‘A Garage Sale for the Last Old Growth’

/in /by

The Tyee
May 14, 2021

Two summers ago, Brenda Sayers knelt atop what was left of British Columbia’s likely ninth widest Douglas fir tree. Sayers, a member of the Hupačasath First Nation, has long fought to protect old growth in her territory on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

“The old growth holds a lot of our history,” she said. “That tree must have been 800 years old.”

It had been felled in the Nahmint Valley by companies given the go-ahead by BC Timber Sales, the province’s own logging agency, and the largest tenure holder in the province.

On Wednesday, B.C.’s forestry watchdog found that BC Timber Sales erred when it allowed that tree and the forests surrounding it to be clearcut.

Three years after it was launched, the investigation found that the province wrongly greenlit a plan from BC Timber Sales that failed to protect land-use objectives for biodiversity and old growth protection in the Nahmint River Watershed as set out by the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan.

According to the BC Forest Practices Board report, “gaps” in BC Timber Sales’ planning “occurred over a long period of time and are creating real risks to ecosystems.” It also found that although BC Timber Sales knew about those gaps, it didn’t adequately address them.

The investigation was triggered by a complaint filed by the Ancient Forest Alliance in 2018 after its campaigners and members visited BC Timber Sales cutblocks in the Nahmint along with the Port Alberni Watershed Alliance. 

“We witnessed just horrendous logging of some of the finest remaining old growth on Vancouver Island,” said Andrea Inness, forest campaigner for the alliance.

Behind the scenes, the province responded by commissioning two internal investigations on what happened in the Nahmint. 

Their conclusions — made visible through a freedom of information request filed by the Ancient Forest Alliance — found that logging in the Nahmint should be halted until the issues were addressed.

Now the board is calling on the province to create a new plan for the Nahmint region with clear targets to protect rare, old growth ecosystems. That includes halting any current or future auctions until that happens. 

“We would say you probably shouldn’t be investing in developing those kind of timber sales until this plan is figured out,” says BC Forest Practices Board chair Kevin Kriese.

BC Timber Sales and the province have until Sept. 15 to respond to the recommendations.

Meanwhile, BC Timber Sales continues to auction off cutblocks across the province. On the Island, over 50 per cent of that is considered old growth.

This year, BC Timber Sales plans to auction off over 1,100 hectares of old growth on Vancouver Island. That’s more than half of the land mass of the City of Victoria.

Since 2018, BC Timber Sales’ old growth cutblocks on the Island have been four times as large — over 4,000 hectares.

Last September, the province promised a “paradigm shift” in its approach to managing old growth, agreeing to implement all 14 recommendations from the province’s Old Growth Strategic Review Panel report released last year. It committed to doing that through government-to-government consultation with First Nations.

In an emailed statement to The Tyee, the province acknowledged issues around old growth. “We know, and we’ve said clearly, that the status quo on old growth isn’t acceptable.”

When questioned about BC Timber Sales’ own old growth logging activity on the Island, the province said that the Old Growth Strategic Review Panel “did not say there needs to be a complete halt to old growth logging,” adding that, “it’s important to understand that B.C. forests are among the most well-regulated and sustainably managed in the world.”

Who is BC Timber Sales?

BC Timber Sales was founded by the province in 2003 in an attempt to address a longstanding softwood lumber dispute with the U.S.

Before BC Timber Sales, major companies did most of the logging in the province. They also enjoy financial benefits flowing from their long-term tenures. “They’re essentially rent-controlled,” says Torrance Coste, national campaign director with the Wilderness Committee. 

As a result, the U.S. claimed those companies had an unfair advantage. The province responded by taking back one-fifth of their allowable cut and giving it to the newly founded BC Timber Sales, which would operate as a “semi-autonomous” Crown corporation. 

Because of its open-bid system, the lumber sold through BC Timber Sales-owned cutblocks are said to reflect the fair market price, which in turn helps the province set the rates for other forest licenses in the province.

BC Timber Sales suggests that the open market system distributes employment to rural communities. In a promotional video, the agency says that “by providing a reliable supply of timber through open and competitive auctions to loggers, wood processors and other forestry businesses, BCTS supports workers in rural communities across B.C.”

As of 2018, its operations supported 8,000 jobs in B.C, providing over $50 million in net revenue per year to the province, and it awarded $140 million in contracts per year to the private sector.

Calls by The Tyee to the Truck Loggers Association and the BC Council of Forest Industries were not answered by press time.

BC Timber Sales blocks come almost ready-made: they do the timber cruising, build the main roads, and make sure their blocks comply with forest policies and regulations. According to the province, “a number of biodiversity, wildlife, cultural and social values correlate to old growth stands and are specifically considered during the planning and development phases.”

But in the Nahmint, the BC Forest Practice Board’s report put that process in question.

The board found that throughout its history, BC Timber Sales sold cutblocks without an adequate forest stewardship plan to tell them how to translate the old growth and biodiversity requirements in the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan to their cutblock planning in the Nahmint. That’s because of a lack of checks and balances within the agency, said Kriese.

“Checking in on land use plans and how they’re being implemented is a weak spot,” he said, adding that oversight is largely “complaint driven.”

“Unless someone raises the issue, there actually isn’t a lot of investigation to see whether that’s being followed or not.”

Even if the agency was following the rules correctly, that would still pose problems for old growth, says Inness. “We can only hold BC Timber Sales and any other logging company accountable to the laws that exist,” she said. “Those laws are extremely outdated, and clearly put timber values well ahead of any other values — like biodiversity.”

That puts the onus on government, says Inness, to legislate rules that put old growth protection front and centre. “That’s why we need those old growth recommendations from the independent panel implemented.”

Ross Muirhead, forest campaigner with Elphinstone Logging Focus, agrees. “They’re part of the hidden levers of government,” says Muirhead, “they’re going to keep going until they’re told — until there’s actual new legislation around how much old growth can be logged or how much old growth should be protected. It’s just business as usual.”

Then there’s the issue of accountability from companies buying BC Timber Sales blocks. 

The best way to find out what companies are actually doing on the ground, said Mark Worthing, coastal projects lead for the Sierra Club of BC, is to visit the site itself. That’s also the only way to know which company is actually logging the block. 

Companies that buy BC Timber Sales tenures tend to contract logging out to smaller operations. Sometimes those operators re-contract the job out again.

Worthing points to a picture of a BC Timber Sales cutblock with a sign nailed to a tree. The logging company’s name and phone number is written down in black Sharpie.

“They’re wholesale auctioning out stuff off to contractors who have very limited liability,” says Worthing. “They’re basically like a garage sale for the last old growth.”

Rare ecosystems on the cutting block

The Tsitika and Nahmint valleys are home to some of the island’s largest remaining tracts of unprotected, old growth forest on the island — they’re also hotspots for BC Timber Sales cutblocks.

These forests are extremely rare, according to a recent study by Karen Price, Dave Daust and Rachel Holt, who found that only one per cent consists of the big tree ecosystems that often come to mind when we hear about old growth.

“When it comes to BC Timber Sales, they are often located in the last remaining highest productivity, high biodiversity sites,” said Andrea Inness, campaigner with the Ancient Forest Alliance.

The Nahmint is a prime example. After Clayoquot Sound, the Nahmint is one of the largest tracts of old growth remaining on Vancouver Island. It’s home to endangered species like the marbled murrelet, whose habitat depends on old growth. 

“It’s very devastating to see the amount of trees being taken down,” said Brenda Sayers. “There is no regard for wildlife.”

BC Timber Sales is planning to auction off 212.6 hectares in the Nahmint region this year — a marked increase from its rolling average of 56 hectares per year in the region since the agency began. In the coming years, the agency has over 600 hectares of old growth in the Nahmint mapped out for logging.

According to the BC Forest Practices Board report, those sales and planning processes should be halted immediately until a new plan is in place.

BC Timber Sales’ operations in the Nahmint throws its operations across the province into question, says TJ Watt, campaigner for the Ancient Forest Alliance.

“If we caught that there, what’s going on in other places as well?”

This year, BC Timber Sales is auctioning off four old growth blocks consisting of over 190 hectares in the Tsitika valley.

The Tsitika, located between Ma’a̱mtagila and Tlowitsis territories, was once the lesser-known site of old growth blockades in the 1990s. The province established the Lower Tsitika River provincial park in response, protecting about 10 per cent of the area adjacent to the coast and Robson Bight. 

“The big, gut-wrenching trade-off was that it meant that they weren’t able to protect the upper Tsitika,” said Worthing. “So what we’re seeing now is the consequences of that.”

“They’re taking out the guts and feathers of the valley,” says Muirhead, who has been tracking BC Timber Sales activities on Vancouver Island. “They’re just taking everything. The valley bottom is gone, it looks like 50 per cent of the mid elevation is gone, and now they’re going higher up the slopes.”

The region is home to all five species of Pacific salmon whose spawning beds require consistent water flows and temperatures — both of which are impacted by logging. “We’re seeing less and less return and that’s a direct impact of logging — all the runoff goes into the creek,” said Seneca Ambers, spokesperson for the Ma’a̱mtagila First Nation.

