Battling the Mountain Pine Beetle

It’s just as hard to look at as it is to ignore; the eerie reddish-brown hue painted over much of the once lush green wilderness in the interior of British Columbia.

Panicked over the ravaging of BC’s forests by the mountain pine beetle, the rush to stop the pest from spreading has resulted in an unprecedented increase in logging. Amid allegations of a clearcutting free-for-all, the government’s haphazard approach to the pine beetle infestation was highlighted in a recent report commissioned by Ecojustice and a host of environmental and labour groups.

Over-cutting and Waste in BC’s Interior, takes a hard-hitting look at how the current approach to curbing pests is damaging the environment and the economy. Instead of creating hundreds of jobs by sending usable harvested timber to existing mills, the government may instead be contributing to global warming by sending these logs to be burnt for energy.

The report also exposes that unaffected trees are being clear-cut along with the diseased pines and that as much as half of the trees being hauled out of BC’s forests are in fact healthy spruce.

To download a copy of Overcutting and Waste in BC’s Interior, please click here.

[September 2007]