Echo Lake and the surrounding ancient forests.

Province urged to protect Harrison Eagles

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Link to Vancouver Sun online article

David Hancock says he has personally counted more than 7,000 bald eagles in one day on the Harrison and Chehalis rivers – a world record and almost twice the best tally of Brack-endale Eagles Provincial Park near Squamish.

Today, as the eagles arrive again to feast on the area’s annual salmon runs, Hancock is counting on the B.C. government to do the right thing and increase protection for one of the planet’s great avian spectacles.

“At the moment, we don’t really have any legally defined protection,” said Hancock, a trustee with the American Bald Eagle Foundation and chair of the Surrey-based Hancock Wildlife Foundation.

Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance is also calling for increased protection of the eagles by putting an end to clearcutting of their prime roosting habitat on Crown forest land.

He said the province has proposed an old-growth management area of about 45 hectares at Echo Lake – critical eagle habitat just west of Harrison River and north of Highway 7 – but has excluded another 25 hectares. “Lowland old-growth of this quality in the Lower Mainland is as rare as a sasquatch now,” he said. “It should be a no-brainer that the whole thing must be included.”

What protection that does exist at Harrison/Chehalis applies mainly to the wetlands and is non-governmental: the Chehalis River Conservancy (192 hectares) is owned by the Nature Trust of B.C. and leased to the federal fisheries department; the Martin Property (7.5 hectares) is owned by the Nature Trust and Ducks Unlimited Canada.

In comparison, the Squamish River Valley has 755-hectare Brackendale Eagles Provincial Park.

Hancock said the Harrison-Chehalis area should be declared a provincial wildlife management area – at a minimum – to protect the eagles from uncontrolled human activities on the Chehalis flats.

“It only takes one person to walk out there when there are 5,000 eagles and they are all gone,” he said. “That makes no sense at all. They need that feeding and resting area.”

Brennan Clarke, spokesman for the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, said that the old-growth management area is “proposed specifically to overlap with the eagle roosting area” and that the ministry is “working on a more comprehensive wildlife plan for this general area. It’s currently in very preliminary stages.”

Hancock agreed that eagles are especially drawn to Echo Lake to roost in a “cirque of big old trees around that lake” and that the entire forest there should be fully protected, since much of the area has been “hammered” by clearcutting.

“It’s the last chunk of old-growth,” he said. “It’s just one of those old traditional social gathering sites. When you get hundreds and hundreds of eagles nesting in a few trees it’s obviously an important part of their being.”

Stephen Ben-Oliel, who owns a 16-hectare property bordering Echo Lake, also supports protection of the area. “They roost here because it’s one of the last places with old-growth trees,” he confirmed.

Brackendale Eagles Provincial Park was created to protect floodplain habitat, including “critical perching, roosting and feeding” areas for bald eagles arriving to forage on spawning salmon, says the BC Parks management plan for the site, noting it recorded a “world record” of 3,769 eagles during a 1994 count.

Hancock said he observed 7,362 eagles at Harrison-Chehalis on Dec. 11, 2010, along a two-kilometre distance.

“These are absolute counts, not estimates,” he noted.” It’s a small area. I stand there with the telescope and walk around in a circle and someone writes them down as I count them. These won’t be disputed.”

Dick Cannings, a noted birder, biologist, and author living in the Okanagan Valley, said that “if the 7,000-plus figure is accurate – and I have no reason to doubt that – the Harrison-Chehalis area can lay some claim to be the Bald Eagle capital of the world.”

Hancock estimated more than 10,000 eagles were present in a larger 10-square-kilometre wintering area.

Kyle Elliott, a bird biologist who has studied the lower Fraser River, said that in December 2010, the average temperature in Juneau, Alaska, was 22 degrees Fahrenheit – five degrees below the average of 27 degrees.

Those colder temperatures along with the collapse of the chum salmon run at Squamish and ” ideal water levels at Chehalis flats” made for the exceptional year for eagles, he said.

Hancock, who is known for putting live video webcams at eagle nesting and feeding sites, added that increased commercial fishing of chum salmon – a species traditionally of little value – in northern waters over the years is another factor in the eagles coming further south to feed, especially on late runs at Harrison-Chehalis.