“We’re the salmon people. We live off the salmon year-round — or we used to,” says Ambers, whose family now receives only one or two salmon for the year.

Among the proposed blocks in the region, Tsitika Main, a 35-hectare clearcut to be auctioned off this July, nudges up against a stream that flows into the Tsitika River. 

The Tsitika and the surrounding forests are also rich in culturally modified cedars. These trees are landmarks for traditional territory, says artist and hereditary Ma’a̱mtagila Chief Rande Cook (Makwala), but he’s seen BC Timber Sales cutblocks where these trees were felled. “To wipe these trees out, and to cut us down in the process, officially removes the Indigenous people from those territories for good.”

Consultation versus consent

BC Timber Sales consults with Indigenous Nations before logging occurs in their territories. “A primary objective is to work towards reconciliation with Indigenous peoples,” said the province in an emailed statement, adding that BC Timber Sales integrates the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act into its planning decisions.

But Sayers said those commitments are falling short.

In 2018, the Hupačasath band council released an open letter calling for the B.C. government to extinguish all approved old growth cutblocks in the Nahmint Valley. The province committed to entering into talks with the Nation, but BC Timber Sales’ cutblocks continued to be sold in the territory. 

The same year, the BC Assembly of First Nations passed a motion calling for BC Timber Sales to be dissolved, and its tenure lands redistributed to First Nations.

“I’ve always said that reconciliation begins on the land,” said Sayers. “Until companies like BC Timber Sales and federal and provincial policy support First Nations and their right to protect the land, they can call it whatever they want on these websites. To me, it’s just talking out of both sides of their mouth.”

The Hupačasath First Nation were not available to respond to The Tyee’s request for comment at press time, and the Tseshaht First Nation did not respond to our request. 

BC Timber Sales does not consult with the The Ma’a̱mtagila hereditary chiefs whose territory that includes the Tsitika, Naka Creek and Schmidt Creek regions. That’s because government accepted a resolution proposed by the Tlowitsis band administration that functionally erased the Ma’a̱mtagila claim to their territories in the eyes of the province, said Ambers. “We ended up not having any voice in any of the decisions being made.” 

The Ma’a̱mtagila Nation is currently working to reassert their title through the courts.

Instead, the province confirmed that BC Timber Sales consults with the Tlowitsis First Nation through the Nanwakolas Council, which represents five Nations in the region and does not include the hereditary chiefs of the Ma’a̱mtagila.

Ambers says BC Timber Sales is shirking its responsibility to consult with the Nation. “It’s just a blatant disregard for that complexity and a disregard for the Ma’a̱mtagila people” she said.

Cook said BC Timber Sales should put old growth logging in the Tsitika region on hold until title issues are resolved. 

“Industry never stops,” he said. “It’s like, okay, let us spend a year figuring this out and taking it into court. But in a year, you could have areas completely wiped out from logging.”

Dallas Smith, board president of the Nanwakolas Council, oversees BC Timber Sales referrals for the Tsitika region.

Smith said he is concerned about old growth in the region, but revenue from old growth logging continues to be an important source of funding for the council’s member Nations. 

“We still need to keep harvesting in these areas,” he said. “BC Timber Sales is a vehicle that does that because they’re the biggest tenure holder in the area.

“But there has to be room in there to find that balance,” said Smith, referencing the need to protect some of the region’s old growth forests.

Amidst government’s promises of a new era of growth protection, Smith said he’s noticed industry ramping up its logging activity in the region.

The council has a 30 to 60-day window to provide feedback on referrals from BC Timber Sales, and they’re struggling to keep up. “We can make sure we’re putting as much lipstick on the pig as we can on their bad plans. But now we’re seeing these bad plans come a little quicker and sooner.”

“Our message to the province is going to be you know what, no more of these bad plans. You need to sit down with us. And we need to figure this out. We can’t keep kicking the can down the road on this issue.”

For Smith, that also means slowing down or stopping the rate of cut until a plan can be established. “We can’t let that talk-and-log happen anymore.”

For Ambers, the problem with BC Timber Sales’ approach with Indigenous Nations lies in the difference between consultation and consent. 

“Consultation just means that you’ve asked for their opinions,” said Ambers. “Consent implies that you’re asking for permission and that you’re honouring it if somebody says no.”

If BC Timber Sales began to use a consent-based model, Ambers thinks the practices of BC Timber Sales would need to change. “A lot of our Nations don’t consent to the total wipeout of our forests.”

‘This is the low-hanging fruit’

Torrance Coste thinks that as a crown corporation, BC Timber Sales could model the paradigm shift on old growth the province has committed to. 

“It’s like — this is the low-hanging fruit, you guys,” said Coste. “You could write a directive that says, hey, however much old growth you laid out this year, lay out half next year, and then half the year after that.”

Inness agrees. “They’ve promised big, big, big things,” she said, pointing to the province’s commitments to halt logging in at-risk areas within six months and to develop a strategy to transition to the second growth sector in a year. 

With those deadlines looming, Inness says the province is shirking its opportunity to use BC Timber Sales as a vehicle for change.

“Instead of championing conservation and forestry solutions that support communities, they’re using BC Timber Sales to continue to destroy rare ecosystems,” she said. “It’s more than a missed opportunity. It’s willful ignorance on the B.C. government’s part.”  [Tyee]

Read more: Labour + Industry, BC Politics, EnvironmentIf you made it this far, you’re either engaged or skipping to the comments…

… either way, you’re the kind of Tyee community member we want to engage in return.

You see, The Tyee is a reader-supported publication, meaning we rely on regular monthly contributions from supporters that we call Tyee Builders to pay our writers fairly while at the same time keeping our articles free and open for everyone to read.

This is not your typical newspaper subscription. In fact, it’s not a subscription at all. Tyee Builders have the same access to our articles as anyone else. We’re not asking you to buy anything, we’re asking you to invest in a growing independent news source that is publishing in-depth, original articles every single weekday.

In return, we seek your opinion in supporter surveys so we can understand what you want to read about. We give you a behind-the-scenes view of the team that makes The Tyee. And you get our unending gratitude and love for helping us continue to grow.

If you want to help The Tyee grow our independent newsroom and do even more impactful journalism, please join Tyee Builders today. You choose the amount you give, and you can cancel at any time. 

Read the original article here.

Systemic errors in managing Nahmint’s old growth, says B.C. watchdog

/in /by

Ha-Shilth-Sa
May 13, 2021

B.C.’s forestry watchdog has released a report critical of logging practices in the Nahmint valley, pointing to inconsistencies in protecting the area’s old growth forest.

On Wednesday, May 12 the Forest Practices Board released its findings, nearly three years after a complaint from the Ancient Forest Alliance sparked the investigation into old-growth logging in the valley. The independent watchdog found that forestry management standards set by the government were not met in how the Nahmint was handled by BC Timber Sales, a provincial agency responsible for auctioning off Crown land for harvesting.

Covering nearly 20,000 hectares south of Sproat Lake, the Nahmint Valley lies within Nuu-chah-nulth territory, containing old growth forest that includes some of the largest Western red cedar and Douglas fir trees in British Columbia. According to the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan Higher Level Plan Order, the Nahmint is designated as a special Management Zone. The valley is also considered one of the five “high biodiversity landscape units” in the Vancouver Island plan, a designation that sets particularly high levels of conservation for an unprotected forest.

But the forest stewardship plan that BC Timber Sales has been operating under does not adequately protect the Nahmint according to this designation, said Kevin Kriese, chair of the Forest Practices Board.

“BCTS’s FSP did not meet the legal objective, and it should not have been approved,” he said. “We looked at the remaining forest in the watershed and found there are some ecosystems that could be at risk if more logging takes place in them.”

After a 2019 field trip to the Nahmint with the Ancient Forest Alliance, plus dozens of interviews with regional experts and government staff, the Forest Practices Board uncovered a series of systemic errors in how the valley was managed by B.C. Timber Sales.

“What we found was that the district manager made an error in approving this forest stewardship plan, even though it was not consistent with the government objectives,” said Kriese.

He noted that the necessary level of site-specific planning was never done, even though the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan prioritized the Nahmint for such a detailed assessment.  

“More detailed landscape unit planning was supposed to provide clear direction on how much and where to conserve old and mature forest, but that planning was never completed,” said Kriese. “BCTS was left with a complicated set of legal objectives to interpret, and we found it missed important details that are required to manage for biodiversity in the Nahmint.”

The investigation began when the Ancient Forest Alliance discovered enormous trees that were recently cut in the valley, including a few with dimensions comparable to stands listed on the BC Big Tree Registry, a public archive of the province’s largest examples of different species. A disturbed bear den was also discovered inside one of the logged old growth trees, raising concern that forestry practices in the Nahmint were below provincial standards for the area.

“With the Forest Practices Board’s investigation now complete, the evidence is irrefutable: BC Timber Sales are failing to adequately protect old-growth in the Nahmint Valley,” stated Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner Andrea Inness. “This failure exposes the gross inadequacies and lack of accountability that are inherent in BC’s forest system and the need for immediate, systemic change.”

