Recently there was an organized hike of awareness by concerned citizens to the Mt. Arrowsmith region.
Obviously I am not the only back-country user that has worries about the Logging near the old CPR Trail , or # 83-9 (overlooking remnants of Rosseau trail); or the slopes of the river in the valley bottom where kayakers this spring reported large debris in the river’s edges from steep hillside stripping.
It has also been commented that the trails in this area may well have been established before MacMillan Bloedel and later Island Timberlands and Timberwest gained rights to the forests, and that the current logging plans and the Timber companies have a duty to retain these trails and a very significant portion of buffering and water-rivulet and pond protections.
I shudder to think that the aftermath will look like the corpse of the historic Dove-Creek Trails near Battleship Lake from the 2006 Logging by other timber companies. Those clearcuttings have essentially left the CPR Trail as perhaps the only last remaining historical Island trail outside a park .
There has to be some form of responsibility to the community, tourism, wildlife and our air and water values.
Can Island Timberlands please curtail these cuts and concentrate on only secondary older growth in areas of 80 years regeneration or older? These really are the only age categories that allow a combination minimal value of economic and wilderness regrowth and watershedding to re-establish itself.
Anyone visiting this mountain area from a vantage point can readily see that the past 40 years of checkerboard logging has left very little remnants of substantial forest or wildlife.
I can only hope that Island Timberlands can recognize that this current logging plan is a short-sighted limited economic fail.
Peter Bolten
Parksville