Page A2, September 26, 1979 - North Shore News _ speckulations | e rape of the lan I'm worried about the trees. As the dollar falls in relationship to other world currencies the price of our forest products becomes attractive— it’s - very cheap in terms of yen, or U.S. dollars, or deutschmarks. Consequently, each time the dollar takes a slide, the rate Of tree cutting ac- ; celerates. Tree slaughter is. very mechanized these days. A - chain saw makes short work of the tallest forest giants. Huge machines take the largest tree corpse in stride. One “has only ‘to Sail in B.C. waters, ot parade ‘of log booms and self-dumping log barges, to ’ realize the volume of timber that is being cut down to satisfy the booming market for our forest Products. We are even exporting logs without getting the benefits of processing them into lumber - several times more logs than we are supposed to export. “No one wants them” bleat our ‘experts." As Hugh Weatherby asks in his series on the forestry, “Correct Me If Tm Wrong” (running every Sunday i in the Sunday north shore OFFICEINEWS (604) 980-0511 CLASSIFIED 986-6222 CIRCULATION 986-1337 @u SN ® Publisher Peter Speck Associate Publisher Bob Graham Editor-in-Chiel Noel Wright Managing Editor Andy Fraser News Editor Chis Uoyd Photos E&¥sworth Dickson Advertising Director Enc Cardwetl Trattic Manager Donna Champion Production Ten Francis Faye McCrae Classified Bern Hilard Administration Andrew Watters Accounts Sytvia Sorenson North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an = independent community . newspaper and qualified under Schedule 111 Part 111. Paragraph 111 of the Excise Tax Act. 18 published each Wednesday and Sunday by tne North Shore Free Press Lid and aistributed to every door on the North Shore Second Ciass Mad Registration Number 3885 VERIFIED CIRCULATION 49,503 Entre contenta® 1878 North Bhore Froe Press Led. All nights reserved. THIS PAPER !S RECYCLABLE the. News), «if nobody wants them, why cut them down? The trees that we are so thoughtlessly felling in the Province of B.C. took an average of four hundred years to grow. They take a long, long time ‘to attain their magnificence, yet a few minutes of snarling chainsaw - scream puts the end to something that started in Columbus’s time. AI this talk about reforestation is just that - talk. If every acre was reforested (it’s not) and if every acre reforested ‘took’ (they don’t) it would be another four hundred years before the trees would be as attractive as they are now. And still we cut the trees down as if there was no tomorrow. IT’S WRONG Clearcutting, as. the foresters so eupheinistically - call ' » devastation that they. wreak the . ecological on the lazd, is wrong, in my opinion. Replanting, as we are propagandized into believing, is done by people with bags of seedlings who stick them in the ground. This appears to be actually done in about one acre out of seven. There are serious flaws in the idea of reforesting logged miles with seedlings. One is that many animals find the seedlings good to eat. Cedar, for instance, is unsuccessful in most cases as deer find the young juicy cedar seedlings very delicious. Another flaw in the system is simply the hugeness of the job. We don't have the man- power to replant more thana small percentage of the acreage involved, and the distances are so great and the water supply preblems so acute that many seedlings die - some even before planting. Contractors are prone to plant them anyway, as they are paid by the seedling and consequently have litule choice of action after getting to the site with a large crew only to find the seedlings dead or dying. POOR DEFENSE Industry defends the clearcutting by saying that they have not had much success with leaving timber _ by Peter Speck standing to’ reseed naturally. - i They say it-“blows over. If - : they leave the same. amount | of timber. standing that they leave around the creeks, its no wonder it blows. over. § The fact of the matter is that they are there to cut down . the trees;.and the more trees: §f - they cut down while the men 7 -and the machinery aré on §& the site, the more'the profit | there is in it for them.. Consequently, they cut down. ~ everything. In a way, ‘iggy the same as big game hunting. Big game hunting, for trophies, takes the. best animal from the pack - the biggest and most successful male, in most cases. Consequently the group of animals continues breeding with an inferior male, and inevitably the “quality of the breeding stock degenerates. So it is with the ‘trees. If the biggest and finest specimens are taken - and in my opinion, they are always taken - then what.is _ left to reforest naturally? GULF GUTTED The Gulf of Georgia, according to Jacques Cousteau, is one of the most beautiful ‘inland seas’ in the . world. As a sailor, I can attest to that. It is an in- credibly attractive place - ‘and the loggers.are atittoo. — Many times this summer I have felt like weeping to see the huge scars where the landscape has been brutalized in the name of ~ exporting logs to Japan. What is more valuable in the long run? I bet that we are all going to do some weeping in the future if we don’t work out a way of protecting the beauties of our part of the world against the ravages of the chainsaw, the bulldozer and the log skidder. THE CHEAP WAY This newspaper is a newsprint user. Newsprint is made from trees, . Originally. It can be_seeytled into itke- new newsprint (and is, in California and other places). But here in B.C. it's cheaper to cut down four hundred year old trees and grind them up into pulp. A beautiful boaters, Hardy Island, is now being logged off, causing distress to many people. The Burrard Yacht Club is asking to have the western part of the island (lots 1486 and _ 1487) designated as a Marine Park. They ask concerned citizens to write to fhe Minister of Parks and Recreation, the Hon. James Chabat, Parliament Buildings, 50! Belleville Street, Victoria, B.C. “Time is very short,” they add, “so please do it now!” haven for HELP MAKE IT HAPPEN. The United Way. ~ “The most popular and educational — vos program on loudspeakers i in Canada ele OCTOBER 1, 1979, 7:30 P.M. - “BAYSHORE INN _. TICKETS FREE SEATING ‘500 MAXIMUM RESERVATIONS ONLY -- Subjects that will be covered ° Frequency response. °-Time alignment, phased afray, octave-to-octave balance. = Colouration and accuracy. The. four types of. loudspeaker imaging and dispersion. 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