B.C. Forests Minister Bruce Ralston recently returned from a trade mission to Japan, where he and B.C. forestry companies were promoting B.C. wood products, but environmentalists from B.C. had already beaten them there to do the opposite. Pre-emptively, Conservation North director Michelle Connolly and Ben Parfitt, a policy analyst for Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, had already travelled to Japan the week prior to Ralston’s trip, at the invitation of Japanese environmental groups, where they urged companies and policymakers to stop buying wood pellets and lumber from B.C. because the province still allows the logging of primary forests. “Forestry interests promote the idea that B.C. forests are managed sustainably, when they are not,” Connolly said. “We were invited to Japan to tell the public and key decision-makers about  what’s happening to at-risk forests and species in this province.” Ralston said any boycott of B.C. forestry products in Japan would be “devastating.”

Additional coverage in the PG Citizen: Conservation group talks wood pellets in Japan