2012 - Page 8 of 17 - Ancient Forest Alliance

Survey tape sparks logging concerns in Vancouver Island old-growth forest

Aug 29 2012/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

The Vancouver Island old-growth forest that, over the decades, has sparked bitter confrontations over logging is again in the spotlight after survey tape was found near a grove of massive western red cedars.

Members of the Ancient Forest Alliance found the tape in the Upper Walbran Valley, near Castle Grove, which contains the Castle Giant: a western red cedar measuring five metres in diameter. The tree is listed in the provincial big tree registry as one of the widest in Canada.

“Castle Grove is ground zero for the ancient forest movement on southern Vancouver Island, both historically and today,” said Ken Wu, AFA executive director.

“To try and log it is insanity — it will only escalate the war in the woods to a whole new level,” he said.

The logging tape, marked “falling boundary,” is less than 50 metres from the Castle Giant, said AFA campaigner TJ Watt, who discovered the tape.

In an email response to questions, however, the Forests Ministry said no activity is planned in Castle Grove, although some logging is planned in the area farther south.

Teal Jones Group of Surrey holds the licence for the area, but spokesman John Pichugin said he could not say whether the company has applied for a cutting licence in the area until he has seen a map.

Wu said it’s time the province came up with its promised “legal tool” to protect B.C.’s largest trees and monumental groves.

“Of all places, Castle Grove is the place where such a legal designation would make most sense. Otherwise, the B.C. Liberals’ rhetoric has been as empty as a clearcut,” Wu said.

The ministry statement said there are legal mechanisms to provide protection to unique or special trees and all British Columbians who find special trees are encouraged to register them on the Big Trees Registry.

“The ministry continues to look at other ways that may provide stronger proactive protection,” it said.

Ben Parfitt and Anthony Britneff: B.C. MLAs take wrong approach to timber supply crisis

Aug 27 2012/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

Ever since mid May, when a special committee of the provincial legislature was appointed to address a looming “timber supply” crisis, questions have arisen about what the committee would say about one community in particular.

That community is Burns Lake where, in January, a violent explosion and fire leveled the local sawmill—the village’s major employer—killing two mill workers and doing another 250 out of their jobs.

Well the wait is over, and if the unanimous recommendations of the committee’s Liberal and NDP MLAs are an indication, our forests and many rural communities are headed for even harder times than previously thought.

Here’s why. Rather than focusing on the core issue (how many trees are left, and what the future holds for our forests) committee members allowed themselves to be swayed by dramatic yet unrelated events.

The evidence is overwhelmingly clear. We are on the cusp of a monumental shift in our interior forests. After a decade-plus attack by mountain pine beetles and other pests, a spate of intense wildfires and years of unsustainable logging, our forests are largely depleted of commercially desirable trees.

To their credit, members of the Special Committee on Timber Supply acknowledge this. They conclude that the projected drop in logging rates places eight sawmills in danger. This is probably an underestimate. Either way, when mill capacity outstrips what our forests can provide, mills must close. There are only so many trees to go around.

Yet having acknowledged that existing sawmills have an appetite for wood that grossly exceeds what our forests can provide, committee members then turn around and suggest that we should build another mill first and find the timber later.

To entice the owner of the destroyed Burns Lake mill to do so, the committee chooses to go down the same tired road that gave rise to the present timber supply crisis: push the boundaries of what can be harvested to the extreme. This is essentially the approach applied in the East Coast cod fishery and we all know how that worked out.

The committee astonishingly suggested that there are actually twice as many trees to log in the forests around Burns Lake than what senior forest professionals in government estimated just last year (one million instead of 500,000 cubic metres of wood a year).

How did the committee magically double timber supply? With three key recommendations. First, that more “marginally economic” forests be logged. Second, that the government underwrite a massive fertilization program to boost tree growth. And third—here committee members use weasel words to mask the true intent of what they propose—to increase the logging of remnant old-growth forests that were previously ruled off-limits to logging.

It is far from clear that this will produce enough wood to supply a rebuilt mill.

First, “marginal” forests are marginal for a reason. They are generally of inferior quality, further from mills, and more costly to log. And they are often found in places where trees grow less vigorously, for example at higher elevations. Hence, they are risky to log, both economically and environmentally.

Second, with government having drastically curtailed its investments in growing trees, no one should assume there is appetite for big spending increases on fertilization. Never mind the ecological impacts of repeated applications of tree fertilizers on shallow soils and on our waterways, fish populations and other plant life in our forests.

