IN AN APRIL 7, 2021 INTERVIEW with CBC Victoria’s Gregor Craigie, Premier John Horgan claimed his government had already responded to the Gorley-Merkel report on old-growth forests in BC. The premier claimed that logging had been deferred on “hundreds of thousand of hectares” of old growth. Forest scientist Karen Price, one of the co-authors of BC’s Old Growth Forest: A Last Stand for Biodiversity, has pointed out that Horgan’s deferrals apply to only 3800 hectares of high-productivity old growth. FOCUS has shown that a large portion of the biggest deferral included about 100,000 hectares of already protected Strathcona Park. Other deferrals are mainly rock and ice or second-growth forest.
Horgan’s grasp of forest-related issues was further clarified by his claim to Craigie that “just in the Lower Mainland, 500 million hectares of land has been set aside just to protect the Spotted Owl.” What’s wrong with that? Watch the 1-minute video below.
The problem for British Columbians is that Horgan seems clueless about the environmental damage being created by the forest industry in BC, and even more unaware about how his government is responding to that. Or maybe both his claims about the logging deferrals and the area protected for Spotted Owls were a slip of the tongue, or a joke.
Either way, Craigie didn’t fact-check the premier on either matter. Is British Columbia’s mainstream media unintentionally enabling the unfolding ecological catastrophe in BC forests?
Neither the CBC or the premier’s office made any public correction of the misinformation Horgan provided. That’s why the Evergreen Alliance has created the Fact Checker Action Group.
If you have heard something about BC’s forest industry in the media that you think is doubtful, including what you read on this website, please let us know in the Fact Checker Database and we’ll fact-check that piece of information.
Thanks to Dave Cuddy for drawing to our attention John Horgan’s surprising plan to save the Northern Spotted Owl.
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