Len Vanderstar ©SAFT BC

Len Vanderstar is a retired professional forester and professional biologist who worked in various capacities for the B.C. government before retiring. …[Since the late] 1980s, Vanderstar witnessed a steady progression of logging, with companies extracting much of their trees from forests at middle and low elevations. But that logging caused the companies to run short of commercially attractive trees close to town… Now, timber companies are pushing into the hinterland in search of trees … going higher up mountains. …Vanderstar believes that the price paid [for logging that timber] will be even deeper ecological, social and economic pain ahead. [Higher elevation trees are] smaller and may be centuries old. …To deliver enough logs …companies must sometimes log twice the number of such trees at higher elevations… B.C. chief forester Shane Berg said the Ministry of Forests doesn’t track how much logging occurs by elevation zones but rather calculates logging on an area-by-area basis.