Archive for month: June, 2015

It was exactly 2 years ago today that I published a blog on Sonora Island – the southernmost end of the Great Bear Rainforest, within the traditional territories of Kwakwaka’wakw and Coast Salish peoples. In that blog I described the struggle the local community and environmental organizations have had to improve the logging practices of TimberWest Forest Corporation – especially their curious methods of identifying old-growth forests on the ground. I wrote that this was of particular concern as this is a region where less than 5% of many forest ecosystems remains in old growth conditions, and where the majority of ecosystems are globally endangered.

Since that original blogpost there has been good news and bad news.

First the good news: TimberWest agreed to a temporary harvest moratorium on six contentious forest blocks that I described previously in that blog, while it undertook to redefine old-growth and develop reserve designs to set aside rare old growth ecosystems. It worked closely with the local community and that is great. Peachy.

Now the bad news. That temporary moratorium on the six contentious blocks is just that temporary. And, it only constitutes a mere 0.2% of the total area of TimberWest’s tenure (in its Tree Farm License 47).

And now the really bad news. Recent analysis shows that as we move towards implementing stricter logging regulations in 2015, TimberWest has dramatically accelerated its rate of logging in the southern Great Bear Rainforest part of its tree farm license over the past five years. They have logged over one million cubic metres more (the equivalent of a million telephone poles) than they have been allocated as an average Annual Allowable Cut in the five year period (from 2010 to 2014). The company has logged more than 4,400 hectares of rainforest in this area since 2009, 11 times the area of Vancouver’s Stanley Park. This is particularly concerning given that TimberWest does not currently have a plan to reserve and restore these endangered ecosystems and the species that depend on them. Indeed, in the past 5 years, more than 50% of TimberWest’s logging has occurred in areas that were identified five years ago as priorities for landscape reserves. Not only is this not consistent with the spirit and intent of Ecosystem-Based Management (and is also contrary to what their senior executive team committed to us in a 2011 letter), but also goes against the wishes and aspirations of the region’s First Nations (the leadership of these Nations have been in dialogue with TimberWest on their rate of logging and how it precludes other activities and visions for their territories, but that has gotten them nowhere).

It is for this reason, that Greenpeace along with ForestEthics Solutions and Sierra Club BC have once again gone public with our concerns (read our Press Release here). We gave TimberWest the benefit of the doubt over the past two years to get things back on track through ongoing negotiation and engagement, only to be shocked and dismayed with our finding that their logging has accelerated considerably in the region while they have been talking with us.

To emphasize our concern, yesterday we deployed our ship Esperanza to send TimberWest a strong message that their recent practices of logging as if ‘there is no tomorrow’ is entirely unacceptable given the groundbreaking and solution-oriented system of Ecosystem-Based Management that we all have worked tirelessly over the last two decades to implement. Our ship was at Sonora Island where TimberWest operates when we dropped our banner. We had a delegation of representatives from various coastal First Nations. Their drumming and singing added to the poignancy and increased my determination to be part of the collaborative effort to succeed in protecting and restoring the area to the towering old growth forests that once blanketed this region of the Great Bear Rainforest.

And so this I promise you, reader: it will not take another two years of talking and logging before you hear from me again on TimberWest. Stay tuned…

[Greenpeace blog no longer available]

VICTORIA, B.C. ─ For a full decade, B.C. forests have been releasing dramatically more carbon into the atmosphere than they have absorbed out of the atmosphere.

B.C.’s forests emitted 256 million tonnes of carbon dioxide during the period 2003 – 2012. In contrast, B.C.’s forests absorbed 441 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from 1993 to 2002.This is the key finding of a Sierra Club BC analysis of B.C. government forest carbon emissions data.

Including forest emissions in B.C.’s officially reported emissions results in a massive shift in overall provincial emissions from 188 million tonnes for 1993 to 2002, to 894 million tonnes of carbon dioxide for 2003 to 2012.

Net emissions from provincial forests are the result of logging (after accounting for carbon stored in wood products), wild fires, slash-burning and the reduced carbon sequestration capacity of B.C.’s forests due to the Mountain Pine Beetle outbreak.

The 2003-2012 emissions from B.C. forests are equivalent to four times the official annual greenhouse gas emissions of the province, primarily from burning fossil fuels (63 million tonnes in 2013).Despite their magnitude, forest emissions are not counted as part of the official greenhouse gas emissions of the province.

While B.C.’s forest carbon loss has been made worse by the Mountain Pine Beetle outbreak and a number of serious wildfire years, the biggest factor remains poor forest management. In particular, destructive logging practices like clear-cutting, especially of old-growth rainforest, and slash-burning are huge contributors to the carbon emissions from B.C. forests.

“B.C. forest management is making climate change worse, an alarming situation when our forests should instead be our best ally in the fight against climate change, like forests in many other parts of the world,” said Sierra Club Campaigner Jens Wieting. “Unless the B.C. government wakes up and takes far-reaching action to increase conservation and improve forest management, our provincial forests will continue to contribute to climate change instead of slowing it down.”

Sierra Club BC is calling on the B.C. government to make forest health a priority, instead of LNG exports. Sierra Club BC is calling on the B.C. government to phase out subsidies to fossil fuels($1 billion in 2012/13 and 2013/14)and instead make $1 billion available to develop and implement a 5-year forest action plan to restore the health of B.C.’s forests in order to absorb carbon from the atmosphere and support long-term forest jobs.

Core elements of the plan should be restoring government capacity for forest stewardship, increasing forest conservation, improving forest management, adjusting the annual cut to a sustainable level and creating more jobs per cubic metre. Shifting fossil fuel subsidies to forestry should be a key strategy in B.C.’s climate action plan 2.0.

“Restoring B.C.’s forests so that we are banking carbon rather than withdrawing it is necessary not just for our climate but also for water quality, salmon habitat and forest jobs,” said Wieting. “It won’t be easy but it is possible, if the provincial government shifts subsidies and support from fossil fuels to forestry and other climate solutions. We can create jobs that will reduce emissions, instead of increasing them, slow climate change down instead of speeding it up and support communities, the economy and forests instead of putting them at risk.”

Read more: https://www.sierraclub.bc.ca/media-centre/press-releases/b.c.-forest-wake-up-call-heavy-carbon-losses-hit-10-year-mark