But while the watchdog found that provincial standards weren’t met in Nahmint, logging can continue in the valley with no legal ramifications. This is due to gaps in the Forest and Range Practices Act, a legislative issue that made actions to protect the old growth forest by the Compliance and Enforcement Branch futile.

“It later asked BCTS to bring itself into compliance by amending the forest stewardship plan. BCTS stated at the time it was not required to comply with the higher-level plan order because it had an approved FSP,” explained Kriese of the failure in enforcement. “It closed the file and referred to the file to the Forest Practices Board.”

The FPB has recommended that the province conduct landscape unit planning, and to not sell any more timber in Nahmint’s “high risk ecosystems” until a more specific assessment of the area is conducted. An answer from the Ministry of Forests is expected by Sept. 15.

In an emailed response to Ha-Shilth-Sa, the ministry did not say logging will cease in the Nahmint’s high risk areas. But some measures are being taken.

“[T]he ministry if updating the Nahmint Landscape Unit Plan, adjusting Old Growth Management Areas to better capture rare and underrepresented ecosystems and biodiversity targets at the landscape level,” wrote a ministry spokesperson. “The updated Landscape Unit Plan will come into effect soon, ensuring biodiversity protection across the range of ecosystems in the Nahmint.”

Meanwhile, softwood lumber prices have reached records highs, with some species tripling in value since the beginning of the pandemic. These economic factors with undoubtably put demands on the old-growth trees within the Nahmint valley, where an average of 56 hectares have been harvested a year by BCTS since 2003, while another 22 hectares is typically cut annually by the Tseshaht First Nation under its current five-year license.   

Read the original article

B.C. forestry watchdog finds lack of compliance in Nahmint logging

/in /by

Alberni Valley News
May 13, 2021

Forest Practices Board says old growth and biodiversity near Port Alberni are at risk

Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner Andrea Inness walks beside an enormous western red cedar stump in a BCTS-issued cutblock in the Nahmint Valley. (PHOTO COURTESY TJ WATT)

Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner Andrea Inness walks beside an enormous western red cedar stump in a BCTS-issued cutblock in the Nahmint Valley. (PHOTO COURTESY TJ WATT)

A British Columbia forestry watchdog has found that old growth and biodiversity near Port Alberni are at risk.

The report comes three years after the Ancient Forest Alliance submitted a complaint to the Forest Practices Board about timber harvesting in the Nahmint River Watershed. The board has determined that BC Timber Sales failed to comply with land-use objectives for biodiversity protection in the Nahmint Valley.

Now, the board says the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development needs to find a way to make sure this lack of compliance doesn’t happen again.

The Nahmint, located about 20 kilometres southwest of Port Alberni, is designated as a special management zone for its high biodiversity and wildlife, with some of the largest tracts of remaining old-growth forests on Vancouver Island outside of Clayoquot Sound.

The Ancient Forest Alliance was concerned in 2018 that BC Timber Sales was harvesting large, old-growth trees, overriding its own protective order and the area’s special status.

Kevin Kriese, chair of the Forest Practices Board, said that the board took a look at BC Timber Sales’ forest stewardship plan and determined that its management of old forest was not compliant with government objectives.

“The harvesting and the issues around old forest have been going on for a while,” he said in a media presentation on Wednesday, May 12.

In addition, board staff examined the remaining forest in the watershed and found that there was not adequate old forest remaining in some ecosystems. BC Timber Sales’ forest stewardship plan does not have a strategy to protect these ecosystems—meaning that there are some ecosystems that could be at risk if more logging takes place in them.

“There is a risk…that these actually could be harvested,” said Kriese.

After a complaint from the Ancient Forest Alliance in 2018, the ministry’s compliance and enforcement branch started an investigation that ultimately determined BC Timber Sales was not compliant with government objectives. However, the compliance and enforcement branch also determined that it was not able to take enforcement action under the current legal framework, so it closed the file and referred it to the Forest Practices Board.

“That’s an oversight and that’s a gap,” said Kriese. “The current legal framework does not permit government to ensure that forest stewardship plans approved in error can be amended, and this does not give the public confidence in government’s compliance and enforcement. We are recommending government fix this gap in the legislation.”

The report ultimately found “a number of issues” with government objectives for B.C.’s forests, including the Nahmint River Watershed.

“The Board is concerned that actions are needed now to ensure biodiversity, and old forests in particular, are being adequately protected as forestry activities proceed in this watershed,” the report states. “Ultimately, the responsibility for the gaps in the planning and approval processes rests with the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development.”

The report recommends that the ministry complete landscape unit planning for Nahmint and that BC Timber Sales amend its forest stewardship plan to achieve the legal objectives. It also recommends that BC Timber Sales ensures it does not sell any timber sales in these high-risk ecosystems until a landscape unit plan is completed.

The final recommendation from the report asks the ministry to identify a mechanism that will allow forest stewardship plans to be corrected if they are out of compliance.

In light of the board’s findings, the Ancient Forest Alliance is calling on the B.C. government to direct BC Timber Sales to immediately stop auctioning off cutblocks in old-growth forests and instead champion conservation solutions and sustainable second-growth harvesting practices.

“With the Forest Practices Board’s investigation now complete, the evidence is irrefutable,” said Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner Andrea Inness in a press release. “BC Timber Sales are failing to adequately protect old-growth in the Nahmint Valley. This failure exposes the gross inadequacies and lack of accountability that are inherent in B.C.’s forest system and the need for immediate, systemic change.”

The full report can be found on the Forest Practices Board’s website at www.bcfpb.ca. The board is requesting a response from BC Timber Sales and the ministry by Sept. 15, 2021.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development says that BC Timber Sales is addressing the board’s recommendations in its operations, and that the ministry is updating Nahmint’s landscape unit plan.

“The board’s independent reports are an important check on forest practices in B.C. and highlight areas where we can improve. We take seriously the board’s recommendations and observations.”

Read the original article

B.C. timber agency didn’t adequately protect old forest on Vancouver Island: watchdog

/in /by

CTV News Vancouver Island
May 13, 2021

logging

The Forest Practices Board says the investigation stemmed from a 2018 complaint about BC Timber Sales licensees’ logging of large old-growth trees in the Nahmint River watershed near Port Alberni. (CTV News)

VICTORIA — An investigation by British Columbia’s forest practices watchdog has found the provincial agency responsible for auctioning timber sale licenses did not adequately protect old forest in an area of Vancouver Island.

The Forest Practices Board says the investigation stemmed from a 2018 complaint about BC Timber Sales licensees’ logging of large old-growth trees in the Nahmint River watershed near Port Alberni.

Board chair Kevin Kriese says the findings show BC Timber Sales’ forest stewardship plan is not consistent with specific biodiversity objectives that are legally required under the Vancouver Island land use plan established two decades ago.

Kriese says more detailed landscape planning was supposed to provide clear direction on how much and where to conserve old and mature forest, but that planning was never completed and the forest stewardship plan should not have been approved.

He says BC Timber Sales was left with a complicated set of legal objectives to interpret, and the board found it missed important details required to manage for biodiversity in the Nahmint.

The Forests Ministry says it appreciates that the board acknowledged old and mature forests make up 67 per cent of the Nahmint area, and BC Timber Sales’ operations are addressing its recommendations.

The board’s report recommends that BC Timber Sales not sell any licenses in areas of “high-risk” ecosystems until the province finishes landscape planning to specify the amounts of forest to retain.

“We looked at the remaining forest in the watershed and found there are some ecosystems that could be at risk if more logging takes place in them,” Kriese says in a statement Wednesday.

The ministry says in a statement it’s updating the Nahmint landscape plan and adjusting old-growth management areas to “better capture rare and under-represented ecosystems and biodiversity targets.”

The updated landscape will come into effect soon, it says.

The board also determined that an investigation started by the Forests Ministry’s compliance and enforcement branch was reasonable. But it was cut short because the branch did not actually have the power to ensure the required objectives of higher-level land use plans are met.

The board is recommending the government fix that gap, Kriese says.

“The current legal framework does not permit government to ensure that (forest stewardship plans) approved in error can be amended, and this does not give the public confidence in government’s compliance and enforcement.”

The Nahmint River watershed is within the traditional territory of the Nuu-chah-nulth people and spans just shy of 200 square kilometres.

The Forest Practices Board says its investigation was triggered when members of the environmental organization Ancient Forest Alliance saw BC Timber Sales’ licensees harvesting large, old trees in 2018.

The Nahmint Valley is considered a “hot spot” for old-growth trees with high conservation value, the alliance says in a statement.

The alliance says it complained to the board after members found very large old-growth trees had been cut in the area, including ancient cedars and the ninth-widest Douglas fir recorded in Canada.

Read the original article

B.C. ‘shouldn’t have approved’ plan that failed to protect Nahmint old-growth forests: watchdog

/in /by

 

A three-year review by the forest practices board found the provincial government did not meet its legal objective to protect ecosystems and ancient forests in a treasured Vancouver Island watershed

The Narwhal
May 12, 2021

The B.C. government has put biodiversity and old-growth at risk in Vancouver Island’s Nahmint River watershed, which is home to ancient forests with some of the province’s largest Douglas fir trees, a Forest Practices Board investigation has found.  