And third, perceived increases in old-growth logging could prove a nightmare in international markets where the B.C. government and forest companies alike have worked judiciously to have forestry operations independently certified as sustainably managed.

But if the government embraces the committee’s recommendations for Burns Lake, expect the same unsustainable logging practices to be applied provincewide, and with devastating consequences.

The real tragedy in the committee members’ recommendations is that they are well aware of where the real challenges lie. The committee acknowledges the essential importance of improved forest inventories—looking at how many healthy trees we have. Why isn’t this the first order of business? B.C. needs an expedited, thorough assessment now, before we have committed to even more unsustainable logging rates.

To proceed with logging increases before such work is done is irresponsible and an insult to forest-dependent communities across the province.

Anthony Britneff recently retired from a 40-year career as a professional forester with the B.C. Forest Service where he held senior positions in inventory, silviculture and forest health. Ben Parfitt is a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Environmentalist bristles over report urging more logging

Aug 16 2012/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

A government report looking at the pine beetle’s impact in B.C.’s central interior has taken the wrong approach in urging more logging, says the executive director of Ancient Forest Alliance.

Ken Wu says the report’s recommendation to increase the timber supply and value of pine-beetle wood could allow for logging in protected forests.

“There’s different ways to do more with less, to be more efficient. Instead they’re looking at opening up our last protected areas and that’s totally the wrong approach. Rewarding unsustainable behaviour with more unsustainable behaviour is what has pushed this whole planet to the ecological brink.”

Wu says these protected areas include old growth forest, wildlife habitats, scenery, and recreational spots. Grants For College

Link to article: https://www.cknw.com/news/vancouver/story.aspx/Story.aspx?ID=1757152

Today the Special Committee on Timber Supply released its report on how to deal with a timber shortfall in BC’s Central Interior in relation to the forest industry’s regional overcapacity. See article for link to PDF.

Media Release: Timber Committee Opens Back Door for Potential Logging of Protected Forests

Aug 15 2012/in Media Release/by TJ Watt

For Immediate Release
August 15, 2012

Timber Committee Opens Back Door for Potential Logging of Protected Forest Reserves in BC’s Central Interior

Committee also recommends continued overcutting, logging of “marginal” stands (ie. slow growing subalpine forests) and creating more “area-based tenures” ie. increasing private property-like rights on public forest lands.

Today the Special Committee on Timber Supply released its report on how to deal with a timber shortfall in BC’s Central Interior in relation to the forest industry’s regional overcapacity. See the report here: https://www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/39thparl/session-4/timber/reports/PDF/Rpt-TIMBER-39-4-GrowingFibreGrowingValue-2012-08-15.pdf

Of greatest environmental concern was the committee’s recommendation to create local committees to review the possibility of opening up protected forest reserves for logging. These forest reserves include:

– Old-Growth Management Areas that currently protect old forests
– Wildlife Habitat Areas that protect species at risk
– Visual Quality Objectives that protect scenery for tourism
– Riparian Management Areas that protect water quality and fish habitat
– Ungulate Winter Range that protects the winter habitat of large herbivores like mountain caribou
– Recreation Areas for camping, hiking, outdoor activities

Recommendation 2.2 calls for the BC government to:

“Design a science-based review process for local use by monitoring committees in the assessment of existing sensitive-area designations to ascertain if they are still defensible or whether they need to be modified.”

“Instead of opening up protected forest reserves directly, which they know is highly unpopular with the public, they’re recommending a back door entry point for the logging industry into these currently protected forests. It’s 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 incremental damage. That’s just plain false and any ecosystem-based science review will show that,” stated Ken Wu, executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “In particular, it looks like they’re recommending an expedited process for logging sensitive areas in the Burns Lake region, with other regions to follow.”

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.

The potential 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.

“However, I should also point out that if the government does follow up on this recommendation, then it does open the door for the potential expansion of protected forest reserves if it is guided by a true ecosystem-based science framework. Such a science framework, particularly with the advancement of landscape ecology and conservation biology over the past two decades, would clearly 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. If anything, a true science-based review process would lead to an expansion of forest protections in the old land-use plan areas. But I wouldn’t count on the BC Liberal government, given the pressure by the massive timber lobby, to not create a rigged-game in the terms of reference and constraints placed on such a process,” notes Wu.

