BC Timber Sales the worst logging operation in BC
BC Timber Sales is the logging operation that wants to log Lost Valley. St’at’imc people that have hiked through Lost Valley in the past several years report seeing BC Timber Sales survey flagging, which mark out cutblock boundaries and road locations throughout the watershed.
BC Timber Sales is fully owned and operated by the government of BC, and was formerly known as the BC Small Business Program.
BC Timber Sales recent logging operation in spotted owl habitat near Hope, BC.
Here’s how they work. BC Timber Sales’ planners choose where logging is to take place. Then they hire road builders to put in logging roads at the government’s expense. Next the surveyed proposed cutblocks are put out to bid with the rights to log being given out to the highest bidder. The trees are logged by the contractor, then trucked to a mill. The lumber that is produced is often sold under another company’s logo and the consumer therefore has no idea that they have just bought BC Timber Sales lumber.
What this means is that even the most green-minded consumer of wood products finds it next to impossible to avoid buying lumber from BC Timber Sales because the government-owned logging operation does not properly label its lumber.
Hiding behind this phoney labeling smokescreen, BC Timber Sales has been doing some nasty things to our forest ecosystems in British Columbia. Several conservation organizations have now identified BC Timber Sales as the worst logging operation in the province. For example, BC Timber Sales is the biggest logger of spotted owl habitat. Logging companies like Canadian Forest Products and International Forest Products have voluntarily ceased logging in core spotted owl habitat, but BC Timber Sales planners appear to be specifically targeting habitat areas in the southwestern corner of the province for logging.
The same thing is happening in BC’s inland rainforest that stretches from Prince George to the Kootenays. In this region, BC Timber Sales is one of the top loggers of endangered Mountain Caribou habitat. Recently Fraser Valley environmental researchers have uncovered a proposal by BC Timber Sales to log a mountain goat winter range forest, which the major logging companies had stayed out of since the 1970s to protect the goats.
The St’at’imc and conservation organizations alike assert that BC Timber Sales must not be allowed to carry out their plans to log Lost Valley.