Even in a non-record year, it is not unusual to see more than 1,000 eagles congregate at Harrison-Chehalis.

The Fraser Valley Bald Eagle Festival takes place Nov. 17-18 on the Harrison River.

AFA's Hannah Carpendale stands near a giant red cedar and Douglas-fir in the Echo Lake ancient forest.

Campaign sprouts up to save Echo Lake old-growth forest

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Metro News online article

Echo Lake, between Mission and Agassiz, has become the focal point behind a new campaign aimed at protecting old-growth forests and eagle roosting areas around the province.

Conservationists with the Ancient Forest Alliance are calling for the provincial government to protect Echo Lake’s forest.

Areas containing some of the lake’s old-growth trees would be excluded from the province’s proposed Old-Growth Management Area.

“This is really an extremely rare gem of lowland ancient rainforest in a sea of second-growth forests, clearcuts and high altitude old-growth patches,” said Ken Wu, executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “To still have an unprotected lowland ancient forest like this left near Vancouver is like finding a Sasquatch. How many jurisdictions on earth still have trees that grow as wide as living rooms and as tall as downtown skyscrapers. What we have here in B.C. is something exceptional.”

The government is currently in the midst of a 60-day public input process into their proposed management plan.

The alliance hopes enough public engagement would help protect the entire old-growth forest at Echo Lake.

Media Release: BC Liberals open the back door to log protected forests under the guise of "science" and "local communities"

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For immediate release,
October 10, 2012.

BC Liberal Government opens back door to potentially log protected old-growth forests in BC’s Central Interior under the guise of “science” and “local communities”.

VICTORIA, BC – The BC Liberal Government announced yesterday a new forestry action plan for BC’s Central Interior that would open the “back door” for logging in currently protected forests. By the spring of 2013 the BC government plans to create frameworks for a “science-based review” and “community-engagement” process to potentially open up forest reserves that currently protect old-growth forests, scenery for tourism, species at risk, and wildlife in the Central Interior. Conservationists are calling the government’s invoking of “science” and “local community input” as Trojan horses for logging companies to access protected forests. The government’s action plan is detailed in a new report, “Beyond the Beetle: A Mid-Term Timber Supply Action Plan” at: https://www2.news.gov.bc.ca/news_releases_2009-2013/2012FOR0193-001516.htm

“The BC Liberals are using weasel-words and sneaky manoeuvres to open the back door for the logging industry to get into these currently protected forests under the guise of ‘science’ and the politically correct phrase of ‘local community input’ – despite the fact that a majority of people have already clearly said ‘no’ to logging in protected forest reserves during the public input process and that a true science-based review would show the need to protect more forests to slow the decline of endangered species and wildlife, not to log their few protected reserves,” stated Ken Wu, executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “What I predict is that the BC government will set-up a ‘rigged-game’ for the science review with an overarching constraint that the existing unsustainable levels of timber harvest must be maintained – meaning that science will be used as a tool to determine which protected areas should be logged, not whether or not they should remain protected or be expanded as needed by endangered species, wildlife, tourism, and wild salmon. In addition, having local logging industry reps sit at local committees to decide whether to log these areas certainly won’t hinder the BC Liberals’ logging goals.”

The rationale for opening up protected forest reserves is that an impending shortfall in available timber supplies to support Central Interior sawmills will soon take effect, known as the “falldown effect”. This shortfall in timber supplies in relation to an overcapacity in the forest industry is the result of the loss of mature forests from the pine beetle infestation (caused by climate change and forest fire suppression) and a massive forest industry expansion in the Interior in recent years to take advantage of the infestation, as well as a decades-long history of overcutting the best stands at lower elevations resulting in diminishing returns as the standing timber declines in volume and value and becomes more expensive to access.

“Rewarding unsustainable behaviour with more unsustainable behaviour is wrong and foolish. The Interior timber industry’s unsustainable expansion and overcutting of beetle-affected wood and vast areas of living trees should not be rewarded with more of the same inside of our protected forest reserves now – that’s the worst, most myopic course of action possible and it’s precisely the type of mindset that has brought this planet to the ecological brink,” stated Wu. “Instead the BC Liberal government should diversify rural economies, reduce overcutting while supporting the creation of more higher-end value-added wood manufacturing jobs, ensure sustainable second-growth forestry, end wood waste in clearcuts, end raw log exports to foreign mills, retrain forestry workers, and expand forest protections for wildlife, tourism, recreation, and wild fisheries.

