Friends of Clayoquot Sound see destructive clearcuts continue in '96
"Science Panel" style cutblock R60, Rolling Stone Valley. Clearcut October 1995 by InterFor. Clearcut area 12.3 ha; total area 15.5 including road and uncut patch in middle.
by Maryjka Mychajlowycz, Friends of Clayoquot Sound, Forest Watch
The Friends of Clayoquot Sound have done more than blockade logging roads in their efforts to save Clayoquot's ancient rainforest. Over the last two years this local environment group has mounted a Forest Watch program to document ongoing clearcutting in Clayoquot.
They have visited all the newest clearcuts and logging roads and see no evidence that logging has significantly changed despite Scientific Panel recommendations and the government's repeated assurances that logging practices in the Sound are now "the best in the world".
All the cutblocks recently approved by the local Central Region Board have involved clearcutting ancient rainforest. The largest is 14.7 hectares insize (30 football fields). Despite the catastrophic landslides of January, 1996, clearcutting continues on very steep slopes including in the lower Bulson watershed where previous landslides indicate slope instability. In Tranquil Valley, two cutblocks, although submitted as experimental selective cutting, lie on outrageously steep slopes of up to 95 percent.
The Bulson watershed is less than 2 percent impacted by logging. By government rules it meets "Pristine" watershed criteria and no logging should be allowed until full and thorough inventories are undertaken and further withdrawals made to fully protect all of its resources. That's why the Friends joined Greenpeace to set up logging blockades there in June.
Not only are better forest practices not coming fast enough for the Friends, they fear that the pace of destruction is picking up again. Since March, 1996 development plans to log five Clayoquot Sound watersheds have been submitted for public and government review.