The investigation, released on Wednesday, concluded the B.C. forests ministry erred in approving a forest stewardship plan put forward by BC Timber Sales, the government agency responsible for auctioning off provincial logging permits.

The plan failed to meet land-use objectives for biodiversity protection, including where and how much old-growth forest should be conserved in the 20,000-hectare watershed southwest of Port Alberni, the three-year investigation found. 

“BC Timber Sales’ forest stewardship plan did not meet the legal objective, and it should not have been approved,” Forest Practices Board chair Kevin Kriese said in a statement. 

“We looked at the remaining forest in the watershed and found there are some ecosystems that could be at risk if more logging takes place in them.” 

The investigation also found BC Timber Sales did not follow good conservation design, use available ecosystem mapping or ensure forest ecosystems were adequately represented at the landscape level through old-growth management areas. These issues have occurred “over a long period of time and are creating real risks to ecosystems,” the board found.

The board is B.C.’s independent watchdog for sound forest and range practices. It investigates public complaints about practices on public land, along with the appropriateness of government enforcement, and makes recommendations for improvement. 

“The evidence is irrefutable; BC Timber Sales is failing to adequately protect old-growth in the Nahmint Valley,” Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner Andrea Inness told The Narwhal. 

“There is such a lack of oversight and accountability inherent in B.C.’s forest system that companies and BC Timber Sales are failing to meet the already inadequate standards that are set for old-growth protection,” Inness said. “And it’s more or less gone unnoticed until now.”

Nahmin Valley old growth clear cut
Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner TJ Watt surveys a sprawling clearcut filled with old-growth Douglas fir trees in the Nahmint Valley. Photo: TJ Watt

The investigation was triggered by a complaint from the Ancient Forest Alliance, following a May 2018 trip to the Nahmint Valley by Inness and other alliance members, including photographer TJ Watt, as well as members of the Port Alberni Watershed-Forest Alliance.

Their fact-finding expedition discovered exceptionally large Douglas fir trees — including the fifth and ninth widest Douglas firs ever recorded in the province — scattered amidst the remains of an extensive clearcutting operation. The two groups also documented old-growth cedar stumps measuring almost four metres in diameter.

Inness said trip participants were amazed by the sheer beauty of the Nahmint Valley, which has some of the grandest and most intact ancient rainforests in B.C. outside of the Great Bear Rainforest and Clayoquot Sound. 

“On the flip side, we were struck by the sheer scale and pace of the old-growth logging that was happening there,” she said. “It was as though the trees could not be cut fast enough.” 

Following the expedition, the Ancient Forest Alliance submitted a complaint to the compliance and enforcement branch of B.C.’s Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations.

Two subsequent investigations — the findings of which were obtained by the Ancient Forest Alliance through a Freedom of Information request — showed BC Timber Sales was not complying with rules designed to ensure sufficient old-growth forest is retained to avoid loss of biodiversity.

One investigation, conducted by a ministry compliance and enforcement officer, recommended that logging in the Nahmint Valley be halted, future harvesting tenures be put on hold and the agency be prevented from establishing Nahmint old-growth management areas — created to protect old-growth and achieve biodiversity targets — while problems were addressed.

The second investigation, conducted outside the ministry, came to similar conclusions, the FOI documents revealed.

Nahmint logging douglas fir
Before and after images of a massive Douglas fir tree in the Nahmint Valley. According to the B.C. Big Tree Registry, this Douglas fir was the ninth-largest of its kind in Canada. Photo: TJ Watt

The Ancient Forest Alliance also called for a halt to old-growth logging in the Nahmint Valley until the Forest Practices Board investigation was complete. 

“That plea was ignored and logging continued,” Inness said. 

She said it is very troubling that the investigation has revealed nothing was done to amend the forest stewardship plan developed by BC Timber Sales — even though the forest ministry district manager who approved the plan was aware of possible non-compliance issues.  

The investigation found the forest stewardship plan was inconsistent with a 2001 Vancouver Island land use plan order, which sets specific objectives for conserving biodiversity. 

It also found B.C.’s legal framework does not permit the government to amend forest stewardship plans approved in error. 

“…[T]hat does not give the public confidence in government’s compliance and enforcement,” Kriese said. “We are recommending government fix this gap in the legislation.” 

The board’s report comes as the BC NDP government drags its heels on implementing recommendations from an independent old-growth strategic review panel it commissioned in 2019. The panel, led by foresters Al Gorley and Garry Merkel, made 14 recommendations that the BC NDP promised during last fall’s election campaign to implement if re-elected. 

In the April 12 Speech from the throne, which lays out the government’s blueprint for the current legislative session, the government appeared to backpedal on the BC NDP’s election promise, saying only that it will “continue to take action on the independent report on old-growth.” 

Critics assert that very little has been done, with the Ancient Forest Alliance and two other conservation groups assigning the government a failing grade in a recent report card that examined progress on implementing the panel’s recommendations. 

In one recommendation, Gorley and Merkel said the government should immediately defer development in old forests “where ecosystems are at very high and near-term risk of irreversible biodiversity loss.” 

Brenda Sayers of the Hupacasath First Nation said she wants to see an end to old-growth logging in the Nahmint. 

“The Nahmint Valley is not only beautiful, its ancient forests and biodiversity are critical to our people’s culture, our identity,” Sayers said in a statement. “Yet the B.C. government is sanctioning the destruction of these ecosystems through its own logging agency, which has shown itself to be incapable of responsibly managing our sacred lands.”

The government has until Sept. 15 to respond to recommendations from the forest practices board, which said the forest stewardship plan should be amended and the ministry should complete a landscape unit plan for the Nahmint. It also said the ministry should identify a mechanism to allow forest stewardship plans to be amended if they are inconsistent with government objectives.

In an emailed statement, the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development said BC Timber Sales is addressing the board’s recommendations in its operations.

The ministry is also updating the Nahmint landscape unit plan and adjusting old-growth management areas “to better capture rare and underrepresented ecosystems and biodiversity targets at the landscape level,” the statement said.

The ministry noted the Nahmint Valley contains 67 per cent of its original mature and old-growth forests, “far more than required by the Vancouver Island land use order,” but it did not specify how much of that is old-growth.

“The board’s independent reports are an important check on forest practices in B.C. and highlight areas where we can improve,” the ministry said. “We take seriously the board’s recommendations and observations.”

Inness said the Ancient Forest Alliance is not interested in watching B.C.’s ancient forests and some of the world’s biggest trees continue to fall, even if the forest stewardship plan for the Nahmint Valley is brought into compliance with “our very inadequate laws.” 

“Those laws need to change,” she said, noting the B.C. government has not announced any new old-growth forest protections or policy changes. 

“It hasn’t even announced its plan for how to implement the [old-growth] panel’s recommendations. We’re calling on the B.C. government to stick to its promise and to deliver those things immediately. More and more of these endangered old-growth forests are falling every single day.”

Read the original article

Forestry Watchdog finds BC Timber Sales failing to protect old-growth, biodiversity in Nahmint Valley

/in /by

Forest Practices Board investigation into Ancient Forest Alliance complaint reveals non-compliance by BC government logging agency in Nahmint Valley, putting ecosystems at risk, and systemic flaws in BC’s forestry legislation.

 

For immediate release
May 12, 2021

 

Victoria, BC – BC Timber Sales’s logging plans for the Nahmint Valley have consistently failed to comply with legally-binding land-use objectives for biodiversity protection, according to a long-awaited Forest Practices Board report following an investigation into old-growth logging in the Nahmint Valley near Port Alberni on Vancouver Island.

The report, released today, comes three years after the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA), together with members of the Port Alberni Watershed Forest Alliance, exposed the clearcutting of some of Canada’s grandest remaining old-growth forests and biggest trees – including Canada’s ninth widest known Douglas-fir – in the Nahmint Valley, located in Hupacasath and Tseshaht territory. The discovery prompted the AFA to submit a complaint to the Board, as well as the Ministry of Forests’ Compliance and Enforcement Branch (CEB), in summer 2018.

The Board’s nearly three-year investigation confirms one of the key findings from the CEB investigation – that BCTS’s 2017 Forest Stewardship Plan (FSP) for the Nahmint Valley fails to comply with legal biodiversity objectives set under the Vancouver Island Higher Level Plan Order.

“With the Forest Practices Board’s investigation now complete, the evidence is irrefutable: BC Timber Sales are failing to adequately protect old-growth in the Nahmint Valley,” stated Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner Andrea Inness. “This failure exposes the gross inadequacies and lack of accountability that are inherent in BC’s forest system and the need for immediate, systemic change.”

The Board’s investigation found that BCTS did not follow good conservation design, use available ecosystem mapping, or ensure forest ecosystems were adequately represented at the landscape level through Old Growth Management Areas. As a result, not only is BCTS’s FSP non-compliant, according to the Board’s report, these issues have “occurred over a long period of time and are creating real risks to ecosystems.”

