BACKGROUND - British Columbia: Including the Alaska Highway - page 710

economy, many forestry decisions have as much to do with politics as they do with good
management of natural resources. The most talked-about issue is clear-cutting, where en-
tire forests are stripped down to bare earth, with the practice in old-growth forests espe-
cially contentious. The effect of this type of logging goes beyond just the removal of an-
cient trees—often salmon-bearing streams are affected. Clayoquot Sound, on the west coast
of Vancouver Island, is synonymous with environmentalists' fight against the logging in-
dustry. The sound is home to the world's largest remaining coastal temperate forest. Envir-
onmentally friendly options are practiced, with companies such as the Eco-Lumber Co-op
selling wood that is certified as being from responsibly managed forests.
You can see the extent of logging through British Columbia when you arrive, but visit
Google Maps ( http://maps.google.com ) and click on the Satellite link. Then zoom into Brit-
ish Columbia—northern Vancouver Island is a good example—to see just how extensive
the clear-cut logging is.
Contacts
For more information on any of these issues, contact the following local environmental
organizations: Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society ( www.cpaws.org ), Greenpeace
( www.greenpeace.ca ) , British Columbia Environmental Network ( www.ecobc.org ) , So-
ciety Promoting Environmental Conservation ( www.spec.bc.ca ) , and Valhalla Wilder-
ness Society ( www.vws.org ) .
Flora and Fauna
FLORA
Two colors invariably jump to mind when you say “British Columbia”: green and blue.
Just about everywhere you travel in British Columbia, you see trees, trees, and more
trees—around two-thirds of the province is forested. But the types of trees differ in each
geographic and climatic region. Coastal regions are dominated by temperate rainforest,
which requires at least 1,000 millimeters (40 inches) of rain annually and is predomin-
antly evergreen. This biome is extremely rare: it is estimated that at the end of the last ice
age, 0.2 percent of the world's land area was temperate rainforest. Only 10 percent of such
forests remain, 25 percent in British Columbia, where they are made up of mostly hemlock,
western red cedar, and Sitka spruce. Arbutus (known as Pacific madrone in the United
States) is an evergreen hardwood distinctive for its red bark and glossy oval-shaped leaves.