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The Prince George
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Citizen
inside today A mountain climbing first 3
The trouble with Wade 13 Our rainforests' future 23
I
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1989
50 CENTS
LARGE AREA NOT REPLANTED
Ann Landers..................12 Entertainment.............10,11
Bridge........................19 Family ......................12
Business.......................9 Horoscopes...................19
City, B.C......................3 Movies..................P10.P15
Classified................16-21 Religion ....................24
Comics ......................10 Sports....................13-15
Editorial.....................4 *P—Plus Magazine
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Forest restocking
For 14 years, the records have been considered confidential. Finally, this week, chief forester John Cuthbert said The Citizen could see them.
One problem with these areas is that companies used to request seedlings from the government, then get their requests cut back by the government, which paid for reforestation, plus an 18-per-cent administrative fee.
In 1987, the government changed the rules, making companies responsible for reforesting areas they logged after October of that year.
The records for the five years before vary because some areas need more planting than others, and there was a shortage of seedlings.
This year Polar Forest Industries will catch up on the 5,000 hectares they logged between 1982-87. Thus far 2,026 hectares were planted and 2,663 are considered NSR.
Takla Forest Products has largely natural regeneration (nature doing the job) prescribed by the forest service, so of 1,811 hectares cleared, only 175 were planted, leaving 1,440 as NSR.
In a way that’s unfair since nature doesn’t work fast, and it can take 10 years for natural regeneration to work.
The Pas cleared 9,770 hectares, planted 6,061, and will be caught up within two years.
Carrier Lumber will plant about two millon trees this year and will catch up, even though 6,922 hectares were logged and 3,329 have been planted so far.
Rustad Bros. Lumber’s logging covered 8,890 hectares, and 5,976 were replanted. They should be caught up by the end of next year.
Dunkley Lumber planted 2,687 of the 4,661 hectares harvested from 1982 to 1987 and will be about 80 per cent caught up at the end of the year.
Lakeland Mills will need three years to catch up. Of 2,993 hectares harvested, 571 were planted, but the company has a plan in place to catch up on past shortages.
For Netherlands Overseas Mills, 11,772 hectares were harvested and 5,565 were planted, which means three years to catch up.
Northwood has both planted and harvested a lot, with 32,683 hectares cleared, 16,382 planted and a three-year program to catch up.
That’s on land outside the company’s tree farm licence.
On Northwood’s tree farm licence, about 55,000 hectares were logged, but 25,000 are NSR.
The company will plant seven million seedlings this year.
The new rules announced in 1987 still aren’t in place fully. No company in the north has signed the “letter of understanding,” saying that they agree what should be done and how.
Company foresters say there are a lot of new policies without rules and proposed rules which are still matters for discussion.
Under the proposed new rules, the forest service wants firms to estimate how much waste they leave behind, then have the government audit the results. Companies don’t want to get involved in the issue which has caused lawsuits on the Coast.
And companies will have to hold public meetings telling what they’re doing to and for the forest under the rules still being argued about.
The government also proposed a new policy on “reduction of productivity losses from logging operations” which would tell firms how much land could be disturbed by logging and lost to future forests due to hauling roads and other problems. The industry has struck a committee with government to work out this policy proposed in March 1987 and it now has subcommittees. There still aren’t any guidelines.
Vant for'slur' on Indians
VICTORIA (CP) - Native leaders are calling for the resignation of Highways Minister Neil Vant after he said he wanted to keep British Columbia from looking like a giant Indian reserve.
“My initial reaction is one of extreme disappointment,” Lou Deme-rais, a spokesman for the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said Friday.
“Holy doodle. If that’s the level of sensitivity the minister has he ought not to be in cabinet.”
While explaining the government’s decision to standardize highway signs to the Chamber of Commerce in Quesnel on Friday, Vant said:
“The reason I have that control (to change signs) is to prevent beautiful British Columbia from looking like one giant Indian reserve with huge billboards everywhere blocking out beautiful landscape.”
Vant, an Anglican clergyman and former member of the B.C. Human Rights Commission who wears cowboy boots, could not immediately be reached to clarify his comments.
But Vant’s ministerial assistant said the comment was not meant as a racial slur.
Doman trial scheduled for April
VANCOUVER (CP) - Former B.C. premier Bill Bennett and two other men will stand trial April 17 on insider trading charges, a provincial court judge ordered Friday.
“My friends and I have agreed the matter should take 15 days — three weeks — and we’re suggesting the trial be set for April 17," said Crown counsel A. G. (Ace) Henderson, who met earlier with defence lawyers.
Judge Keith Libby agreed to the date after polling the three defence lawyers who appeared briefly in the courtroom without their clients.
Bennett, his brother Russell Bennett and Vancouver Island busines-man Herb Doman — along with Bennett Equities Ltd. — were charged Jan. 27 with violating the insider trading section of the B.C. Securities Act. All three have told their lawyers they will plead not guilty.
‘It is a rather uncommon sort of case,” said Henderson, noting insider trading charges are rarely laid in British Columbia.
He said more time may be needed for the trial because each defence lawyer is entitled to question each of the witnesses separately.
Outside the court, Bill Bennett’s lawyer, Peter Butler, said the former premier got his wish for an early court date and would be in court on the opening day.
“Yes, he will, he’ll be here, pleading not guilty,” Butler said, manoeuvering through a large circle of reporters and cameramen.
Butler also said the case would take three weeks because “there are a lot of documents and quite a few witnesses.”