“BCTS has logged too much old-growth forest in some ecosystems, including in rare and underrepresented plant communities, putting biodiversity at risk,” stated Inness. “What’s worse is they have no plan in place to ensure even more of these forests aren’t destroyed.”

Despite these issues, the FSP was given ‘rubber stamp’ approval by the district manager and when the CEB’s investigation identified possible compliance issues in fall 2018, nothing was done to amend the FSP to bring it into compliance.  

The Board’s report also reveals inherent inadequacies in the Forest and Range Practices Act – namely that there is no mechanism through which changes can be made to non-compliant FSPs once they’re approved – and loopholes that allow forest companies to substitute younger, smaller trees for older, bigger trees in retention areas, combine protection targets for old-growth and mature forests together, and stack forest reserves like Old Growth Management Areas and Wildlife Habitat Areas on top of each other.

“BC’s deeply flawed forest system not only lacks accountability, it allows forest companies and BCTS to protect the lowest possible amount of productive old-growth forests while always targeting the very best stands for logging,” stated AFA campaigner and photographer TJ Watt.

“At the end of the day, it’s not enough that BC Timber Sales amend their landscape unit plan and their FSP, as the Board suggests, so they can continue logging old-growth while adhering to BC’s outdated and inadequate forestry laws. Those laws need to be revised to reflect advancements in conservation science and the ecological crisis facing BC’s ancient forests.”

“Public trust in BC Timber Sales is already abysmal,” stated Inness. “Knowing they’re failing to meet the BC government’s grossly inadequate standards for old-growth protection is further proof of the urgent need for sweeping, systemic change in BC’s forest system.”

In its 2020 report, the NDP government-appointed Old Growth Strategic Review Panel concluded that productive old-growth forests are endangered across most of BC and a complete paradigm shift in BC’s forest sector, as well as immediate steps to protect the most at-risk old-growth forests, are urgently needed. In October, Premier Horgan committed to implementing the Old Growth Panel’s recommendations “in their totality,” but very little has been done thus far and the province is falling far behind on the panel’s suggested timeline.

In light of the panel’s recommendations and the Board’s findings, the AFA is calling on the BC government to direct BCTS to immediately stop auctioning off cutblocks in old-growth forests and instead champion conservation solutions and sustainable second-growth harvesting practices.

Brenda Sayers of the Hupacasath First Nation in Port Alberni is also urging the province and BC Timber Sales to end the destructive logging of old-growth in the Nahmint.

“The Nahmint Valley is not only beautiful, its ancient forests and biodiversity are critical to our people’s culture, our identity. Yet, the BC government is sanctioning the destruction of these ecosystems through its own logging agency, which have shown themselves to be incapable of responsibly managing our sacred lands.”

“The province needs to enact the paradigm shift that Premier Horgan committed to last October so that biodiversity and ecosystem integrity – which are what sustain First Nations cultures – are given the highest priority, not just in the Nahmint, but everywhere in BC.”

Background information

  • The Nahmint Valley, recognized for its high biodiversity, important wildlife and conservation values, was designated a “low intensity area” in the 1994 Vancouver Island Land Use Plan (VILUP) and a special management zone with “high biodiversity” priority in the ensuing VILUP Higher Level Plan Order in 2000.
  • The Board found BCTS failed to meet legal-binding protection targets for many old-growth ecosystems in the Nahmint. In some cases, the gap between the legal retention targets and how much old-growth remains is significant. For example, for four rare and underrepresented ecosystems in the Nahmint, BCTS has only achieved between 20 and 55 per cent of the targets.
  • The Nahmint Valley is considered a “hotspot” of high-conservation value old-growth forest by conservation groups, with some of the largest tracts of remaining old-growth forests on Vancouver Island outside of Clayoquot Sound. The Nahmint River supports significant salmon and steelhead spawning runs and the area is also home to Roosevelt elk, black-tailed deer, cougars, wolves, and black bears as well as old-growth dependent species like marbled murrelet and northern goshawk.
  • Old-growth forests are vital to sustaining unique endangered species, climate stability, tourism, clean water, wild salmon, and the cultures of many First Nations. On BC’s southern coast, satellite photos show that at least 75% of the original, productive old-growth forests have been logged, including well over 90% of the valley bottoms where the largest trees grow. 

 

Conservationists decry absence of funding for old-growth, forestry paradigm shift in BC Budget

/in /by

Victoria, BC – The Ancient Forest Alliance is disappointed the NDP government’s provincial budget, released yesterday, fails to allocate funding to protect endangered old-growth forests or enact the necessary paradigm shift in BC’s forest sector. 

“The BC government has missed a critical opportunity to show British Columbians it’s serious about its old-growth commitments,” stated Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner Andrea Inness.  

“Despite promising a complete paradigm shift in the way BC’s forests are managed, the NDP government’s 2021 budget is bereft of meaningful solutions to make it happen. In fact, the Ministry of Forests budget is being slashed by $41 million this year and a further $30 million in 2022.” 

“How does the province expect to protect ancient forest ecosystems, support communities, and overhaul its forest management regime with less funding than it had before?” 

The provincial budget comes six months after Premier Horgan committed to the full implementation of the 14 recommendations set out by the BC NDP-appointed Old Growth Strategic Review Panel, which submitted its final report one year ago. The recommendations include an immediate halt to logging in BC’s most at-risk old-growth forests within six months; a new, science-based approach to forest management that prioritizes biodiversity; and proactive, adequately funded local and provincial transition plans.

Since the panel’s report was released publicly in September, the BC government introduced a regulation to protect an estimated maximum of 1,500 of BC’s biggest trees and deferred logging in nine areas encompassing 353,000 hectares. However, only 3,800 of those hectares are previously unprotected, at-risk old-growth forest, leaving the majority of BC’s remaining productive old-growth forests open to logging.

While Budget 2021 does include increased funding for land-use planning modernization (an inadequate $7.3 million over three years), $180 million to support negotiations with First Nations communities, which ideally will include engagement on the Old Growth Panel recommendations, and $17 million to enact the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), it’s missing critical funding pieces needed to fully implement the Old Growth Panel’s recommendations.  

“The provincial budget lacks funding to relieve economic pressure faced by BC First Nations so that logging deferrals become an economically viable option for them,” stated Inness.

“There’s also no funding for new Indigenous Protected Areas that conserve old-growth forests, no conservation financing to support the economic diversification of First Nations communities while old-growth is protected, and no funding to help workers and communities transition away from old-growth logging. In terms of funding sustainable forestry solutions, this budget is as bleak as an old-growth clearcut.”  

The Ancient Forest Alliance, other conservation groups, and hundreds of British Columbians sent feedback to the BC government’s Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services last year, calling for funding for old-growth protection in Budget 2021. That feedback was reflected in the Standing Committee’s final report, in which it recommended the BC government “fund a transition to second growth harvesting and away from primary forests” in Budget 2021. 

An additional 4,200 messages were also sent in the weeks leading up to the budget announcement, illustrating British Columbians’ expectations that the province follow up its old-growth commitments with timely and adequate funding. 

“The Standing Committee’s recommendation and British Columbians’ wishes seem to have fallen on deaf ears,” stated campaigner TJ Watt. “By failing to fund the Old Growth Panel’s recommendations, the NDP government will be severely limited in how far they can go to protect old-growth, setting the stage for more of BC’s endangered ancient forests to fall.” 

“That the BC government also failed to fund old-growth protection and sustainable economic development in Clayoquot Sound is particularly disappointing, especially after the federal government in 2019 committed matching funds for the implementation of the Tla-o-qui-aht and Ahousaht land-use visions, which set the vast majority of those Nations’ territories in Clayoquot Sound aside from industrial development,” stated Watt. 

“On Monday, the federal government committed $2.3 billion – in addition to the $1.3 billion it committed in 2018 – to protect one million square kilometers of Canada’s land and freshwater and to support Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas, Indigenous Guardians programs, provincial and territorial protected areas, and to protect species at risk.” 

“The NDP government has a unique opportunity to obtain matching funds from the federal government. They’re missing a golden opportunity to support Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas while delivering the paradigm shift that was promised.”

-30-

No New Money for Old Growth Protection in BC’s Budget

/in /by

Spending plan ‘absolutely shatters’ hopes that province is taking changes to forest industry seriously, says advocate.

The Tyee
Apr 2021

GraniteCreekLoggedCedar.jpg
Old-growth red cedar logged in the Granite Creek watershed near Port Renfrew in Pacheedaht territory. Photo by TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance.

Despite calls to end old-growth logging in B.C. and government promises to overhaul its forestry practices, there is no new funding for that transition in the budget announced today.

Instead, the ministry responsible for B.C.’s forest management will see an overall drop in funding over the next three years.

The budget comes seven months after the province released a strategic panel review on old-growth logging, which called for a paradigm shift to prioritize ecosystem health over the timber supply and recognize values like biodiversity, clean water and cultural resources.

The report made 14 recommendations that would totally overhaul the management of old-growth forests, starting with grounding the system in a government-to-government framework involving both the provincial and Indigenous governments.

