Tribune
WEEKEND Friday JULY 13, 2012
bcclassified.com
VOL. 23 NO. 28
REACHING 10,675 HOMES WEEKLY
A cool way to beat the heat
A family outing in downtown Williams Lake......Page A10
Voltage and GFCI Tester Kitt On-off button, visual and audible indicator.
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Mathais Goodrich, one, was trying out the water park area in Kiwanis Park on Tuesday. Fully clad in his NoZone swim wear, Mathias was enjoying the chance to cool off. Monica Lamb-Yorski photo
Man missing The Williams Lake RCMP are searching for a senior man who went missing from his home Wednesday night. Police say that at 9:40 p.m. on Wednesday, July 11 the Williams Lake RCMP received a complaint that Larry Schafer, 73, was missing from his residence on Chimney Lake Road. Schafer had left earlier in the day on his ATV and trailer to get some gravel from the nearby area. Police say they immediately attended to the area and made best efforts to search the rural area with what little day light was left. The RCMP, along with search and rescue, will be continuing the search today. Schafer is described as Caucasian, five feet, six inches tall, 205 pounds, and wearing jeans, work boots, and a short, red plaid shirt. He has grey hair and is balding. Anyone with information is asked to immediately phone the Williams Lake RCMP at 250-3926211 or 911.
Deadline looms for timber decision Tom Fletcher Black Press The B.C. legislative committee studying timber supply in the wake of the Interior pine beetle epidemic is holding its final hearings this week, with an Aug. 15 deadline to recommend whether to open up more areas to logging as the forest recovers. At hearings in Vancouver this week, MLAs heard conflicting advice from industry and environmental interests, after a tour of the communities hardest hit by the beetle kill. Their task is to see if there is enough timber available to rebuild the Burns Lake sawmill destroyed by fire in January, and to decide if affected areas protected for old growth, wildlife or visual values should be considered
for harvesting. Long-time B.C. environmentalist Vicky Husband told the committee the “elephant in the room” is mill overcapacity, built to deal with the huge areas with dead trees that are approaching the end. “The result was a perfect storm of events — beetles ravaging one billion mature pine trees and an industry building supermills and logging like crazy,” Husband said. “Everyone knew it couldn’t last, and we’ve know this for a long time. It seems like we’re coming to the end and suddenly trying to find a Band-Aid solution.” She warned that opening up protected areas to increase the annual allowable cut would risk B.C.’s international forest certification, and
create “false hope” in forest-dependent communities that the high level of timber harvest can continue. Committee members questioned whether maintaining pre-epidemic protected areas hit by beetle kill is the best thing for forest health. “If we don’t go in and manage those and put the health of the forest first … and don’t go into these particular reserves, viewscapes, old-growth management areas, we will have more disease,” CaribooChilcotin MLA Donna Barnett said. Cowichan Valley MLA Bill Routley was sympathetic to the submission from Burns Lake, where residents pleaded for a solution that would allow their largest employer to rebuild. “It’s six First Nations that are
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supportive of a plan, a company, a chamber of commerce, the workers’ representatives, on and on,” Routley said. Representatives of the Forest Fibre Alliance of B.C. called for change to existing timber licences to allow access to non-sawlog wood to make fuel pellets, fibreboard and other products from wood now going to waste. Association member Jim Burbee said non-sawlog producers have had to buy their own sawlog licences to get access to wood for their products, because existing sawlog licence holders have no incentive to trade wood that isn’t suitable for sawmills. See MACDONALD, Page A2