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The British Columbia government says it is acting on a series of recommendations to help the province's forest industry in the wake of the mountain pine beetle epidemic. Critics say it's a weak response to the issue that shows the government hasn't learned from the collapse of other natural resource industries.

The B.C. government announced plans on Tuesday to meet timber supply shortages in the B.C. Interior by reviewing current prohibitions on logging in environmentally sensitive areas and giving forest companies more power to manage the land base.

The B.C. government will examine the contentious possibility of opening old-growth forests to logging in parts of the province hardest hit by plummeting timber supplies. It's an idea that both proponents and opponents say would require chopping protective measures that took years to create.

The song was inspired by a trip to the BC Forest Discovery Centre in Duncan where there is a cross-section of a 1300-year-old fir tree that blew down in a storm in the 1960s.

In an ethereal valley near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island, more than 100 remarkable Douglas-fir and red cedar trees have held their ground for centuries. Members of the Victoria-based Ancient Forest Alliance came upon the gnarled titans - some over 60 metres tall and more than four metres in diameter - in December 2009. Soon after, they learned the area was slated for harvest and launched a campaign to save "Avatar Grove."

Logging on hillsides such as McLaughlin Ridge inevitably affects the water supply of surrounding communities and the province should do more to help protect watersheds, says the chairman of the AlberniClayoquot Regional District.

An old-growth forest near Port Alberni that had been protected as critical habitat for wintering deer and endangered goshawks is being logged by Island Timberlands - even though newly released documents show Environment Ministry staff strongly disagreed with the company's harvesting plans.

The next eight months will be a crucial time period for the fate of BC’s old-growth forests – in fact, the most important in BC’s history for ancient forests.

Please DONATE to help the Ancient Forest Alliance build a much-needed “War Chest” of funding during this crucial pre-election period to shape major provincial policy decisions.