The Special Committee on Timber Supply, consisting of four BC Liberal MLA’s and three NDP MLA’s, held public hearings in rural communities in July in the Cariboo-Chilcotin region and met with stakeholders in Vancouver to gather input. Prior to the tour, Committee Chair John Rustad, BC Liberal MLA for Nechako Lakes, had spoken in the media several times with a heavy bias towards justifying logging in forest reserves and even suggested opening up Tweedsmuir Provincial Park for logging.

The rationale for opening up forest reserves is that an impending shortfall of available timber to support local sawmills will soon take effect, known as the “falldown effect”. This shortfall in timber 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 industry expansion in the Interior in recent years to take advantage of the infestation.

Other destructive recommendations by the committee include:

– Expanded harvesting of “marginal” forest types (Recommendation 2.1), that is, in high elevation subalpine regions with slower growth rates and where regeneration after logging is slower. This will not only damage sensitive ecosystems, but will result in an expansion of Not Sufficiently Restocked (NSR) sites in the province.

– Expanding area-based tenures (Recommendation 5.1), as opposed to volume-based tenures and timber sales. Area-based tenures, ie. Tree Farm Licenses, ultimately limit the diversity of firms in the industry. Over time typically larger entities will acquire area-based tenures in areas with higher timber values, as the history of the province shows. While Community Forest Tenures can be progressive additions to BC’s system of forestry, most area-based tenures are a means towards corporate concentration in the industry. They also diminish the public’s ability to regulate such lands and to create new protected areas, as they confer more private-property type rights on technically public lands.

Instead of opening up protected forest reserves and ensuring more overcutting that will only exacerbate the future falldown, the AFA is calling for a forest and jobs transition strategy involving ending massive wood waste in clearcuts, incentives for value-added wood manufacturing industries, support and training for unemployed forestry workers, expanded protection of forests to sustain ecosystems and communities, and economic diversification of rural communities.

“More overcutting and opening up protected forest reserves to try to prop-up an unsustainable industry a bit longer is like burning parts of your house for firewood after depleting all other wood sources. In the end, you’re a lot worse off,” stated Wu. “Rewarding unsustainable behaviour with more unsustainable behavior is completely the wrong approach. 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 – 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.”

Lift on logging restraints would be ill-advised

Aug 7 2012/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

As members of a hastily convened committee of the provincial legislature meet to consider a controversial government proposal to escalate logging activities in British Columbia’s already hard-hit Interior forests, questions arise about whether the commit-tee is in any position at all to make an informed decision.

Thanks to the bravery of an unnamed public servant who decided in April to leak a provincial cabinet briefing document that outlined the contentious plan, the provincial government was forced to appoint the committee, consisting of both Liberal and NDP MLAs, and to hold public hearings.

A whirlwind tour of 16 communities in less than a month followed, with the committee, wrapping up its public consultations with back-to-back meetings in Merritt and Kamloops on July 12. As a result, members of the “special committee on timber supply” are now wading through the transcripts of nearly 200 people to appear before them as well as nearly 500 written submissions, before making their recommendations, which are expected in mid-August.

A consistent theme running through many of those submissions is that it would be highly unwise for commit-tee members to side with the government’s proposal to lift limited constraints on logging remnant patches of old-growth forests among others, in an effort to buy a few more years worth of logging for an industry that simply has too much milling horse-power given what forest remains.

The reason why is simple. For more than a decade, the provincial Forest Service – guardian of the public’s forests – has been hammered with deep funding and staff cuts. That, coupled with the ravages visited upon our forests by the climate-change-fuelled mountain pine beetle attack and all of the escalated logging activities in response to it, means that no one in government can credibly claim to know what, exactly, is going on in our forests.

In Kamloops, committee members heard such from Sean Curry, a veteran forest professional. Curry noted that most of us have at least an idea of what’s in our bank accounts. Checking our forest bank account is even more critical given withdrawals in the form of logging, insect attacks and fires, and because interest rates in the form of growing trees are so highly variable. Trees may be healthy one year, dead the next.

Curry’s choice of the banking analogy was obvious. If you don’t check, you risk over-drawing. In other words, we’re relying on younger trees that were planted or that naturally re-seeded following logging to be there in future years. The trouble is we’re not checking up on them nearly enough, despite compelling evidence that that is precisely what we need to do.

The recent work of two Forest Ser-vice scientists tells us why. In 2008, Alex Woods and Wendy Bergerud reported on field studies they did in the Lakes Timber Supply Area. The team found trouble in nearly one out of every five previously declared healthy or “free-growing” plots of trees that they looked at. Significantly, their report was based on fieldwork done in 2005 – before the mountain pine beetle completely overran the region near the community of Burns Lake, where a sawmill burned to the ground at the beginning of this year and that has become a focal point for commit-tee members as they weigh the merits of lifting logging constraints.

