette is a sad reminder to the small group of citizens who know and care about renewable resource management, that sustainable scientific driven management is clearly a lost dream.
The area in question in the Lynch Creek drainage is being logged adjacent to the Class A Gladstone Provincial Park primarily because the Boundary forest has been over logged, a point well known by everyone at the top of the logging chain of command.
The participants at the 1994-96 Kootenay/Boundary Commission on Resources and Environment, who supported parks, recognized that both Granby and Gladstone Park proposals were too small to ensure their ecological viability and therefore the proposed Special Management Areas on the flanks of both parks were critical.
The rationale for special management areas was to allow industrial activity but with a much lighter foot, an argument consistently opposed by the uber-right who wailed and gnashed their teeth every meeting in opposition to the concept of dramatically increasing the province’s protected areas to 12 per cent of the land base as recommended by the Bruntland Commission.
Close to 20 years on, business interests run the show with predictable results; our forest has been over harvested, wildlife populations have been compromised for decades if not forever, cows live in all our rivers and streams contrary to lessons learned from Walkerton, Ont.
Is it possible to reverse this god-awful mess or is this the true Canadian character? After all, greed rages in society. It probably depends on how many people look in the mirror and don’t like what they see.
Barry Brandow, Grand Forks