As hundreds of protesters trying to stop logging of old-growth forests were arrested at Fairy Creek on Vancouver Island last year, the B.C. government raked in big money from logging companies.
In total, it collected more than $1.8 billion dollars in stumpage fees — a number that would have been higher still but for the protests.
Nothing in the past 15 years comes close to that revenue benchmark, a figure that underscores that it is not just the logging companies who benefit financially from logging old-growth or primary forests, but the provincial government as well.
New research by the B.C. office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows, however, that the whopping stumpage revenues of last year mask trouble ahead.
The high revenues were only made possible by an unprecedented run-up in lumber prices and the extraordinary value of the older trees that are the chief target of companies logging in B.C.
With those trees disappearing as quickly as Newfoundland’s cod…
