Tourism sector seeks increased logging restrictions in Outer Discovery Islands
Cortes Currents
English - April 25, 2021 23:41 - 8 minutes - 18.7 MBNews cortes island discovery islands quadra food security energy indigenous nations Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - A $50 million a year business seeks increased logging restrictions in the Outer Discovery Islands.
Ralph Kellar, ad hoc chair of the Discovery Islands Marine Tourism Group, cites studies showing that marine tourism brings just as much money into the local economy.
“The Discovery Islands proper were identified by tourism as an area of concern and exceptionally high value. For example, in Campbell River today there are twelve, perhaps more, motorized tour companies that exclusively the afore mentioned islands anf those companies generate over $10 million a summer for the Campbell River economy” said Kellar, whose family operates the sea kayak company Coast Mountain Expeditions out of Read Island and the Discovery Lodge on North Quadra Island.
“We kept seeing more and more clear cuts show up on the landscapes of the Discovery Islands, our operating area. We got tired of explaining this stuff to our customers,” said Kellar. “Most of the timber was being exported to the Orient and we were left with the clearcuts. There was virtually no return to the local economy, except for a few logging jobs.”
Last August, the Campbell River Business Recovery Task Force identified tourism and forestry as two of the three first dollar pillars of the city’s economy.
They said that the top four forestry companies with headquarters in Campbell River – Western Forest Products, Interfor, Mosaic and BC Timber Sales – pay an estimated $47 million in wages and benefits every year. Their operations extend over a considerable portion of Vancouver Island as well as the Discovery Islands. There were smaller companies as well.
“We conducted a study and ended up with a number we think is pretty realistic, maybe even a bit low, but the value of the Discovery Islands tourism, not including Campbell River, is about $50 million a year,” said Kellar. “That compares very favourably to the forest industry. Depending on the year, it would be the same size as and some years even bigger.”