Logging Companies Are Pushing into High-Elevation Forests

By Ben Parfitt – The Tyee

On an early April morning this spring, Len Vanderstar drove away from his home in Smithers heading for a distant clearcut.

About 20 kilometres out of town, he turned onto a gravel road and began to climb out of the Bulkley Valley toward Babine Mountains Park.

About an hour later, he arrived at his destination: a 109-hectare patch of land that had once been a forest of 250-to-300-year-old trees. The forest was now gone after it had been logged following an auction by BC Timber Sales, an arm of British Columbia’s Ministry of Forests.