By 2007, Woods and Bergerud noted, many of the sample plots they had looked at had subsequently been attacked by the beetle – proof, they said, of the need to do even more assessments, particularly in light of climate change.

This July, a report by Tom Ethier, assistant deputy minister in the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, noted that the problems identified by Woods and Bergerud are more widespread. Of 266 allegedly “free-growing” forest patches in five timber supply areas, “the majority” had experienced tree losses in the decade after they were declared healthy.

The good news, Curry says, is that for modest increases in Forest Service funding and a bit of patience – waiting a couple of years while the field-work is done – we could have a far better idea of what’s in our forests.

This, then, is not the time for the committee to endorse logging increases, a decision that in the absence of good data would be at best irresponsible and at worst highly dangerous.

Ben Parfitt is resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and author of many forestry reports, including Making the Case for a Carbon Focus and Green Jobs in B.C.’s Forest Industry.

The stump of a 14ft diameter old-growth redcedar freshly cut in 2010 found along the Gordon River near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island.

More logging won’t cure forestry trade’s ills

Aug 1 2012/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

The B.C. Liberal government stirred up controversy recently by proposing to remove scenic forest protections in the Harrison, Chehalis and Stave Lakes regions near Vancouver. Their “quick-fix” attempt to provide more timber for logging fails to recognize that the coastal forest industry’s 20-year decline has fundamentally been driven by their own resource depletion policies.

The overcutting of the biggest and best old-growth stands in the lowlands that historically built the industry has resulted in diminishing returns as the trees get smaller, lower in value, and harder to reach. Today, more than 90 per cent of the most productive old-growth forests in the valley bottoms on B.C.’s southern coast are gone, according to satellite photos.

This practice of high-grade resource depletion and the accompanying job losses in B.C.’s forests has its parallels throughout the history of unsustainable resource extraction. As always, those responsible for the crisis deny all evidence that the resource is being over-exploited — until the very end.

Unless the B.C. government reorients the coastal forest industry toward sustainable, value-added second-growth forestry — rather than old-growth liquidation, overcutting and raw log exports — the crisis will only continue.

In a report for the B.C. Ministry of Forests (Ready for Change, 2001), Dr. Peter Pearse described this history of high-grade overcutting: “The general pattern was to take the nearest, most accessible, and most valuable timber first, gradually expand up coastal valleys and mountainsides into more remote and lower quality timber, less valuable, and costlier to harvest. Today, loggers are approaching the end of the merchantable old-growth in many areas … Caught in the vise of rising costs and declining harvest value, the primary sector of the industry no longer earns an adequate return …”

The virtual elimination of old-growth Douglas firs — 99 per cent of them — and Sitka spruce on B.C.’s southern coast has been followed by the current high-grading of cedars, previously a lower-value species. Next in line are the smaller hemlocks and Amabilis firs, sought by new Chinese markets.

However, the B.C. government’s PR spin still aims to convince all that our monumental ancient forests are not endangered. They do this by statistically lumping in vast tracts of old-growth “bonsai” trees in bogs and stunted, slow-growing “snow forests” at high elevations, together with the productive stands with moderate to fast growth rates, i.e. the areas with large trees where almost all logging takes place.

It’s like combining your Monopoly money with your real money and then claiming to be a millionaire, so why curtail spending?

As our old-growth forests are eliminated, so too are the human and natural communities that depend on them.

B.C.’s coastal forest industry, once Canada’s mightiest, is now a mere remnant of its past. Over the past decade, more than 70 B.C. mills have closed and over 30,000 forestry jobs lost. As old-growth stands are depleted and harvesting shifts to the second-growth, B.C.’s forestry jobs are being exported as raw logs to foreign mills due to a failure to retool our old-growth mills to handle the smaller second-growth logs and invest in related manufacturing facilities.

In his 2001 report, Pearse also stated: “Over the next decade, the second-growth component of timber harvest can be expected to increase sharply, to around 10 million cubic metres … To efficiently manufacture the second-growth component of the harvest, 11 to 14 large mills will be needed.” Today, more than a decade later, there is only one large and a handful of smaller second-growth mills on the coast.

