Logging: who decides what (and how) to cut?

The B.C. government has just wrapped up a public consultation that may lead to changes in how residents are consulted and informed about resource extraction decisions. It is reviewing a practice known as the professional reliance model, which has been in effect since 2004 when the B.C. Liberal government came to power. That’s a system where a resource company hires a professional (a forester, geotechnical engineer, hydrologist, biologist, or soil scientist) to make the decisions about whether a project should go ahead and under what conditions, rather than that decision being made by the government. …Critics say this amounts to the privatization of the forests because neither the logging company nor the professionals they hire are accountable to the public.