The move to log protected forest reserves and Old-Growth Management Areas is based on the false notion that because there are many beetle-killed trees, that the entire ecosystem is not ‘living’ and therefore clearcutting and punching roads into vast swaths of protected forests – which are a mix of living and dead trees that are part of very vibrant, alive, and continually growing ecosystems – does little environmental damage.

Pine beetle-affected forests include living, unaffected trees of various species, younger regenerating trees, and intact understory vegetation and soil structures, while the dead trees and woody debris provide homes for much wildlife. The extent of the pine beetle infestation is unnatural, caused by anthropogenic climate change and decades of wildfire suppression by the forest industry – however, further clearcutting of these living, dynamic forest ecosystems by removing all the living and dead trees and punching road networks throughout them, leading to soil erosion, vastly increases the environmental damage and removes vital wildlife habitat.

Forest reserve designations in the BC Interior include:

– Old-Growth Management Areas (that protect representative tracts of scarce old-growth forests)
– Riparian Management Areas (that protect fish habitat and water quality)
– Ungulate Winter Ranges (wintering habitat for mountain caribou, mountain goats, etc.)
– Wildlife Habitat Areas (that protect species at risk such as grizzlies and other wildlife)
– Visual Quality Objectives (that protect scenery for tourism)
– Recreation Areas (campsites, hiking areas, etc.)

The proposed environmental deregulation would take place in four Timber Supply Areas (TSA’s): the Prince George, Quesnel, Williams Lake, and Lakes (Burns Lake area) TSA’s.

A true science-based framework without the constraint of needing to maintain unsustainable harvest levels, and that focuses on what it will take to sustain species at risk, biodiversity, water quality and scenery (ie. that focuses on the original land-use plan goals without new, added logging goals) would almost certainly recommend the expansion of Old-Growth Management Areas and other forest reserves, given the advancement of landscape ecology and conservation biology over the past two decades in recognizing the destructiveness of habitat loss and fragmentation on species at risk and fish-bearing streams. A true science-based review without unsustainable timber constraints would almost certainly reveal the inadequacy of the existing land-use plans and their system of protected forest reserves to stem the decline of species at risk, to sustain old-growth ecosystems, to support scenery for tourism, and to protect fish habitat – it would lead to an expansion of forest protections.

“More overcutting and opening up protected forest reserves to try to prop-up an unsustainable industry a bit longer is like burning up parts of your house for firewood after depleting all your other wood sources. In the end, you’re a lot worse off,” stated Wu. “Logging protected forests in this province is a no-go in terms of public opinion. For the BC Liberals to hang this albatross around their neck in the months leading up to BC election is both wrong and unwise – they need to start correcting their course, fast.”

 

 

Forests Minister Steve Thomson

NDP Sets Fire to Libs’ Forest Industry Fix

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Link to The Tyee online article

The British Columbia government says it is acting on a series of recommendations to help the province’s forest industry in the wake of the mountain pine beetle epidemic. Critics say it’s a weak response to the issue that shows the government hasn’t learned from the collapse of other natural resource industries.

“The action plan represents the next phase in our decade-long battle against the mountain pine beetle,” said Steve Thomson, the minister of forests, lands and natural resource operations, talking to reporters on a conference call.

The 16-page plan is a response to an August report from the legislature’s special committee on timber supply that held hearings throughout the province last spring and into the early summer.

It sets out nine actions it describes as “sustained” and 11 that it characterizes as “new.” As the plan puts it, “The key elements of the action plan focus on reforestation, forest inventory, fuel management and intensive and innovative silviculture.”

The plan includes a promise of legislation to move to area-based licenses from volume-based, and to create licenses to allow companies to harvest wood that is not sawlog quality but that could be burned for energy.

Thomson said there is $100 million in the 2013-2014 budget for reforestation, and the ministry will seek further funding through the budget process to pay for the rest of the plan.

He defended the decision in the past to drop doing forest inventory and planning for reforestation during the worst of the beetle epidemic. “The rapidly changing situation in our forests dictated that we hold off on updating our inventory and reforestation plans until it stabilized, and now we can proceed,” he said.

