Letter: He who cannot get enough
“He who cannot get enough”
Sarah Penton’s Feb. 20 Radio West guest, Kim Haakstad, president, (British Columbia) Council of Forest Industries, promoted increased forest harvesting resulting in ecological destruction and the need to dive deeper into forest practices deregulation without pushback.
That is not sustainable: Not sustainable for the CoFI, not sustainable for B.C. forests, not sustainable for the animals, water quality, nor air quality, not sustainable for the habitat the commercial greed accomplishments destroy, not sustainable for the families Haakstad cried alligator tears about how financially they hurt if the unsustainable timber extraction, underregulated since the industry’s beginnings and all of which continues as Haakstad seeks.
Not once did the selfishness of the CoFI comment on the extinction nor near-extinction increasingly of the animals (including Caribou) due to habitat (ecological) destruction. Not once did the selfishness of the CoFI comment upon the human habitat diminishments due to the under-regulated harvesting causing climate crisis of increased land and water surface temperatures which synergizes wildfires never seen before with their destructive forces now.
The Inland Temperate Rain Forest (ITRF), the largest in the world of two (the second and much smaller is in the Russian Siberian area), is the largest single gem remaining of our indigenous Sinixt territory (“tum xulau?”). Tum xulau?, which spans from the peaks of the Monashee to the peaks of the Purcell and from below Kettle Falls to approaching 200 km north of Revelstoke, B.C., is getting drier and drier and nearing extinction itself.
The B.C. Forest Ministry is not satisfied with its own knowledge of the ITRF’s jeopardy to end old-growth harvesting: This is insane and, too, not sustainable. CoFI is exemplary of why most indigenous peoples, in their own languages, called (named) white setter-colonizer-occupiers “he who can’t get enough.”
Please visit tinyurl.com/2xc5fu95 to learn more about the ITRF.
Radio West’s host is outstanding: a breath of fresh air, a complement to CBC’s excellent programming.
Lou Stone
Autonomous Sinixt
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