If Our Forests Count Then It’s Time to Count
Judging by the comments published in response to an opinion piece that Anthony Britneff and I co-wrote and that The Province newspaper published this week, there is growing concern within the ranks of the provincial Forest Service and in the professional forestry community over the current state of health of our publicly owned forests.
Inventories – the counting and assessment of plant life in our forests – is essential if we are to have any chance of managing the full range of values in our forests. If we don’t have sufficient information on what we have, we can’t hope to manage it in the public interest.
British Columbia’s publicly owned forests are an incredible asset, worthy of increased inventory efforts.
As Anthony and I note our Province op-ed:
If you had a stock inventory narrowly valued at $250 billion, would you want to know how quickly it is depleted and replenished?
That, by the way, is the estimated value of the available, commercially desirable trees in B.C.’s publicly owned forests. If you consider the additional values our forests have as carbon storehouses, the protector of water resources, the life-support system for numerous plants and animals and the source of tens of thousands of jobs, you could perhaps quadruple that value.