Beetle like a hurricane

John Rustad, who is the parliamentary secretary for forestry and who chaired the timber supply committee, compared it to coping with other natural disasters. “If you’re planning to do some work on your house, and there’s a hurricane approaching, you’re not going to undertake the work on your house until you’ve seen what happened with the hurricane,” he said. “The same thing is what happened with the mountain pine beetle epidemic.”

However, the New Democratic Party’s forestry critic, Norm Macdonald, said it was “ridiculous” to stop doing inventory during the worst of the crisis.

The auditor general, the forest practices board and the Association of B.C. Forest Professionals have all criticized the government’s failure to keep forest inventory up to date, he said.

“They were making cut determinations based on data that’s 30 years old,” he said. “They’re setting cuts. Forestry doesn’t stop.”

The government has taken a hands-off approach to the industry and is responsible for the consequences, said Macdonald. “They’re trying to rationalize what they’ve done, which is to step away from the responsibility to manage the forests properly.”

In general, the plan offers little to help the forest industry, he said. “It is a predictably weak response from this government that’s shown no interest in looking after the land over the last 10 years,” he said. “It’s basically business as usual … There’s no new money. As far as I can see, it’s just not there.”

Jobs today, consequences later

If there’s going to be a shift to area-based tenures, which would set the number of hectares to be harvested each year and give the industry flexibility on how much volume it harvests each year, it needs to be done very carefully and with an eye on the public benefit, said Macdonald.

“It’s a complicated thing to do properly,” he said. While the switch might help, he said, “There really isn’t the proof you necessarily get benefits.”

The government is trying to keep the status quo in the forest industry, even though it’s obvious the province’s forests cannot keep the industry going at the rate it has in the past, said Bob Simpson, the MLA for Cariboo North and a former forest company executive.

“You’ve got an eleventh hour panicked response to something the government’s had a long time to prepare for,” he said. “We’ve seen this movie play out since humanity settled down in one location and wiped out the natural resources around them. It always ends badly.”

Simpson compares the state of B.C.’s forest industry to what happened with the Atlantic cod fishery two decades ago. Despite warnings from non-government scientists, the stocks were allowed to be exploited at an unsustainable rate to feed processing plants in places that identified as fishing communities all along the coast, he said.

“None of those communities can describe themselves as fishing communities anymore,” he said. “That’s what we’re doing here.”

The government should allow cut level to come down and let the industry “rationalize” so there isn’t so much overcapacity for milling, he said. “What the government’s doing is preventing any rationalization whatsoever.”

Fully depleting the resource might delay going over the cliff, but it will make that cliff even bigger when the time comes, he said. “We’re always extinguishing the resources for today’s jobs and today’s economy, and eventually you lose those two as well.”

The government would be wiser to put its efforts into climate change adaptation and mitigation, he said, as well as helping communities that have been dependent on forestry to transition into other ways of surviving.

Logging of old-growth forest mulled by B.C. government

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Link to online article

The B.C. government will examine the contentious possibility of opening old-growth forests to logging in parts of the province hardest hit by plummeting timber supplies.

It’s an idea that both proponents and opponents say would require chopping protective measures that took years to create.

The government is now constructing ground rules so that by early 2013 it can begin revisiting the designation of some sensitive areas, mainly in the north-central triangle between Burns Lake, Prince George and Quesnel.

But any decision to cut old-growth forests would be science-based and reached by consensus of all members of the community, said Forests Minister Steve Thomson.

“There may be limited opportunities to look at that, but only through a process,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.

“It’s important to recognize that this request came from the communities.”

The move comes as part of a larger strategy the government released on Tuesday aimed at boosting timber supply over the next five to 20 years. The list of actions comes in direct response to a special committee report that warned in August that measures must be taken to stave off an impending, dramatic drop in wood supply.

Pine beetle devastation

The plan is the final phase in the provincial government’s decade-long response to the infestation of the mountain pine beetle, which has decimated forests across the province.

The August report predicted the beetle would chew up to 70 per cent of the central Interior’s marketable timber by 2021 if nothing changes.

But environmental advocates say opening protected forests to logging would roll back years of “hard fought” legislation.

