When I was in my teens, in the early ’70s, it was a family tradition to take advantage of a very special sport fishery. For ten magical days, the BC sports fishing regulations opened the upper Chilliwack River from Slesse Creek to Chilliwack Lake for sports fishing — the rest of the year it was illegal.

My brother and I loved our time fishing the upper Chilliwack because of the particular way we fished. We were logjam fishers.

We would thrash our way through a jungle of alder trees and salmonberry bushes, then clamber up into a massive logjam that spanned the river. The jam was big, greasy, old, mysterious, and of course somewhat dangerous. We spent our time on the jam stalking fish. We especially enjoyed peering down into the bottle-green pools that formed in the shelter of the huge water-worn logs. Fish lived there and we could see them. We didn’t actually catch that many fish. But when I try to imagine what people mean when they talk of heaven – my heaven has a logjam.

So I was not happy when sometime in the late ’70s, BC totally closed the upper Chilliwack to sport fishing all year long. Heaven on Earth was shut. Bummer. It has remained shut to this day.

When my brother and I first learned of the reason for the fishing closure on the upper Chilliwack, it was an important teachable moment for us. The steelhead trout population was in decline and fisheries managers did not want fishers like us accidentally harming young steelhead in the upper Chilliwack – so they banned fishing there. And you know what? We accepted that explanation – heck, we supported it. Who wouldn’t support protecting dwindling fish and wildlife in the hope abundance could be restored again?

I tell this fishy tale as a way of explaining why I’m so shocked and angry at the BC government’s continued failure to ban logging of our dwindling old growth forests.

Stumps of old-growth trees in Spuzzum Valley. Wilderness Committee file photo.

The writing has been on the wall for a long time – so much old growth forest has been logged already that species are rapidly sliding towards disappearing from the province completely.

Countless salmon populations are hanging on by a thread because their river habitats have been so destabilized by excessive old growth logging. The list of wild creatures in steep decline in BC because too much old growth forest has been logged is now as long as my arm. Yet the destruction continues.

I say the provincial government needs to ban the logging of old growth forests. All of them that are left must be protected. Every hectare. And BC needs to be setting aside older second growth forests so they eventually can become old growth again. For many BC wildlife populations, this course of action is their only hope for a future.

Our BC government has recently embarked on a process to get your opinion about old growth forests in the province. You can provide your comments online here.

Tell them we don’t need another process to collect opinion. We need to break the legislative logjam in Victoria. Tell them we need a ban on old growth logging. Now. Before it is utterly and completely too late for species like the southern mountain caribou and so many more.

Joe Foy is the protected areas campaigner for the Wilderness Committee.

See the original article in the Watershed Sentinel.