Over half a century ago the municipal council had the amazing foresight to assemble the municipal forests from land that had been abandoned for taxes. Rather than have tax sales they kept the land and created what is now a fabulous recreational resource. Assuming the land had been logged before it was abandoned, it has taken 70 years to get where it is now.
However the forests are still being logged and it will be longer than the lifetime of most us in the valley before the cut parts get back to where they were before.
From a logging point of view the business seems marginal at best. Over the last 10 years over $10 million worth of logs were sold for a profit of about $450,000, a rate of just over four per cent.
It seems that the main reason the forests have been logged is to pay the costs of managing them.
From a recreation point of view, this style of forest management provides little positive benefit but causes substantial long term damage. Nearly all of the management activity is focused on preparing for logging and repairing the damage it does. In recent years less than one per cent of expenditures were directly related to recreation.
When will we realize that the recreational value of the forests far outweighs the meagre return that is realized from logging? It would be fabulous if council would dedicate all the forests as park. We would be the envy of the whole country.
Garth McGeary
Maple Bay
