Ross Muirhead

Government needs to assign a dollar value to every ha of old-growth or mature forests left standing in the province. The current rule of thumb is approx. 10K per ha per year in environmental services they provide, including of course carbon sequestering. Until a forest is logged government places $0 value on these forests that have been providing free services to society since the last ice age. Older forests and their services are worth much more to society today and to future generations than stumpage taxes. Its clear that the Ministry of Forests has not known how to grow back a living forest, let alone high quality trees. due to continued reliance of natural forests to meet the majority of their AAC.