Echo Lake Ancient Forest – Follow-Up Letters Needed! Please WRITE!

Recently, over a thousand of you wrote letters to the BC government asking for the full protection of the Echo Lake Ancient Forest near Mission (see www.ProtectEchoLake.com), an extremely rare, lowland old-growth rainforest that is also the world’s largest night-roosting site for bald eagles.  The BC government is proposing to protect about 45 hectares, or about half, of the old-growth forests around Echo Lake as an Old-Growth Management Area (OGMA). Unfortunately, the government’s proposal excludes spectacular stands of old-growth redcedars and Douglas firs on the west and north sides of the lake.
 
These unprotected forests are within a Woodlot License, a smaller logging tenure on Crown lands, which the BC government states is not subject to the creation of new Old-Growth Management Areas. However, it is within the government’s power to shift the Woodlot License boundaries to another second-growth forest area among the thousands of hectares of Crown lands in the region.
 
PLEASE write a follow-up letter asking the BC Liberal government to:

• Please work to make a solution that will legally protect all of the old-growth forests around Echo Lake, including the 30 hectares or so of old-growth and mature forests on the north and west sides of the lake that are excluded from the proposed Old-Growth Management Area (OGMA). Voluntary measures on the part of the logging licensee will not suffice.
• Such a solution could entail shifting the Woodlot License boundaries on the north side of the lake into second-growth forests elsewhere, among the thousand hectares of second-growth Crown lands available for harvesting in the Chilliwack District.
• Enact a provincial Old-Growth Strategy to protect endangered old-growth forests across BC, such as in the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island, and southern Interior.
• Ensure a sustainable, value-added second-growth forest industry and end the export of raw, unprocessed logs to foreign mills.

 
*** Be sure to include your home mailing address so they know you are a real person.
 
Write to:
 
Steve Thomson, BC Minister of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations
[email protected]
 
And CC your letter to:
 
Enrique Sanchez, Chilliwack District Old-Growth Management Areas (OGMA’s) – Public Review Coordinator
[email protected]
 
Terry Lake, BC Minister of the Environment
[email protected]
 
Christy Clark, Premier of BC
[email protected]
 
Norm MacDonald, BC Opposition Forests Critic
[email protected]