The BC Green Party has introduced a petition in the provincial legislature containing the names of 30,151 people who support the protection of old-growth forests.
Party leader Sonia Furstenau, the MLA for Cowichan Valley, says this petition comes 12 years after then MLA John Horgan and six other NDP members introduced petitions to protect old-growth forests and ban raw log exports in 2009.
Furstenau says since that time, MLAs from the NDP have introduced at least 12 separate old-growth petitions, including twice in 2019 while in government.
She says the Horgan government has been in power now for four years, but people who signed petitions over the years calling for the preservation of old-growth forests are still awaiting significant action on the matter.
Furstenau says her petition calls on Premier Horgan to protect the remaining old-growth and implement all the recommendations from the Old Growth Strategic Review Panel.
She says reports show that the “rate of old-growth logging has actually increased under the BC NDP government.”
In addition to the more than 30,000 signatures from BC residents, 8,674 people from outside of the province signed the BC Green Party petition for a total of 38,825 signatures.
Signatures came from 20 different countries across five continents.
The petition was launched on April 7 as part of the party’s old-growth advocacy campaign.
