North Cowichan council on Wednesday defeated a motion from Councillor Tek Manhas to specifically invite Resource Works — an industry mouthpiece — to provide input into a review of the 5,000-hectare Municipal Forest Reserve.

However, Council agreed that Resource Works could provide a virtual or in-person presentation on the organization's recent report, Forestry in BC: Setting the Record Straight.

Manhas, a supporter of logging the forest reserve, has already had discussions with Resource Works executive director Stewart Muir.

Muir (https://bit.ly/35VvyQ4) has been busy of late trying to whip up industry outrage by suggesting that the old-growth protests on the west coast of Vancouver Island are the first step in shutting down all logging in BC.

“We now know that the real campaign is about a moratorium on all forestry in British Columbia,” warns Muir, a registered federal lobbyist.

No one seriously believes that public support for old-growth protection is the slippery slope to ending all logging in BC. We need logging. That’s obvious.

But I digress.

There is no old-growth in the Municipal Forest Reserve due to decades of logging. A report for council estimates at least 141 species are at risk in the reserve, which falls within the endangered coastal Douglas-fir forest.

What’s needed is a conservation vision for our forest reserve, not a lecture from Resource Works on why we need yet more of the same in our community.

— Larry Pynn, July 22, 2021