WILDERNESS PRESERVATION SAVES JOBS
Preserving jobs is one of the top concerns of everyone in B.C. But, contrary to what logging proponents claim, clearcutting the Stoltmann Wilderness would preserve fewer jobs than it would destroy.
Find out how you can 'adopt' endangered Stoltmann Wilderness trees like this one in Sims Creek. See tear-off mailer below. Photo credit: James Jamieson
Wilderness Committee volunteers at the annual Brackendale winter eagle count on the Lower Squamish River. Photo credit: Kerry Dawson
Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton are the three closest communities to the Stoltmann Wilderness. They are growing at the fastest rate in the Lower Mainland, 3.6 percent per year. Over the next few years these three communities are expected to grow at almost twice the rate of the Lower Mainland as a whole!
In the Squamish-Whitler-Pemberton corridor, tourism currently accounts for 28.9 percent of employment and logging/milling for half that amount, 14.6 percent. These industries are the two most important job producers in the region. But their employment trends are on opposite tracks. From 1981 to 1991 jobs in logging/milling declined by 25 percent while tourism jobs increased by 300 percent!
Preserving the 260,000 hectare Stoltmann Wilderness would provide many job creation opportunities for the burgeoning tourism industry of the Squamish-Whistler-Pemberton corridor.
But what about the declining logging/milling jobs in the region? Clearly, allowing the big logging companies including International Forest Products (InterFor) to keep on clearcutting until the last few wild valleys are logged out will not change the current downward trend in logging/milling jobs in the region.
The answer for the forest industry lies in getting more local jobs per tree cut. InterFor ships much of the timber it cuts in the Squamish-Whistler-Pemberton corridor to be milled at its lumber mills on the Fraser River and Burrard Inlet. Some of the timber is shipped to foreign mills in the form of cants-squared off logs. This year, InterFor's Tree Farm License (TFL) #38, the government issued license that guarantees logging rights in three of the Stoltmann's four big-treed valleys (Sims, the Upper Elaho and the Clendenning), comes up for renewal.
The Wilderness Committee urges the B.C. government not to renew TFL #38. Instead WCWC recommends that TFL #38 lands within the Stoltmann Wilderness-about one-third of the timber volume of the TFL-be withdrawn so that the entire 260,000 ha Stoltmann Wilderness can be preserved as a provincial park. Timber cutting rights for the rest of the TFL #38 lands should be reallocated and placed under local community control. Companies that value-add manufacture wood products locally should be guaranteed a wood supply and all timber cutting agreements should stipulate the use of labour-intensive eco-forestry methods, not clearcutting.
We can preserve jobs while saving the entire Stoltmann Wilderness.
InterFor clearcut and slash burning on the edge of the Stoltmann Wilerness. Photo credit: Joy Foy
Large dimension lumber being shipped from Vancouver docks to foreign mills for remanufacture. Photo credit: Joe Foy
InterFor bulldozer on new Sims Creek logging road, 1995. Photo credit: Joe Foy
