Jennifer Houghton says only a new Forest Act, radically different from the current one, will fix B.C.’s declining timber supply and the faltering forest economy in rural communities. That decline, she says, includes not only dwindling timber supply and mill closures but altered landscapes, growing fire danger, increased flooding, worsening drought impacts, shrinking employment, and increasing pressure on communities that historically depended on forestry. “These problems,” she says, but those outcomes are connected by the way the industry and the regulation of it are structured. …Houghton was the main speaker at the Nelson 2026 New Forest Act Roadshow, traveling to 12 communities throughout June. …The group is promoting a new Forest Act for the province in which ecological balance would replace timber flow as the central driver of all forestry activity. She said the new act is not a protest or a slogan but a practical roadmap to more economically healthy forest communities.