Dear Editor:

Christy Clark has earned an unpleasant reputation for not letting the facts get in the way of a good political rant.

In Kelowna the other day, her penchant for aborting the truth got the best of her while pandering to some of her generous campaign donors in the timber industry.

Clark took a run at school students with a bald faced threat that she would “have to take more money from your mom and dad” if the timber industry weren’t cutting down our forests.

Based on media reports, she made, even for her, some outlandish claims.

For example, we have this statement about B.C. having, according to Clark, “the most sustainable forest industry anywhere in the world.”

Sorry, but no.

Take the B.C. coast for example. Employment in the timber industry fell by over 10,000 jobs from 2004 onwards, even though the number of jobs in cutting and hauling logs remained roughly the same.

The number of mills fell from 155 to 107 in just four years.

Here in the B.C. Interior, there are 20 fewer lumber mills than two decades ago.

In spite of the industry cutting virtually the same volume of trees as they have for decades, we rank 14th of 15 industrialized nations for getting value from wood harvested – and we get under half the value the U.S. gets from wood.

So how has Clark responded?

She has responded by doubling whole log exports – industry likes to call these logs “raw” – in just the past six years.

Logs exported whole produce one tenth the number of jobs the same amount of wood milled in B.C. does.

Clark’s message is that B.C. citizens get maximum value for our forests.

She is wrong again.

Not even close.

As just one out of many, many situations and examples, stumpage fees – what the private sector pays to cut publicly owned trees – in coastal regions were cut from $20 to $5 per cubic meter in 2009, knocking payments to taxpayers for a truck load of logs from $800 down to $200.

On the B.C. coast, where the swing downward has been particularly acute, stumpage revenue dropped from $228 million dollars annually 10 years ago to just $16 million two years ago.

These kinds of declines in earnings for public resources have somewhat complicated causes, but the losses are disturbing.

Here in the Okanagan, when school boards seem intent on closing schools because they claim they cant scrounge up $2 million dollars, people ought to be hammering Clark and the Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources Steve Thomson for gross mismanagement of public resources.

Clark made the claim B.C. has the “most environmentally stable places in the world.” She talks about world class environmental protection. She has placed her foot in her mouth once again.

That may explain why B.C. does not have an Endangered Species Act and consequently 1,597 animal and plant species province-wide have been assessed and listed by the government as at risk.

For us normal citizens, that means animals that are threatened, endangered, and vulnerable to impact by industries like clear cut logging and road building – a system that would reach around the world 50 times.

Severe impacts like this are to be expected because the forest industry has never – this alone should scare the pants off British Columbians – completed an environmental impact assessment of any logging program.

It may also explain why one of her cabinet ministers, before he got kicked upstairs with the big guns, wrote that critical deficiencies in forest management legislation “significantly lowers the threshold protecting our biodiversity” and “planning decisions are often taken in isolation by individual tenure holders.”

So much for world class forest management!

These contrasts with Clark’s version of the world simply expose the reality that Clark is seriously factually challenged.

But that has never stopped her from making public proclamations that aren’t based on fact.

There is little doubt that for the better part of the last half century, the Ministry of Forests has grossly mismanaged one of the public’s most valuable resources.

They haven’t done this alone.

They’ve been goaded by the timber industry and been provided political cover by people like Clark.

Now, reality is barging through the front door.

Throw in mismanagement of forest carbon stocks in a world suffering from carbon emission excess, burgeoning human pressure for clean water and air and recreation and this malfeasance just gets more destructive.

We desperately need a Premier who can cope with and act progressively in this already changed and dramatically changing world, not one who thinks propaganda will win the day.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to write about what I believe to be an extremely important issue for British Columbians and the residents of the Okanagan Valley.

Dr. Brian L. Horejsi

Forester and Wildlife Scientist

Penticton, B.C.