In releasing the report last September, the province deferred logging in 353,000 hectares of forest, some of which was old growth. The deferral expires Aug. 31, 2022.

In the weeks leading up to B.C.’s fall election, Premier John Horgan promised to implement all 14 recommendations of the old-growth strategic panel review, saying his government is “committed to implementing the report in its totality.” Horgan has cited the need to consult with First Nations as a factor delaying more action on the recommendations.

When asked where funding for implementing the promised changes are in the budget, Finance Minister Selina Robinson said funding already exists under the existing Ministry of Forests budget.

When pressed about the reduction in funding to the ministry — cut 4.4 per cent this year — she repeated her response.

“Like I said, that funding exists, it’s available to the Ministry of Forests, and I’m assured by the minister that they can accommodate that within their budget,” Robinson said.

Torrance Coste, national campaign director with the Wilderness Committee, called the response “frankly shocking.”

“To hear the finance minister say any changes, the paradigm shift itself, just exists within standard… budget absolutely shatters any notion that this government is taking this seriously,” he said, noting that the ministry has other challenges, such as wildfires, that are causing costs to increase.

“They called for a paradigm shift, and now they’re cutting the budget of the ministry that oversees forests. That doesn’t make sense to me,” he said. “At the end of the day, the budget needs to be going up if you’re going to do a paradigm shift. Or if it doesn’t, then they need to explain why.”

The budget, which projects an $8.1-billion deficit, says employment is rebounding following unprecedented job losses early in the pandemic and promises to consult with “businesses, economists and Indigenous and community leaders to ensure a strong and sustainable recovery for all B.C. communities.”

In introducing the budget, which focused on health and economic recovery, Robinson touched on the province’s relationship with First Nations, citing its passing of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act in 2019.

“The declaration recognizes and respects the human rights of Indigenous Peoples and ensures that they are involved in decisions that affect them and their territories,” Robinson said, adding that greater Indigenous participation in decision-making provides more certainty for resource-sector investment.

But apart from a significant increase in funding to the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation for treaty and other land-use agreements, the budget does little to reflect that priority.

It promises $60 million in annual base funding to support engagement with Indigenous Peoples and $17 million over three years to support the implementation of DRIPA and government’s commitments under existing reconciliation agreements, including land transfers.

But Coste noted the Forest Ministry budget for “Forest Policy and Indigenous Relationship” is less than $10.5 million, up from just over $9 million last year.

Last month, environmental organizations Ancient Forest Alliance, Sierra Club BC and Wilderness Committee issued a statement on the six-month anniversary of the old-growth report assessing progress.

It gave the province a failing grade on providing economic alternatives for First Nations and funding a transition in the industry as old-growth logging is deferred.

It called on the province to provide the needed funding, saying it is fundamental to implementing the old-growth strategy.

In the throne speech delivered two weeks ago, Lt. Gov. Janet Austin noted that economic growth in B.C. has often come at the expense of the environment.

That must change, Austin said, reading a speech written in the premier’s office.

“We can no longer rely on simple resource extraction to generate wealth with no regard to long-term consequences,” she said, promising to work on reforming the Forest Act and the Forest and Range Practices Act and updating land-management practices to emphasize environmental protection.

“Your government will continue to take action on the independent report on old growth, which recommended important new protection for remaining old-growth stands not already protected,” she said. “Our economic recovery must become an opportunity to accelerate environmental protection, not an excuse to relax our commitment to sustainability.”

Yet old-growth logging continues in B.C.

Several protestor blockades are currently in place on Vancouver Island to prevent old-growth logging. On April 1, the BC Supreme Court granted an injunction to logging company Teal Cedar, a division of the Teal-Jones Group, to have the protesters removed.

As of yesterday, the injunction had not been enforced.

Forest revenue is expected to increase by 7.4 per cent next year but decline an average of 12.8 per cent annually over the following two years, as the province projects a 20-per-cent decrease in stumpage rates, which are paid by industry to the government for timber on Crown land.

There were no significant changes to forest harvests, dropping from 46 million cubic metres over the next year to 45 million over the next two years, with harvests slightly down in the Interior but up on the coast.

Coste said that also needs to change.

“At the end of the day, we do need to bring the cut down a bit,” he said. “The government says value over volume every second breath. They’re talking about all the things they’re doing to bring the value up; eventually they’re going to have to start talking about how to bring the volume down and leave more forest.”

The Union of BC Indian Chiefs passed a resolution in September calling on the province to implement all 14 recommendations of the old-growth panel and to ensure that immediate deferrals include all threatened old-growth forests.

The Tyee reached out to UBCIC on Monday about what it hoped to see in the budget. In an emailed statement, UBCIC president Grand Chief Stewart Phillip reiterated the organization’s passion for protecting old growth and the need to move forward in a way that allows sustainable old-growth management to protect, respect and advance First Nations rights and title.

“UBCIC would like to see funding put towards stronger, comprehensive old-growth policy, including the full implementation of the recommendations from the Strategic Old Growth report, and more engagement and consultation with First Nations on how they can impose a moratorium on old-growth logging that directly impacts their territories,” Phillip said.

BC Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau said she was surprised by the finance minister’s comments that existing funding under the Ministry of Forests would finance a transition in the forest industry, particularly as the province was set to reduce its budget.

“In order to have the paradigm shift away from old-growth logging, we need to see investment in Indigenous-led conservation efforts, we need to see conservation financing put on the table by the provincial government so that Indigenous communities can have that economic opportunity to invest in their future in ways that does not undermine the long-term health of their environment and their ecosystems,” she said.

Furstenau pointed to long-term, sustainable opportunities like the Great Bear Rainforest and investments in eco-tourism, sustainable aquaculture and sustainable forestry.

“There are so many ways that we could be leaning into the paradigm shift that is needed to get away from old-growth logging, to have her say that… is disappointing and it’s a clear indication that this government does not take their commitment to protecting old growth seriously,” she said.

Read the original article

Falling fast

/in /by

 

Three decades after the so-called ‘War of the Woods,’ the logging of B.C.’s ancient forests goes on, prompting protest from a new generation of eco-activists

Watt’s ‘before and after’ photos have drawn worldwide attention to old-growth logging in B.C. (TJ Watt)

McLean’s magazine
April 13, 2021

It came as a bit of a shock to Shawna Knight, a 43-year-old mother of two who runs the Buddha Box, a locally sourced food outfit in Shirley, on Vancouver Island’s southwest coast. Co-founder of the famous Cold Shoulder Cafe in the local surfing mecca of Jordan River, Knight says she figured she was as clued in as anyone to what was happening in the wild world around her. “We hunt for mushrooms, we do nettles every spring. I felt like we were connected. But we weren’t. We so obviously were not.”

Knight says she’d taken it for granted that the days when British Columbia was internationally notorious for cutting down the world’s last remaining stands of temperate old-growth rainforest were well and truly over. She thought the “War in the Woods” that had brought thousands of protesters to Canada’s West Coast from all over the world, when she was in her teens, had been fought and won. “Boy, was I wrong,” Knight tells me. “I just assumed we weren’t old-growth logging anymore. Turns out we’re doing it as fast as we can, right now.”

The realization came like a bolt out of the blue following a chance find on a Facebook chat group last summer—the ancient trees were still falling. It’s what prompted Knight to shut down the Buddha Box and spend her time ever since, a week on and a week off, where I met her: at a blockade on a remote logging road known as the Edinburgh Main, a branch of the Gordon River Main, in the mountains above Port Renfrew, an old fishing and logging town about two hours’ drive northwest of Victoria.

The camp on the Edinburgh Main is one of a half-dozen protest sites that have been springing up and moving around since last August on roads that the Teal-Jones logging company has been trying to punch into the Fairy Creek watershed, one of the last unprotected old-growth valleys on Vancouver Island.

The Teal-Jones Group is a 70-year-old logging and milling firm that bought the provincial timber rights to a huge tract of Vancouver Island’s southwest forests—Tree Farm Licence 46—in 2004. Ever since the first blockade appeared last August, the company has been in and out of court, hoping for an injunction that would order the dozens of protesters who have been encamped on its roads to get out of the way.

Although no cutblocks had been authorized within the Fairy Creek watershed, Teal-Jones says it is within its rights to log there, and it intends to take trees from only about 200 hectares of the 1,200-hectare watershed. The company is just trying to build logging roads to get at the trees. It sounds like a fairly straightforward contest. But it isn’t.

It’s not just about the Fairy Creek watershed, and it’s not just about TFL 46. In some ways, it’s as though the War in the Woods that began in the mid-1980s and lasted a decade is still going on. “It never really ended,” Knight tells me.

***

But there’s a lot that’s different about “protest” this time around: digital technologies, the rise of social media, the new capacities available to First Nations authorities, the economic transformation of formerly logging-dependent communities, and the realigned roles of the federal and provincial governments.

It’s not even clear how it came to pass, exactly, that all those protesters suddenly showed up last summer camping in cars, tents and old buses in the mountains around Fairy Creek. But it would appear that word of a Teal-Jones logging road breaching a ridge line above the watershed first came from Joshua Wright, a 17-year-old activist and filmmaker with highly developed computer skills. Wright had been live-monitoring road construction in the area using advanced digital-mapping software from his home across the Juan de Fuca Strait and across the Canada-U.S. border in Olympia, Wash.

