Dear editor,
We visit Austria every year to see our son who lives there, and to visit the forests surrounding the Austrian Alps.
Now the Forests are not huge like in BC but talk about managing the forests. The forests there are pristine. The trees for logging are selected from within the existing forest (about 100 years old) and when cut down the bark and branches are mulched into soil and returned to the forest. New trees are immediately planted. There are no forest fires鈥� there is nothing
left to burn.
The Austrians (and Germans) have been logging for hundreds of years. They do not use the timber to build houses but only for the joists. The walls of buildings are concrete and rebar.
My family are pioneers in B.C. coming in the 1800s and have served in all the wars to protect Canada and B.C., but we did not serve to see the fallers destroying trees that are 1,000 years old for a few bucks鈥� trees we will never see again.
Syd Burrows,
Comox
