People march for control of forests
People in Vernon and Peachland joined a provincewide call on Friday for more public control of B.C.’s forests.
In Peachland, more than 25 people gathered to march along the waterfront.
The event, organized by the Peachland Watershed Protection Alliance, saw people with signs and banners walk from the Peachland Visitor Centre to Heritage Park.
“We have no control of what goes on in our watershed,” said Alex Morrison, communications director with the Peachland Watershed Protection Alliance. “The municipality is bound by legislation to provide clean drinking water to their citizens and yet they don’t really have any control of what goes on in the watershed.
“Anybody who’s lived here for any length of time knows that we’re inundated by dirty water, brown water in the spring. We’ve had three floods in four years. We’ve had landslides up in the creeks and lakes up there.
“We’re powerless to do anything.” Morrison pointed out a new forest framework which would put nature’s needs before corporate profits, allow for public control of public lands with an independent forester general, have regional forest councils making decisions based on nature and community needs and forest management based on science, not corporate profits.
In Vernon, Eli Pivnic, of Climate Action Now, addressed a group of about 50 sign carrying protesters on
Friday before they marched through downtown Vernon
“We have lots of trees. We don’t have many healthy forests.”
Pivnic added that change was needed, that more public input was necessary as was less corporate control of the the forests.
“The forests are controlled by six companies,” he said.
Huguette Allen of the Sustainable Environment Network Society noted that there is a “huge difference between plantations and forests.
“Old growth supports young life and we don’t need to trim forests. It’s been happening naturally for 300 million years. Mosses, roots and
fungi clean the water while plantation forests lead to floods and pollution.”
Allen noted that old growth supports young life and wild life.
“Twenty-three hundred species are at risk,” she said. “We need to object, to raise our voices and awareness, to continue explaining and to make it known that we’re here for the common good, for children and animals.”
Pivnic pointed out that the wood pellet industry, which used to depend on waste, has grown and is now cutting trees, including old growth, to fulfil huge contracts.