Similarly, B.C.’s wildlife are being pushed to the brink by old-growth depletion. More than a thousand spotted owls once inhabited the Lower Mainland’s old-growth forests. Today, half a dozen individuals survive in B.C.’s wilds. The unique Vancouver Island wolverine — a 27-kilogram, wilderness-dependent mustelid that can fight off a bear — hasn’t been seen since 1992. Only 1,700 mountain caribou remain as logging has fragmented B.C.’s inland rainforest. Coastal rivers and streams, once overflowing with spawning salmon, are now sad remnants of their former glory, degraded by logging debris and silt.

It’s not like we haven’t had chances to learn. The pattern of resource depletion, ecosystem collapse, and ensuing unemployment has long been paralleled in our oceans where “fishing down the food chain” from larger to smaller species has caused successive stocks to collapse. Thousands of jobs have been shed along the way.

The most prominent example of this was the loss of 40,000 Canadian fishing jobs with the collapse of the North Atlantic cod stocks, once the world’s richest fishery. In B.C., giant Chinook salmon or “tyees” were once common, and smaller species like pink salmon were heavily targeted only when the preferred species declined. Since the commercial salmon industry’s peak in the 1980s, thousands of fishing jobs have been lost, and the effects of habitat destruction, climate change and fish farm parasites on wild salmon now compound the problem.

The B.C. Liberal government’s myopic response to their own resource depletion policies is to try to open up protected forest reserves. It’s like burning up parts of your house for firewood after you’ve used up all your other wood sources. It won’t last long, and in the end you’re a lot worse off.

To try to defer the consequences of unsustainable actions with more unsustainable actions is precisely what has brought this planet to the ecological brink.

The B.C. government has a responsibility to learn from — rather than to repeat — history’s mistakes. They must forge a new path based on old-growth protection, value-added second-growth forestry, and a diversified green economy.

Ken Wu is the executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance.

Here’s what B.C. needs to do to save forestry

Jul 31 2012/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

As a publicly owned resource, British Columbia’s forests must be harvested in a manner that pro-motes sustainability and healthy forests that are ecologically diverse. This would protect and promote existing and new jobs in communities dependent on well-managed forests. Here, then, are the principal recommendations of the Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers of Canada (PPWC):

FOREST INVENTORY

The PPWC demands the B.C. government take an inventory of our working forestland base to determine what the annual allowable cut would be. This will be done with a goal of long-term sustainability and future silvicultural needs, using the best science avail-able. It will take into account climate change, industry and community needs, as well as a social contract for land use to be developed with input from all stakeholders. The contract must have a goal of zero wood waste as this waste leads to lost job opportunities in both the traditional forest products industry and the emerging bio-economy. Zero tolerance for wood waste beyond the woody debris that should be left behind at logging sites to ensure soil and water protection.

The PPWC calls for a politically independent chief forester to be appointed in consultation with the previously mentioned stakeholder group.

EXPORT LANGUAGE

The B.C. Forests Ministry, along with labour, industry and communities, must develop a strategy that moves industry away from the current escalating dependence on log exports. This would then promote tertiary, secondary and value-added industries within our province. On the coast, we must promote a second-growth strategy that integrates protected old-growth areas as well as a new milling strategy for that second growth. The initiatives to end log exports must come from governments and forest-dependent communities. The PPWC has always and will continue to advocate for the export of manufactured products, not raw logs.

DEALING WITH PINE BEETLE FALL DOWN IN ANNUAL ALLOWABLE CUT

Rather than ignoring the fall down in timber supply within beetle-infested areas, we must put a strategy in place that will lessen the impact on directly affected communities.

To meet these goals, government needs to appoint a permanent forest commissioner’s office to be funded out of a portion of provincial stump-age fees and assigned responsibility for working directly with affected communities, First Nations, the provincial forest service and the industry to identify top reforestation priorities and to guide public investments in restoring forest health.

This office would also have responsibility for administering a retraining program. The PPWC will not support moving into parks and protected areas to address timber shortfalls. This does not address the long-term issue of fall down in the annual allowable cut.

FSC CERTIFICATION

It must be the stated goal of government, industry, and community forests to achieve Forest Stewardship Council certification across British Columbia within three years.

ENERGY SECTOR COMPETITION

With the increased competition for fibre from the energy sector, its requirement must also be addressed. The highest-value use of the resource must always be of paramount importance in terms of providing jobs, stable communities and functioning ecosystems.

