Help Stop Massive Clearcuts in Ontario's Public Forests
Posted by: Kathie Brosemer (kathie) on September 07, 2001 at 15:50:05
from the got-an-axe-to-grind? dept.
Late on the Friday of the Labour Day long weekend, The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) released a new draft of their clearcutting guideline which requires companies to create massive clearcuts in Ontario's public forests. An earlier draft of the guideline was released last fall and called for the use of 10,000 hectare clearcuts (larger than the City of Guelph). Rather than addressing the public outcry that resulted, the MNR has now removed any limit on the size of clearcut allowed. See more details below.
Your comments to MNR are a key element in the fight to get this guideline changed and to stop this dangerous Canadian precedent. Here's how, and why, it's important that you help...
The new draft guideline would allow the vast majority of the area logged in a forestry plan area to be in massive clearcuts.
MNR says that big clearcuts will be good for wildlife because naturally occurring fires are also big. This simplistic and misguided concept is the cornerstone of the guideline, and puts at risk the remaining areas of large, continuous old forest in the province. Woodland caribou, a threatened species, is already locally extinct everywhere that industrial logging has occurred in Ontario. This guideline sets a dangerous precedent for forestry in Canada.
Although the guideline contains some progressive changes to how many trees should be left standing in clearcuts after logging to provide better wildlife habitat, these changes don't go far enough. Any positive changes the guideline proposes are swamped by its focus on massive clearcuts, which will do significant harm to our forests.
We need your help to get the MNR to drop its plans to allow massive clearcuts. The Ontario government must be shown that we won't stand by and let them destroy our forests. Your comments to MNR are a key element in the fight to get this guideline changed and to stop this dangerous Canadian precedent.
Please follow the instructions below and voice your objection to these destructive and poorly thought out guidelines.
Important
In order for the MNR to consider your response, you must mail or fax a letter to the address below, and write "EBR Registry Number PB00E7004" on the top of your letter!
You should point out that:
- MNR must abandon its focus on requiring massive clearcuts.
- MNR must protect significant areas of big, old, continuous forest from the impacts of logging.
- MNR must make further improvements to clearcutting rules by requiring that a minimum average of 25% of trees be left in patches after clearcutting to provide wildlife habitat in the recovering forest.
Send your comments to:
Joe Churcher, Silviculture Systems Specialist
MNR Forest Management Branch
70 Foster Drive Suite 400
Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, P6A 6V5
PHONE: (705) 945-5710
FAX: (705) 945-6667
For more information go to www.wildlandsleague.org.
You can also send a message to the Minister of Natural Resources John Snobelen from the Wildlands League website.
The Wildlands League was founded in 1968 to protect wilderness in Ontario. It became a chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society in 1980. The Wildlands League works to protect wild places and to ensure resource use is sustainable for nature and communities.
Wildlands League
Protecting the Land
Suite 380, 401 Richmond Street West
Toronto, Ontario
M5V 3A8
Phone (416) 971.9453
Fax (416) 979.3155
clearcuts
More education about the relation and similarities between clearcutting and wildfires needs to be brought up on this subject. For one thing when a company clearcut they have a buffer area which they don't cut around ie: lakes, streams, important wildlife areas such as; osprey nests and moose calving areas. When a wild fire comes through it burns everything, it is responsible for stream degradation and pollution in trout spawning areas as well as destroying other habitats.by Amy Poelwyk on 2001-10-01 10:37:13
People need to dig deeper in this issue instead of just seeing it as cutting all the trees. Trees come back!!! remember??? so go sit on your couch (which has a wood frame) or go take a nap on your bed (which also has a wood frame) and think about how really bad cutting trees is!!!