Without assessing blame towards any forestry companies, provincial New Democratic Party Leader Howard Hampton pointed the finger at the provincial Tories for cutbacks at the Natural Resources Ministry in contributing to some wasteful harvesting practices. At an Oct. 26 press conference in Thunder Bay, Hampton played videotapes showing a couple of hundred cords of timber left to rot over the past two years in Caribou forest, seven kilometres south of Sioux Lookout. The Kenora-Rainy River MPP says reductions of some 1,500 forest program staff and about $237 million in funding cuts at the ministry since the mid-1990s have left them unable to do their job properly. Bowater Inc. has a license to cut in the nearby English River forest, but company officials deny they cut down any of the trees shown in the video. Hampton says the trees were cut down in 1999 and the footage was shot last July.
