Hancock bought several thousand acres on Vancouver Island and Denman Is. in 1995, pretended to consult with the community for a couple of years, acknowledged our community's desire for a Community Forest managed by ecological standards.

In June 1997, without even telling us they sold 4000 acres on Denman to a middle man, Don Larkin, who held the land for a week or 2 and then sold it to a reknowned clear-cut logger, Mike Jenks and his partner, Charles Kim in the name of their numbered company 4064 Investments. Mr. Kim is a new Canadian from Korea who also has Trans-Pac Fibre.

Hancock treated Denman Is. very dirty and is only interested in maximizing their investments. They are very ruthless. The person we dealt with was John Davis and Mason (sorry, I can't remember his last name). They only have 1 biologist who does field work and are famous for promising results, but stall and then do nothing. On Denman we have several biologists and biodiversity scientists, so in my opinion, Hancock sensed the community was smarter than they were used to dealing with, so they dumped us in order to send the message to the neighbours of their other lands: don't get any ideas about eco-system based community forestry, because we will sell to the worst possible clear-cut loggers that will make Hancock look good in comparison.

On Denman they had a 10 year liquidation plan, but the loggers they sold it to have destroyed most of the forest in less than 3 years. On account of Hancock being here, our community has created Sustainable Logging Bylaws and at this point in time, 4064 is challenging those bylaws and previously sued 13 locals (SLAPP suit) against publicizing violations of the bylaws.

Anyways, Hancock sure dealt our community an economic/ecological blow by selling this forest. I was interested in hearing that Hancock was withdrawing as a sponsor of the Olympics, because of the moral ethical problem of association with such a bunch of swindlers. Well, I can tell you that they are a bunch of swindlers who care nothing about the land. Their new CEO of timber operations is Clark Binkley, the former Dean of Forestry of University of British Columbia who I heard speaking on the radio about how he wants to invest pension funds in growing trees (plantations). His major advice to BC was to privatize the crown lands and let corporations do a "better job".

Another thing which I wished we had followed up on is that Hancock was being sued by the Campbell Group (who managed us for them) because Hancock had fired them. Unfortunately no one has researched this (or if it had any connection to us). We have been so busy trying to save this forest from total destruction by Jenks and Kim.

Oh yes. Hancock doesn't actually own the forests they buy and manage. They create investment units consisting of forests and sell the units typically to pension funds. We think Hancock is vulnerable to campaigns directed to the beneficial owners who are the people paying into the pension funds. (If their managment practices are not morally defencible.) We understand that teacher's pension funds are among the investors. You can imagine that teachers are not going to want "the ongoing destruction by Hancock of unique old growth and cool temperate rainforest in the Strzelecki Ranges, located about 200 km east of Melbourne " as a result of their pension fund's activities, being brought up in class!