Only about four people showed up to last Wednesday’s timber supply review open house in Merritt, but the following day’s session in Princeton had 60 to 70 people in attendance, according to Bruce Walter, R.P.F. stewardship officer and first nations relations for the Cascades Natural Resource District.

He said that from what he heard, a large part of the Princeton crowd came from the Weyerhauser mill in town.

“From what I was hearing from the people there — and this might represent 80 per cent of the people — Weyerhauser had encouraged them to come have their say at the meeting, and that it was an important place to go and learn some things in terms of our review,” said Walter. “That’s what I gathered from it, why it was that size.”

The four attendees at the Merritt session were all industry members as well, and asked mostly technical questions about the models the ministry is using to determine the allowable annual cut (AAC).

In Princeton, however, many of the attendees were wondering about the impact on their community.

“Obviously people are concerned about the harvest levels going down, and what it might mean to them,” said Walter. “We wanted to make sure that we were aware that Weyerhauser is very important to their community.”

Walter said that many of the attendees wanted to impress upon him that Weyerhauser was a good company, operating at high standards, and that if there were going to be reductions to the harvest, that they should be affected the least. “Everybody’s looking after — and rightfully so — their interests,” said Walter.

As far as what impact this will have on the decision, he said there are a lot of factors that go into the determination, but public input is one of them.

“If I’ve got 90 people telling me to go one route — there’s multiple ways to set the AAC, there could be any number of scenarios — so if I have a lot of people saying to me this is what our preference should be, and it falls within reason, why wouldn’t I go that route?”