“This is blood sweat and tears, multi-stakeholder processes, consensus building. They took years, these land-use plans, to establish,” said Valerie Langer, director of Forest Ethics Solutions.

“It’s very frightening to all those people who put years of their life as volunteers into this.”

Potential pilot projects could eventually take place in Burns Lake and Quesnel, with the highest priority areas being assessed this coming spring and summer, Thomson said.

Doug Routledge, vice-president forestry with the Council of Forest Industries, welcomed the government’s “tangible” plans.

“Cautiously and well-informed,” Routledge said of the proposed changes. “We’re not unhappy to see that the question about relaxing or deferring other constraints on the working forest land-base is still on the table.”

He explained the wood they’re looking to harvest would not include the most vulnerable areas, such as that protected as a critical habitat.

‘Crisis will be even worse’

Ben Parfitt, a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, has also followed the committee’s work closely.

He believes opening up an old-growth area is unrealistic, and suggested the biggest environmental threat was a part of the plan that will create new opportunities for logging by identifying marginally economic forests.

“We have a significant problem on our hands that is going to extend well beyond five to 20 years,” Parfitt said. “If the government chooses to try and address this problem by freeing up more trees to log today, I believe the crisis will be even worse than what it is now.”

But Thomson said the government believes the “greatest opportunity” to beef up timber supply lies in identifying those stands.

Plan to maintain timber supply widens land base.

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Link to online Vancovuer Sun article

The B.C. government announced plans on Tuesday to meet timber supply shortages in the B.C. Interior by reviewing current prohibitions on logging in environmentally sensitive areas and giving forest companies more power to manage the land base.

In releasing a plan titled “Beyond the Beetle,” Forests Minister Steve Thomson said the provincial government was moving toward the “next phase in our decade-long battle with the mountain pine beetle.”

But no new money has been committed to critically needed inventory work now that the beetle epidemic is winding down. The plan is the government’s response to a special legislative committee on the timber supply that tabled a report last month.

Critics called the plan vague, saying it doesn’t adequately address how much timber is actually left in B.C. forests. An update of the timber inventory is to begin in 2013, but the plan commits no new money to do the work.

Independent MLA Bob Simpson, whose Cariboo North constituency is ground zero in the beetle-damaged forest epidemic, called the plan a recipe for disaster.

“We are going down the same path as we did with the East Coast cod fishery,” Simpson said. “We are going to play with the rules, the regulations and change the tenure and access, to go and bleed the forests dry in order to keep the status quo.”

NDP forests critic Norm Macdonald said the plan was too vague on the issue of investing in an updated timber inventory. “It was clear there had to be serious investments in inventory. Over 72 per cent of the land has base data over 30 years old. You can’t expect proper forestry to be done with that sort of data.” However, Thomson said the ongoing deteriorating condition of beetle-hit forests dictated that the province delay inventory work until the infestation is over. Federal Student Loan Consolidation

“Now we can proceed,” he said. But he also acknowledged that he is restricted by budgetary constraints and that needed money has yet to be committed. Besides beginning on inventory work, the key elements of the plan include: . A commitment to move from volume-based timber tenures to area-based tenures, where forest companies would assume more management control.

. Increasing the timber inventory by including marginally economic stands that up until this point have been excluded.

. Developing a review of so-called “sensitive areas” that have been exempted from logging because of their wildlife or scenic values, and possibly reopening land-use plans.

Jens Wieting, a forest campaigner for the Sierra Club of B.C., said the province has done exactly what environmentalists feared – sacrificed other forest values to ensure a timber supply for Interior sawmills. He said the government is putting at risk not only environmental values but the forest industry’s reputation.

“To put these at risk for a short-term win is unbelievable. It is a level of ignorance that is hard to digest.”

Thomson said logging communities have asked for the review of restrictions on forest reserves. “It will be done very carefully, and only where there is consensus and agreement from the community,” he said.

The forest industry said Tuesday that it supports the government initiatives.

“We see the potential for some tangible improvements in the short-term and midterm timber supply by following the various courses of action,” said Doug Routledge of the B.C. Council of Forest Industries. “It’s a positive action plan. It provides some definitive timelines. We are a little concerned that there will be sufficient human and financial resources to accomplish what is in the action plan, but that is something that can be worked on over time.”

