Press release February 4 2025 – The Sunshine Coast Community Forest (SCCF), a logging company 100% owned by the District of Sechelt, has a budget for public outreach that includes paid advertising in the local Coast Reporter newspaper. Over the course of the last 6 months (last two ads January 17th and 24th 2025) have included the following headline:
“Ecosystem Based Management will increase old growth in the community forest by 900%.”
A link is provided in the ad supporting the claim which reads:
“The fact is that the land we now call the community forest was heavily logged in the past, and also experienced several massive fires. The result is that old growth in the community forest makes up only 452 hectares or 4.2% of the forest.
By protecting 42% of our forests in an ecosystem conservation network, with a minimum 30% representation from each ecosystem, in time these forests will become old, or as old as natural disturbance allows. This is a ten-fold increase in the amount of old growth in the community forest within one generation of trees.”
“When our organisation first read this 900% claim in SCCF’s advertisements it struck us that there might be some exaggeration to it and decided to engage a GIS Analyst (by Applied Conservation GIS) to investigate. The final number crunching resulted in a large difference in the amount of future old-growth to be added to the SCCF tenure. We feel that SCCF needs to set the facts straight by issuing another advertisement acknowledging their error.” says Ross Muirhead, ELF Forest Campaigner. “The results of the 3rd party GIS analysis proved to be that we could see an 82% increase of old-growth over time by the addition of new forest areas into the Conservation Network – not 900%. It’s a bit shocking that SCCF’s Communication Department feels its necessary to make exaggerated claims. We expect a full retraction by SCCF of the false percentage read by the public in the same newspaper.” read more
