Editor, The Times:
I find you’ve captured a high sense of irony in last week’s newspaper.
In the editorial section, there are a couple of letters from folks expounding concerns about potential disasters that could result from harvesting activities, and potential for habitat loss.
While there is some truth to these points, what those letter authors may fail to realize, is standards change, and harvesting practices in yesteryear are not the same as today. Today, forest companies, or any resource management group, no matter how local or national, are held to not only policy and legislative standards and tests, a variety of certifying agencies such as FSC and ISO, but to a fierce social licence which includes such a broad scope of input and consideration of many co-operative and conflicting viewpoints.
As a resident of Clearwater who currently works in the natural resource sector, supporting my young, growing family, as my parents and grandparents did here before me, I marvel in the fact that many of the roads we now use to access our pristine forests, lakes, volcanos and wilderness areas, would not be there if it weren’t for the harvesting and resource activities that needed to go before.
A point I think you’ve so subtly captured, on page A9, with the feller-buncher clearing a few trees to expand the parking lot area, at the trailhead of the Clearwater River Trail.
Kyler Miller
Clearwater, B.C.
