Regarding ERO# 019-0880 I…

Regarding ERO# 019-0880

I live in southern Ontario.

I am opposed to the Ontario Forest Sector Strategy draft.

I experienced a small logging project when a little stretch of forest was taken down one year to prepare for a subdivision in the property adjacent to mine. It was a few years after that the land ever got developed.

Along the property line there used to be large maples that were removed. It used to be three degrees cooler on any hot day under those trees, and that made a real difference. My house was cooler because it got a little shade from them.

After they took the forest I had water flood my property, that got into the foundation, into the basement. My siding was filthy when the wind got blowing up the dirt, and the snowdrifts without the trees sheltering my laneway were terrible.

I don't think people who haven't actually experienced the change of taking down a few trees in their area have a real idea of the consequences. I look at forests entirely different now. I pitied that I never planted my own trees soon enough. After the forest came down the saplings I had put in never amounted to much in comparison.

Doubling the amount of logging in Ontario at a time when the negative impacts of climate change are measurable, and climate change is being addressed in environmental policies around the world, is irresponsible.

Ontario forests need to be protected for our future generations, not be double harvested.