So you want pictures eh?

On a recent trip to Content Reach I took a few snaps of what is going on up there in the way of forestry operations. It appears that the government forestry department has decided to allow the road building to start without permits. The roads depicted in these photos are not set to be permitted until January 2007, but here they are in the fall of 2006. What gives?

There were also a few skidders (timber jacks) out around so I decided to take a few snaps of them. Notice the balding tires? That's why the soil is so torn up in this area.

I also took a few shots of an area that has been logged already to compare it to the area that has yet to be upturned by man. You can see the tracks through the bog area in the first photo, what will the second photo look like once they're done?



Not to be unfair, there are some nicer looking logged over areas out there, but I was not out there to showcase the forest industries good side. This is for the people of the NE Coast of Newfoundland to ponder. Is this what we want our forests to look like?

The last of Newfoundlands coastal black spruce forests are disappearing under a dying industries footprint

Newfoundlands last old-growth forests are under attack by a dying industrial forest industry.

Now, a statement like that seems extreme to some of you who mightened ever have consider yourself 'a green', but there is more to this than you might think...

A massive amount of the the Northeast Coast of Newfoundland is scheduled to be clearcut harvested over the next five years, particularly around the Eastport Peninsula and the Pt. Lemington area.

The Pt. Lemington harvest appears to be very problematic for the communities in and around the cutting in terms of future domestic firewood supply.

These maps are a result of the current round of forest districts 4, 5, 6 & 8 five year planning team meetings that have been taking place in Gander over the past year. This is the only planning process on the Island that is mandated to take into account public input on the land use surrounding communities. While the forestry department is mandated to take the publics input surrounding these plans, they do not have the fiscal ability, nor the mandate to facilitate all the uses outside of forestry that exist on our land base.

Through planning like this, the current government is ignoring the basic needs of well-established, sustainable human communities existing in the bays and inlets that have predominated the landscape of this serene coastline for centuries.

There are other, longer-term plans that are potentially even more destructive than what you see above. The 25 year harvest plans that the forestry department is working with are fantastical, and upon close inspection show an even darker future for our forest industry than we are led to believe.