Axed : Decade of cuts to BC's Forest Service

The outcome is that the connection between public servants and forest fires of increasing the public they serve is far more tenuous, and at the worst possible of times: an era of number and severity, unprecedented insect attacks that have killed hundreds of millions of trees; forest fires an unimaginable of increasing number and severity; a reforestation challenge of unimaginable extent and refore [...] Axed: A Decade of Cuts to BC’s Forest Service 5 If the ILMB portion of the budget is removed, the actual Forest Service budget for 2010/11 is $591 million,8 meaning the gap between the 2008/09 and 2010/11 budgets widens to $179 million. [...] Such reductions mean that we are losing our collective eyes and ears in the forest, a trend that is unfortunately being replicated in other provincial government departments, including the Ministry of Environment.10 6 Axed: A Decade of Cuts to BC’s Forest Service With the loss of eight full-time positions, the number of Forest Service employees working in log scaling (measuring and grading logs) f [...] Such is the nature of a remote coastal re- departments, gion, which is also the site of a booming trade in raw log exports, in high-grading of cedar including the Ministry (high-grading being the targeted taking of desirable trees and the wasting of most other of Environment. [...] The reforestation challenge, as another example, has increased in scale and complexity, in part because of a steady decline in provincial and federal dollars to cover reforestation costs, but also because of the run-up in small-scale logging in response to insect attacks and fires, and the ongoing impact of climate change to forest health.