Knight in a camp bus at a blockade (Photograph by Jen Osborne)

That’s a far cry from what might be called the first shot fired in the War in the Woods back in the 1980s. You could situate that event on Nov. 21, 1984, when Tla-o-qui-aht Chief Moses Martin stood on the beach of Meares Island, just off Tofino in Clayoquot Sound, and addressed a group of MacMillan Bloedel officials and loggers who’d arrived to start clearing the forest. Martin told them their provincially issued logging rights counted for nothing against Tla-o-qui-aht law, and that they were welcome to stay for a meal but they’d have to put down their chainsaws first.

The MacMillan Bloedel party withdrew, but not without a fight in the courts. They lost, and so did the provincial government. Sixteen years later, Clayoquot Sound, with its giant trees still standing after 1,000 years, towering as high as 20-storey buildings, was a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Along the way, thousands of protesters had made their way to Vancouver Island to protest old-growth logging. In one protest, at the Kennedy Lake Bridge, 859 people were arrested and eventually convicted on contempt charges for violating an anti-blockade injunction. It’s still considered the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history.

The activists and the Tla-o-qui-aht won most of their demands, and further prohibitions on industrial-scale logging were secured in the nearby Megin River Valley, portions of the Walbran and Carmanah valleys and other remnants of ancient forest on Vancouver Island immediately north of Teal-Jones’ TFL 46. On B.C.’s mainland coast, where much of the readily accessible timber had already been taken out, the Great Bear Rainforest was made off limits to further large-scale logging.

Over the years, there were other compromises between the lumber and conservation interests as the industry went through a series of convulsions, including a pine beetle infestation that carried off much of B.C.’s Interior woodlands. Then came years of forest-protection backsliding during the Liberal party governments of Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark.

When New Democrat John Horgan was elected with a Green-backed minority in 2017, hopes were high that Vancouver Island’s dwindling ancient forests would win some reprieve—TFL 46 falls entirely within Horgan’s home riding of Langford-Juan de Fuca. There was much consultation and study, including a key “Old Growth Strategic Review.” When Horgan beat back the Greens and the Liberals to form a majority in last September’s snap election, he had his eye on the public’s hardening mood: a 2019 opinion poll showed 92 per cent of voters wanted action to protect endangered old-growth forests, partnerships with Indigenous people and a more diversified economy.

Logging truck drivers protesting forest-industry layoffs in 2019 (Darryl Dyck/CP)

Teal-Jones, too, insists the company intends to meet the high standards the public increasingly demands. In a recent statement, Gerrie Kotze, the company’s chief financial officer, declared: “Our work on this tree farm licence will be done in a way consistent with our values of sustainable forest management.” Teal-Jones, he added, “is committed to harvesting with the care and attention to the environment.”

Conservationists heralded the Old Growth report and its recommendations as the makings of a welcome “paradigm shift” in B.C.’s dysfunctional forest policies, putting ecosystem health above all other considerations. While Horgan’s government committed to following the review panel’s recommendations, further consultations would be required. Horgan nonetheless pledged to protect “nearly 353,000 hectares of old-growth forests,” in nine large areas, saying, “that’s just the beginning.”

Then the caveats began to reveal themselves. The nine parcels weren’t being “protected,” exactly. Logging was merely being deferred for two years. As for the “old-growth” in the deferral areas, half the landscapes were either alpine bonsai trees, or not even forest, or second-growth, or old-growth that was already protected. The Ministry of Forests had to clarify that only 196,000 hectares of “old-growth” was involved. In any case, when would the “paradigm shift” laid out in the review actually begin?

Maclean’s reached out to newly appointed B.C. Forests Minister Katrine Conroy’s office for answers. Will the review’s recommendations be implemented within the deferral’s two-year timeline? Conroy’s spokesperson, Tyler Hooper, explained by email that it’s going to take time because the government is committed to “doing this right,” adding that the Old Growth panel’s timeline “related to when work should be under way,” not completed. Besides, he noted, the recommendations came before the COVID-19 crisis: “We’ve started high-priority work in keeping with the report’s recommendations. But it will take engagement with the full involvement of Indigenous leaders, organizations, industry and environmental groups to find consensus on the future of old-growth forests in B.C.”

A closer review undertaken by forest ecologists Karen Price and Rachel Holt with professional forester Dave Daust, authors of the report “B.C.’s Old-Growth Forest: A Last Stand for Biodiversity,” reckon that only 3,800 hectares of Horgan’s deferred 350,000 hectares contain forests of the type that the Old Growth panel classified as in need of immediate action. So about one per cent, in other words, was forest of the ancient, tall-tree kind that most people imagine when they hear the term “old-growth.”

***

You have to squint at all these numbers to notice the point that the activists are trying to make when they say the bad old days in British Columbia are back. It’s complicated, and that’s where Ancient Forest Alliance photographer TJ Watt comes into the picture. He’s one of the main reasons that a handful of activists who first met at Lizard Lake near the Teal-Jones Granite Main logging road last August have acquired so many friends and well-wishers.

The 36-year-old Watt has been cutting through the cacophony of data with photographs. After a childhood in rural Metchosin, just outside Victoria, and summers in Port Renfrew, where his parents ran a marina, Watt has emerged as a key figure in the campaign to save the few groves of ancient forest that remain on Vancouver Island’s southwest coast. He’d found himself enchanted by the forest early on, and by his early 20s he’d developed a fascination with photography.

Watt’s leadership in the Ancient Forest Alliance grew out of a random event, in his early 20s, when he came upon the Western Canada Wilderness Committee’s storefront office on Johnson Street in Victoria. He walked in and hit it off right away with WCWC’s veteran campaigner, Ken Wu, who put him to work taking photographs of a forestry protest rally in town. Ten years ago, after Watt and Wu struck out on their own and founded the Ancient Forest Alliance, Watt found himself drawn deeper into Vancouver Island’s distant groves of cedar, fir, hemlock and spruce.

“The more remote landscapes were a blank spot on the map to me,” Watt says. “You spend three or four hours on a logging road, and then you arrive in this wonderland, with cascading waterfalls and emerald green pools and rivers, and these ancient forests, with trees that are nearly five metres across. I was just blown away how these forests were not protected.”

Watt’s early photographs of the still-standing trees in the unprotected portions of the Walbran Valley, and his 2018 portraits of the just-felled giants in the entirely unprotected Nahmint Valley near Port Alberni, caused a sensation. The photographs were partly a catalyst for the Horgan government’s old-growth review.

But it was last November that his disturbing “before and after” pictures of Teal-Jones logging operations in the Caycuse Valley drew international attention. “That was an explosion,” he says. “People from around the world get it, when they see the striking contrast in a tree that’s lived for 800 or 1,000 years, and the next day, it’s gone.”

His methodology is straightforward. He finds a big tree, picks an angle, sets up his tripod, shoots his photographs, and keeps careful notes—measuring the distance from the camera to the tree with a range finder; taking reference photographs of his set-up; noting the camera lens he’s used; noting the focal length; and recording the GPS coordinates so he can accurately retrace his steps through the logging slash to the “before” location, to take an “after” photograph.

Watt posted his first Caycuse “before and after” photographs on his Instagram account on Nov. 24, and they’ve since shown up in the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper, Outside magazine and countless social media posts. The scenes he depicted have been seen by millions of people.

“Humans are visual creatures, and photography allows you to understand an issue in an instant,” Watt says. “People see that it’s a permanent loss. Old-growth forests do not come back. We get one chance, and one chance only, to save these trees.”

Wu in the Avatar Grove forest (Photograph by Jen Osborne)

Because of the mischief they’ve been making in and around TFL 46, you’d think TJ Watt, Ken Wu and the Ancient Forest Alliance would be considered villains in a town like Port Renfrew. They’re not. They’re more likely to be considered heroes.

In the forests above the town, Wu and Watt have drawn widespread public attention to several patches of old-growth—like Avatar Grove and Eden Grove—and to individual trees with names like Big Lonely Doug, the San Juan Spruce and the Red Creek Fir. Avatar Grove, named after James Cameron’s blockbuster 2009 science fiction movie, is now classified as a forest ministry recreation site, and it’s become world-famous. Every year, tens of thousands of people visit the strange and mossy stand of giants, while Port Renfrew has taken to billing itself as the “Tall Tree Capital of Canada.” What the forest industry took away, the tourist industry is giving back.

That’s another huge difference from the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, the whole point of forest policy on Vancouver Island’s west coast was to convert old-growth forests, with their wolves, Roosevelt elk, black-tailed deer, black bears and cougars, into monocultural tree plantations. In those pseudo-forests, as the celebrated B.C. environmentalist Vicky Husband used to put it, “a deer would have to pack a lunch.”

***

The Teal-Jones Group isn’t simply the villain of the piece, either. The company is one of the loudest industry voices behind a broad-based move spearheaded by environmentalists to push back on the pace and scale of raw log exports from B.C.’s coastal forests.

