Shocking to actually see the clearcuts on your video. More people need to be aware of what's happening and the plan to log all the original forest in BC. Most people don't know that that has been the default plan for logging in BC, and except for some questionable deferrals in terms of timing and placement, and plan to save old growth according to the Old Growth Review Panel which may or may not be activated before all the original or primary forest is gone, this plan for logging all primary or orginal forest is still there!

I find former Premier Harcourt's interview statements bewildering, does NDP alliance with industry take precedence over fact?  He clearly has not been into the Peachland watershed recently?  I used to hold him up as a ''good guy'' and told him as much in person at the UVIC Forest Summit he, Bob Peart and John Innes  organized.  

Has Harcourt become an apologist for industry too!  Shame!

I think I will send him some photos of recent clear-cuts.  Very strange comments.  We only CLEARCUT , I think selection logging counts for less that 10% of trees harvested.  Can someone confirm that %?

While Harcourt's claim that clear cutting died in the 90s is brutal, what is most disturbing is the silence of John Innes, he sat by as the former Dean of the Faculty of Forestry  and stayed silent, the guy who taught clear cut loggers their art for 11 years  (how to cut the most trees, in the shortest time using the least labour to get to the closest mill for the cheapest price and make the greatest profit) sat silent. Bewildering

Its all in the language:  

Wildfire mitigation

Clear cuts with retention

Old Growth Management Areas

Wildlife Tree Retention Areas

Partial cuts, 

Small block harvesting

A clear cut is a clear cut is a clear cut... even if government reps. and forestry publicists insist on using use industry jargon, fancy terms and other misleading lingo.

It is all clear-cut logging in disguise.  View 7 minutes of video from Will Koop, BC Tap Water Alliance, documenting the clear cuts as they hammer our watershed year after year  from 1984 until present day.   

Thanks for your comment Virginia. I agree, it is shocking. I can still remember the sense of dismay I felt when I first started going through the satellite imagery of BC. It's sickening. But also, at least for me, motivating. It made me ask, "What do we need to do to stop this and restore our life support systems?"

I encourage everybody to spend a few hours touring BC via satellite imagery. The best, most up-to-date high resolution imagery can be found in the "Maps" app of anyone who has an Apple device. I'm not sure if there is a similar program for PCs.

Google and Bing satellite imagery are okay, too, but not as up-to-date as Apple Maps, in my experience. For an area that I know well, Maps is about 1 year behind.

You might also check out other countries, especially the USA, China and Japan, BC's main customers for wood products and raw logs. Good luck at finding the clearcuts, except those on private land in the USA.

For anyone who has flown over British Columbia in the past 10 years, these pictures are not a surprise.  I can only guess that former Premier Mr. Harcourt is only taking the highways now, where 'visual quality objectives' have been used to create the facade of 'Beautiful BC' for highway travellers.  Anyone who ventures off the roads and into the backcountry also knows the reality.  Is it any surprise that Merritt flooded? That Princeton flooded? That Grand Forks flooded twice? That the entire Fraser Valley flooded? There are no trees to hold the water from rushing downhill and into the major rivers, carrying with them the soil that the trees once held in place.  

It is no surprise that the biggest BC forestry companies are investing more money south of the border, because they see the writing on the wall - there will be no more wood to process in their BC mills.  The jobs vs. environment battle will see no victors on either side - there will be so few jobs and so little primary forests left that the residents of BC will ALL be losers in this rush to the bottom.  What a heritage we have left for our children !

On the one hand, Mike Harcourt's NDP government introduced the Forest Practices Code of BC Act  BUT, on the other hand, it invoked a policy to limit the impact of non-timber values (e.g., biodiversity, water soil and visual quality) on timber supply to six (6) per cent.