He said key components for the industry are the commitment to update the timber inventory and a commitment to monitor land-use plans that predate the beetle infestation. Routledge said many values may have changed as a result of the beetle. Current land-use plans leave broad areas out of bounds to logging when it is possible for wildlife conservation to be accomplished in more specific areas, he said.

Routledge said a very rough estimate shows 40 per cent more timber could be found if land-use plans were updated to optimize the allocation of resources and land.

The greatest gains in timber supply are likely to come from the inclusion of marginally economic timber stands.

The beetle is expected to knock 10 million cubic metres a year out of the timber supply. But, in Burns Lake alone, including marginal economic stands added 60 per cent of the volume back into the supply. An economic stand is one with more than 140 cubic metres of saw-logs per hectare. The new standard lowers that to 100 cubic metres.

“They are logging stands below 100 cubic metres per hectare at the moment at Williams Lake,” Routledge said.

Ancient Forest Alliance

BC considers ‘limited logging’ of old-growth

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The British Columbia government will examine the contentious possibility of opening old-growth forests to logging in parts of the province hardest hit by plummeting timber supplies.

It’s an idea that both proponents and opponents say would require chopping protective measures that took years to create.

The government is now constructing ground rules so that by early 2013 it can begin revisiting the designation of some sensitive areas, mainly in the north-central triangle between Burns Lake, Prince George and Quesnel.

But any decision to cut old-growth forests would be science-based and reached by consensus of all members of the community, said Forests Minister Steve Thomson.

“There may be limited opportunities to look at that, but only through a process,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.

“It’s important to recognize that this request came from the communities.”

The move comes as part of a larger strategy the government released on Tuesday aimed at boosting timber supply over the next five to 20 years. The list of actions comes in direct response to a special committee report that warned in August measures must be taken to stave off an impending, dramatic drop in wood supply.

The plan is the final phase in the provincial government’s decade-long response to the infestation of the mountain pine beetle, which has decimated forests across the province.

The August report predicted the beetle would chew up to 70 per cent of the central Interior’s marketable timber by 2021 if nothing changes.

But environmental advocates say opening protected forests to logging would roll back years of “hard fought” legislation.

“This is blood sweat and tears, multi-stakeholder processes, consensus building. They took years, these land-use plans, to establish,” said Valerie Langer, director of Forest Ethics Solutions.

“It’s very frightening to all those people who put years of their life as volunteers into this.”

Potential pilot projects could eventually take place in Burns Lake and Quesnel, with the highest priority areas being assessed this coming spring and summer, Thomson said.

[Times Colonist article no longer available]

AFA's Hannah Carpendale stands amongst the giant Douglas-fir tree's of the unprotected Kosilah Ancient Forest near Shawnigan Lake.

Rock music video to support old-growth forest conservation in BC

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The Vancouver Island based Artist Response Team (ART) is proud to announce the release of its newest song and video in support of ancient forests in BC and the Ancient Forest Alliance. The song was written and performed by Holly Arntzen and Kevin Wright of ART and features world-class guitarist David Sinclair (Sarah McLachlan, kd lang). They perform under the band name, The Wilds.

The MR. DOUGLAS video, was shot mostly in the Koksilah Ancient Forest, an unprotected grove of old growth Douglas Fir and cedar trees located west of Shawnigan Lake on Vancouver Island.

The song was inspired by a trip to the BC Forest Discovery Centre in Duncan where there is a cross-section of a 1300-year-old fir tree that blew down in a storm in the 1960s. The tree rings are marked to correspond with events down through history that the tree lived through; the publishing of the first book in China in 868 AD, the arrival of the Vikings in North America in 1000, the rise of Ghengis Khan in 1206, and Columbus’ first journey to the New World in 1492. The song is a walk through history.

There is less than 1% of the original coastal old growth Douglas Fir forests left in BC, and we are still cutting them down. A recent story in the Victoria Times Colonist documents the struggle going on to reap the economic windfall from highly valuable old growth on the one hand… and on the other hand, preserve the last remnants of old growth ecosystems for future generations, the protection of drinking water, and conservation of habitats.

WATCH MR. DOUGLAS on YouTube: https://youtu.be/aKH54msZ0AY