Dozens of sawmills have closed over the past 20 years, and B.C. forests ministry records show that from 1998 onward raw log exports to China, the United States and elsewhere grew from about one per cent of the coastal cut to 30 per cent by 2018, reaching a recent average of four million cubic metres annually.

To put that in perspective: because a standard logging truck can hold around 40 cubic metres of timber, the volume of unprocessed logs from coastal forests shipped out of B.C. has been adding up to the equivalent of 100,000 fully loaded logging trucks in a bumper-to-bumper convoy stretching roughly from Vancouver to Winnipeg, every year.

Another big change from the days of the War in the Woods: First Nations are increasingly becoming major players in the forest industry.

Watt’s photos of old-growth logging (like his drone image of Caycuse, above) exploded on social media (TJ Watt)

The Fairy Creek watershed, along with almost all of TFL 46, falls within the traditional territory of the Pacheedaht Nation, a community of about 300 Nuu-chah-nulth people. While the Pacheedaht forestry initiatives include a set-aside for 400 years’ worth of cedar sufficient for their traditional ocean-going canoes, the Nation now also manages or co-manages an annual cut of about 140,000 cubic metres and runs its own small sawmill. It takes a percentage of the stumpage fees from every tree cut down in its traditional territory and co-owns a portion of Tree Farm Licence 25 in the Jordan River watershed. The Pacheedaht have declined to take an official position in the Fairy Creek controversy.

Ken Wu, the veteran forest activist, has since moved on to establish the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance, which works mainly at the federal level. Wu, who now works out of Montreal, tells me a major change from the 1980s and 1990s is that, while logging-road blockades are a necessary “catalyst” to action, the harder and more lasting work involves building broader alliances with “non-traditional” partners in the resource industries.

The Trudeau government has committed Canada to achieve 30 per cent protection of marine and terrestrial ecosystems by 2030. Wu says that’s not near enough. The Endangered Ecosystems Alliance is aiming for 50 per cent. As for holding the line to protect the last stands of Canada’s West Coast temperate rainforest, Wu says the key is offering Indigenous communities a viable alternative to the trap between a rock and hard place—between old-growth logging and poverty.

“The point is, there’s hardly any of the high-productivity old-growth left,” Wu says, “and we have to protect everything that remains. B.C. is one of the very last jurisdictions on earth that still condones and supports the large-scale logging of 500- and 1,000-year-old trees. It doesn’t grow back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.”

This article appears in print in the May 2021 issue of Maclean’s magazine with the headline, “Falling fast.” Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.

Read the original article

‘War in the woods’: activists blockade Vancouver Island in bid to save ancient trees

/in /by

The Guardian
April 8, 2021

Activists block a logging road to oppose the cutting of old growth trees in the Caycuse watershed on southern Vancouver Island.
Activists block a logging road to oppose the cutting of old growth trees in the Caycuse watershed on southern Vancouver Island. Illustration: Jesse Winter/The Guardian

Loggers say blockades threaten their livelihoods as activists build fortifications and vow to remain

Hundreds of activists are digging in at logging road blockades across a swath of southern Vancouver Island, vowing to stay as long as it takes to pressure the provincial government to immediately halt cutting of what they say is the last 3% of giant old growth trees left in the province.

The situation echoes the 1993 “war in the woods” in nearby Clayoquot Sound, which saw nearly 1,000 people arrested at similar logging blockades in the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history.

Giant old growth trees stand in a small protected area called Avatar Grove, near the Fairy Creek watershed on southern Vancouver Island.
Giant old growth trees stand in a small protected area called Avatar Grove, near the Fairy Creek watershed on southern Vancouver Island. Illustration: Jesse Winter/The Guardian

Tensions are rising. Just this weekend, the activists stopped a team of old growth tree cutters – called fallers – from entering a logging area in the Caycuse watershed.

“You know this is illegal?” said Trevor Simpson, a logger, who told the Guardian he’s been a faller contractor for 29 years and relies on cutting old-growth trees. “This is my livelihood at stake.

A blockader named Owen, one of about two dozen on the scene, told the loggers through the window of their pickup truck: “The fact is, if we want our planet to be sustainable, we have to protect these ecosystems.”

Members of the Rainforest Flying Squad speak with logging contractors after refusing to let them cross a bridge to an active cut block.
Members of the Rainforest Flying Squad speak with logging contractors after refusing to let them cross a bridge to an active cut block. Illustration: Jesse Winter/The Guardian
Trevor Simpson makes a satellite phone call after being refused access to a cut block by members of the Rainforest Flying Squad.
Trevor Simpson makes a satellite phone call after being refused access to a cut block by members of the Rainforest Flying Squad. Illustration: Jesse Winter/The Guardian

Another logger said: “We have to work. Are they [the blockaders] going to pay our wages today? If we don’t work, we don’t get paid.”

The blockaders refused to let Simpson’s team pass, and eventually the frustrated crew left. They returned on Tuesday to hand-deliver a court injunction ordering the blockades taken down and setting the stage for arrests. Similar scenes are playing out at strategic blockades across the area.

A forest defender drives though an old cut block near the Fairy Creek watershed.
A forest defender drives though an old cut block near the Fairy Creek watershed. Illustration: Jesse Winter/The Guardian

After the loggers left the Caycuse blockade, activists went to work building fortifications, a giant kitchen tent, and even an outhouse made entirely of discarded old-growth cedar.

The movement started more than eight months ago, when an impromptu blockade of 12 people sprang up to stop road building into the headwaters of the Fairy Creek watershed, one of the last untouched watersheds in the region.

But what started as a campaign to stop logging in a single watershed has grown thanks to widespread frustration with the British Columbia government’s broader approach to old-growth logging.

A blockader counts the rings in a recently cut old-growth cedar tree in the mountains above the Caycuse watershed.
A blockader counts the rings in a recently cut old-growth cedar tree in the mountains above the Caycuse watershed. Illustration: Jesse Winter/The Guardian
Blockaders hold a meeting around a fire after turning away an old-growth logging crew.
Blockaders hold a meeting around a fire after turning away an old-growth logging crew. Illustration: Jesse Winter/The Guardian

Activists and forestry experts say a tiny fraction of the province’s giant old-growth trees are left standing, and an immediate moratorium on cutting them is needed. Meanwhile, forestry companies and the government say the cut must continue in order to protect jobs in an industry that has experienced steep job losses and mill closures in recent years.

The logging company Teal Jones Group says its plans for cutting in Fairy Creek have been mischaracterized, and the trees it wants to cut are critical for supporting hundreds of jobs.

“Most of Fairy Creek is a protected forest reserve or unstable terrain and not available for harvesting,” said Gerrie Kotze, the company’s vice-president.

Kotze said Teal Jones’ planned cut was a small area at the head of the watershed. The company would harvest the trees with care “and mill every log we cut right here in BC,” he said.

The government is caught between its election promises to protect old-growth forests and what it says is an undue risk to jobs in the forestry industry.

“We want to make sure people can appreciate old-growth trees for years to come, while supporting a sustainable forest sector for workers and communities,” said the forestry minister, Katrine Conroy, in a statement.

Activists erect a structure at logging road blockade on southern Vancouver Island.
Activists erect a structure at logging road blockade on southern Vancouver Island. Illustration: Jesse Winter/The Guardian
Activists build wooden walkways in a stand of ancient old growth forest that is set to be logged in the near future.
Activists build wooden walkways in a stand of ancient old growth forest that is set to be logged in the near future. Illustration: Jesse Winter/The Guardian

In September, the government released a long-awaited old growth strategic review. Citing the “high risk to loss of biodiversity” and “widespread lack of confidence in the system of managing forests”, the report’s authors made 14 recommendations, including immediately deferring all old-growth logging in at-risk ecosystems, all of which were accepted by government.

But critics say after more than six months, the government is not moving fast enough while chainsaws continue to snarl and ancient trees continue to fall.

Rachel Holt, an independent ecologist, argues that the government is drastically overstating how much giant old growth still exists. The latest government reports say just over 13m hectares of total primary forest considered very old, or ancient, is still standing. Holt and her colleagues agree.

“But the vast majority of that – about 80% – consists of small or very small trees,” Holt said.

Members of the Rainforest Flying Squad blocking a logging road stay warm around a fire after setting up a new blockade.
Members of the Rainforest Flying Squad blocking a logging road stay warm around a fire after setting up a new blockade. Illustration: Jesse Winter/The Guardian

Giant, ancient trees are the bones of coastal temperate rainforests. Whole ecosystems can reside within their vast, moss-covered branches. To think of them as just pretty things to look at missed the point, Holt said.

The new blockades are international. On his computer in Washington state, 17-year-old Joshua Wright has followed the developments closely. Despite working remotely, the young film-maker is a key organizer with the movement, which calls itself the Rainforest Flying Squad.

Wright, who grew up on Vancouver Island, said it took moving to the US to realize how rare British Columbia’s remaining old growth is.

“If we don’t stop logging now, in three to five years there’s not going to be any old growth left,” said Wright.

Read the original article