Patrick Moore wrote: > > The issue of soil loss by landslides is important, but in British > Columbia this is a minuscule amount of the total area. Yes, even small > landslides can cause negative impacts on salmon streams and should be > avoided. But it is also very clear that overfishing, hydro-electric dams, > agriculture, and urbanization, are far more destructive of salmon than > logging, the effects of which are temporary as the impact of soil erosion is > easily healed in time. Patrick, this is the typical corporate public relations spin to divert attention away from the problems. Unless you are travelling around this province with your eyes closed you know as well as I do that there are a good number of pretty gross landslides around here as a result of piss poor logging practices. They might be miniscule to you, but they have caused major havoc with watersheds and fish habitat, among other things. The statement on salmon is yet another typical response by the corporations to attempt to divert attention away from logging practices. I know, I have sat in meetings where every time fish habitat came up the industry flacks would start discussing how to frame a plausible denial of any responsibility. No one is going to deny that agriculture, urbanization, hydro, etc. has had its toll on the fishery. It has. But the issue here is forestry, and the point is to improve forestry practices, not avoid doing so by blaming something else for the problem. Patrick Moore wrote: > > Immoral is a big word to apply to the obtaining of wood by hard work. I > would think twice about characterizing the people who do this work for all > the rest of us as "immoral". Well, Patrick, I am not apply the word immoral to the obtaining of wood by hard work, nor am I characterizing forestry workers as "immoral." In fact Patrick, I know a lot of people in the woods who are disgusted with some of the ways that they have to do things, but then families need to eat, so they keep working and hope for changes. What is immoral is the policies and senior corporate officials who allow this kind of shoddy forestry to happen in the first place. What is immoral is allowing economic factors to overrule good biology. What is immoral is hiring spin doctors and forming phoney citizens groups to change perceptions rather than taking steps to correct the problem. Jerry West Editor/publisher/janitor ---------------------------------------------------- THE RECORD On line news from Nootka Sound & Canada's West Coast An independent, progessive regional publication http://www.island.net/~record/
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