Priority needs to be given to solid wood production and the “fallout” from the solid wood industry be the source of wood fibre and jobs in the pulp and paper industry as well as the emerging bioenergy industry. The government must work with existing or new wood-manufacturing plants to achieve that necessary balance.

The prospects for growth and employment opportunities in the forest sector and in their communities are bleak without a healthy land base. The PPWC encourages the government to look at these recommendations and to recognize that the need for investment in the land base and in workers is imperative.

Arnold Bercov is national forest resource officer with the Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers of Canada. Stuart Blundell is national environment officer with the union.

Opening protected areas not ideal: Bercov

Jul 31 2012/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

Opening protected areas and parks in B.C. to logging wouldn’t be in the best interests of forestry workers, or the industry itself, according to Arnold Bercov.

Bercov is the president of Pulp and Paper Workers of Canada, Local 8, which represents workers at the Harmac pulp mill at Duke Point and Western Forest Products’ sawmill in Ladysmith. His concerns come at the same time that a special committee, struck by the government in May, is travelling across the province seeking public input into ways to add to the province’s wood inventory, particularly in areas in the Interior that have been ravaged by the ongoing mountain pine beetle infestation.

The committee, headed by Nechako Lakes MLA John Rustad, is to submit a report with recommendations to the government on Aug. 15.

To access more timber, the Clark government is floating a plan that includes logging in areas that were previously off limits for environmental or visual quality reasons and changing the boundaries of forest districts to add more timber to the supply. Bercov said that while the focus of the committee is currently on the Interior, he fears that any changes to policy that would allow more logging in protected areas would inevitably apply to the Island.

“It’s just a loser of an idea that doesn’t serve anyone well,” Bercov said. “I predict it would restart the environmental wars over forestry practices in the province and I believe that it would be a huge mistake. While there are no jobs if all the trees are protected, there will also be no jobs after everything is logged. We need to find a balance.”

The Association of B.C. Professional Foresters, environmentalists and even the University of B.C.’s dean of forestry have expressed concerns, specifically over the second look at forest lands that are set aside for ecological reasons.

“The message we want out there is: ‘We are not going to damage our environmental standards,'” said John Allan, president of the Council of Forest Industries, which intends to submit a brief to the committee. “I am struggling with how you would free up anything more than a few scraps of timber without doing environmental damage.”

Bercov suggested better planning and management practices on behalf of the forest companies and the government to ensure a future supply of wood is what’s needed, and not moving into sensitive and protected areas for logging.

“People should make it a point to have their voices heard by the government on this issue,” he said.

Saving ‘Avatar Grove’: the battle to preserve old-growth forests in British Columbia

Jul 23 2012/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

Follow the link below to read the excellent interview and to see some of TJ’s top photos from Vancouver Island’s endangered ancient forests: https://news.mongabay.com/2012/0723-hance-watt-interview.html

With more than one million unique visitors per month, Mongabay.com is one of the world’s most popular environmental science and conservation news sites. The news and rainforests sections of the site are widely cited for information on tropical forests, conservation, and wildlife.

Big trees by the numbers

Jul 16 2012/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

Big trees by the numbers

Vancouver Island is home to some of the largest trees on the planet. From the well-known towering giants of Cathedral Grove to those newly discovered near Port Renfrew, ancient forests have been wowing visitors to Canada’s West Coast for centuries.

1778
The year Captain James Cook set foot on Vancouver Island. Even then, the Red Creek Fir, the world’s largest Coast Douglas fir near Port Renfrew, would have been an 800-year-old sentinel.

2009
The year Ancient Forest Alliance photographer TJ Watt discovered a rare stand of ancient red cedars just outside Port Renfrew. In a clever marketing move, the group dubbed the trees “Avatar Grove” after the popular movie, helping spark a big tree tourism boom in the former logging town.

333
The number of cubic metres of wood in the San Juan Spruce, Canada’s largest spruce, near Port Renfrew. That’s like rolling 333 telephone poles into one tree.

3671 mm
The amount of rain that falls annually in Port Renfrew, more than twice what Vancouver gets in a year.

96 metres
The height of the tallest tree in Canada, the Carmanah Giant, located in Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park. The giant is as tall as London’s Big Ben.

12,000
The number of protesters who blocked logging in Clayoquot Sound in the summer of 1993, the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. Meares Island, the site of Canada’s first logging blockade, now draws upward of 5,000 visitors a year to its Big Tree Trail, accessible via a 10-minute water taxi ride from Tofino.

Read the article online: https://www.upmagazine.com/story/article/big-trees-numbers