The charges were laid following a joint investigation by the British Columbia and Ontario securities commissions into trading of shares of Doman Industries Ltd. on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
The two Bennetts and Bennett Equities Ltd. have also been charged with insider trading by the Ontario commission. A court hearing is scheduled for March 28 in Toronto on the Ontario charges.
/unsatisfactory/
by KEN BERNSOHN Staff reporter
More than a third of the area logged in the Prince George area in the past five years hasn’t started returning to a decent forest yet, according to Prince George forest district records.
About 130,256 hectares were logged in the Prince George forest district, the largest in the province, not counting lands in tree farm licences. A total of 56,703 hectares were replanted while 5,101 hectares came back naturally. That leaves 59,854 hectares considered not satisfactorily restocked (NSR) or waiting for nature to do the job.
“Formidable, non?” might well be the rhetori- of Quebec’s famous winter carnival to Prince
Frvnrh flnvnr ca* Questi°n posed by Monsieur Bonhomme, who George in to honor the school’s French pro-
rrencn navor visited the Cedars Christian school’s French gram. From 1 to 3 p.m. all grades took part in
carnival, which brought a little bit of the flavor snow sculptures, games and races.
POLICE FIRE ON DEMONSTRATORS
More killed in 'Satanic' protests
BOMBAY, India (CP) - Police fanned out in large numbers today and arrested hundreds of people to prevent further violence after street protests against Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses left at least nine people dead and 40 injured.
Initial news reports said up to 12 died when police fired on demonstrators in Bombay on Friday during a protest over the book, but
WASHINGTON (CP) - Canadian exporters of steel rails won one and lost one Friday in the second preliminary round of a fight to avoid U.S. penalty duties on shipments to the United States.
The U.S. Commerce Department said in a preliminary ruling that there is evidence steel-rail exports from Sydney Steel Corp. in Nova Scotia and Algoma Steel Corp. Ltd. in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. are bene-fitting from federal and provincial government subsidies.
It imposed a stiff tentative duty of 103.5 per cent on shipments from Sydney Steel Corp. in Cape Breton, known as Sysco.
In the case of Algoma, it said the
S.M. Shangari, a senior police official, said eight people died in the rioting Friday and one man died later in hospital.
All but one of the victims were Muslim aged 18 to 28, police said.
Police said more than 5,800 policemen were deployed through the western Indian city to discourage violence during a strike called today by some Muslim organizations to protest the killings.
initial estimate of subsidy benefit was below the minimum 0.5 per cent required under U.S. law to justify a preliminary import duty.
The subsidy benefit assigned to Algoma was only .05 per cent, based on a special investment-tax credit enjoyed by the company and a federal-government grant, the department said.
Commerce Department officials have until May 9 to conduct a more thorough investigation and make a final ruling on the complaint by Bethlehem Steel Corp. of Pennsylvania, a major U.S. steel-producer.
Bethlehem spokesman Arthur Roth said the ruling confirms the
Police maintained a ban on assemblies, marches and demonstrations against the book and at least 800 people were in custody to prevent a repetition of the rampage.
In response to Khomeini’s death calls, Canada and European Community countries have recalled their envoys from Iran, and London has shut down its mission in
exporter
company’s position that Canadian rail producers are heavily subsidized.
He also said Bethlehem has gathered more subsidy evidence to bolster its case against Algoma.
In the first step of the case, the six-member U.S. International Trade Commission ruled unanimously in November there was enough evidence the U.S. industry was being hurt by the imports to warrant proceeding with the investigation.
Tehran. Iran in response pulled its ambassadors out of the Common Market countries.
Questioned about the death threat against Rushdie, External Affairs Minister Joe Clark said Friday during a visit to the United Nations that western countries must “use every line we have to the moderate leaders in Iran” to try to have the threat by extremists dropped.
Clark ducked questions about his personal security amid reports that he’s under round-the-clock RCMP protection as a result of the continuing furore over The Satanic Verses.
Clark dismissed the reports of 24-hour protection as something “that happens from time to time.”
He wouldn’t say if this was one of those times.
In Toronto, Coles Book Stores backed away from its refusal to stock Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, said the Toronto Globe and Mail.
The newspaper said today that copies of the book should become available in the chain’s 198 Canadian outlets next week.
Investigators probe cause of air disaster
Duty imposed on
Administration gave airlines with 156 of the early jumbo jets from 30 to 90 days to conduct inspections and any necessary repairs, depending on the type of door lock they have. They were also given from 18 to 24 months to make modifications to improve the door lock system.
United public relations officials did not return a call late Friday to inquire whether the damaged airliner’s cargo doors had been inspected or whether the ordered alteration had been made on that or other United 747s. The airline would have had at least another 10 months to make the improvement.
United spokesman Lawrence Na-gin said earlier the airliner had a routine maintenance history.
'Needless to say, we don't buy the extra-large eggs anymore."
WASHINGTON (AP) - The United Air Lines 747 that lost nine passengers when a cargo door and section of fuselage blew away over the Pacific Ocean was one of a group of older Boeing jets under order to modify the lock system on their cargo doors.
Failure of the door was one of several possibilities investigators were exploring today as cause for the gaping hole in United Flight 811 when it returned to Honolulu after taking off on a flight to Auckland, New Zealand.
' Other possibilities included structural failure, an engine problem that sent parts flying into the fuselage or a bomb.
A July 1, 1988, “airworthiness directive” from the Federal Aviation
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