For decades, scientists have known that allowing the timber industry to store logs in estuaries kills marine life. So why does British Columbia still permit it? …From a distance, the log boom presents a familiar, almost nostalgic image of British Columbia’s working coast. Up close, it is an intimidating, two-to-three-meter-high tangle of dead trees resting upon the dark ooze. …Timber companies store log booms all along the BC coast, says Jamieson Atkinson, a fish biologist and program manager for the Aquatic Research and Restoration Centre at the British Columbia Conservation Foundation (BCCF). And while estuaries make up less than three percent of British Columbia’s coast, they provide rich habitat for 80 percent of the province’s coastal wildlife. The Fraser River estuary, near Vancouver on the BC mainland, supports more than 300 species of birds and 80 species of fish and shellfish for at least part of their life cycles.