A First Nation's Aggressive Logging Has Some Members 'Heartbroken'
In just three years, much of the McLeod Lake Indian Band’s treaty lands were stripped of their bountiful and valuable trees in a surge of logging that included one clearcut almost 3,000 hectares in size, nearly eight times larger than Vancouver’s Stanley Park.
The extensive logging by the band of its own treaty lands has left two former band councillors questioning why so much forest vanished so quickly, leaving little for next generations.
Defenders of the logging say that beetle infestations made the speed and scale of the logging necessary. But it’s not clear how much of the timber removed had been degraded by beetles, and some scientists say that not immediately clear cutting such forests will allow them to recover far more quickly, while still maintaining healthy habitat for plants and animals.
A logging database maintained by the provincial government as well as satellite imagery reviewed by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives confirms the widespread and recent logging of most of the treaty settlement lands, which were designated as such during treaty negotiations between the band, the provincial and federal governments in 1999.
https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/07/10/Logging-in-McLeod/
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So, what could have been a long-term economic generator for the community with careful management has been turned into a business as usual denuding of the land.
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