Ancient Forest Alliance demands province set aside money to buy private lands near MacMillan Provincial Park
Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner Andrea Inness stands close to a stream on Mt. Horne, the hillside above the world-famous Cathedral Grove, which she says is being encroached on by old growth logging in the area. (TJ Watt/Ancient Forest Alliance)
Conservationists on Vancouver Island have renewed a demand that the province set aside money to buy private lands to stop the logging of old growth trees.
The call came this week after the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) and the Port Alberni Watershed-Forest Alliance drew attention to logging happening close to one of the most-visited stands of protected old growth trees in the province — Cathedral Grove in MacMillan Provincial Park.
Since late 2019 Mosaic Forest Management has been logging on Mt. Horne, which is uphill from the park known for its ancient Douglas firs, some of which are up to 800 years old.
Conservationists say that old growth trees in dense forests support biodiversity and are important areas to protect in the fight against climate change. They are also prized by loggers for their value.
Campaigners against the logging on Mt. Horne argue that that by cutting close to the park, and deforesting the hillside above it, Cathedral Grove will become more at risk to windstorms, erosion and the loss of habitat.
In 1997, a severe windstorm toppled hundreds of trees and destroyed sections of the trail in Cathedral Grove.
“Its ecological integrity continues to be undermined as the B.C. government allows clear cut logging to encroach closer and closer to the MacMillan Provincial Park boundary,” said TJ Watt, with the AFA in a release.
An old growth area logged by Mosaic Forest Management on Mt. Horne, the hillside above the world-famous Cathedral Grove. Second-growth forests are in the foreground. (TJ Watt/Ancient Forest Alliance)
Watt and others have, for years, asked that the province create a natural lands acquisition fund to identify critical areas for biodiversity or with First Nations cultural value and purchase them from private owners.
Vancouver Island’s Capital Regional District has a Land Acquisition Fund, which collects a $20 a year levy from households. Since its creation in 2000, it has purchased and protected around 5,000 hectares of land on southern Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands.
Conservationists argue, in this case of Mt. Horne, acquiring land near the park through a similar provincial fund would allow it to expand and protect more old growth areas.
The province says there is no plan to do so however. Its latest budget, with a surplus of more than $200 million, set aside $13 million to help revitalize the forestry sector in lock-step with First Nations, but that does not include money for buying private lands.
The Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development (FLNRORD) says the area being logged on Mt. Horne is managed by the Private Managed Forests Lands Act and is subject to dozens of regulations including provisions for protecting critical fish and wildlife habitat, water quality, soil conservation and reforestation.
Reserve areas set aside
Mosaic said in 2019, prior to cutting trees in the area, registered professional biologists surveyed the area and did not identify any species at risk or endangered ecosystems.
It also said that, in the past, it has donated or sold more than 44,000 hectares of private land for conservation on Vancouver Island.
“Most of this area represents the highest ecological quality forest areas in our land base,” said Karen Brandt, director of government relations and strategic engagement with Mosaic.
“In our working forest, registered professional biologists identify and set aside additional reserve areas for high-quality habitat for ungulates [deer] and threatened species like marbled murrelet.”
The province is currently undergoing an old growth strategic review. Many groups, including the AFA, recommended during public engagement that a land acquisition fund be included in future policies.
Legislative amendments based on that feedback is expected this spring, with regulations in force by 2021.
The red ticker shows the approximate location of Mt. Horne, where old growth logging takes place near MacMillan Provincial Park and Cathedral Grove, a protected area for old growth trees since 1947. (Google Maps)
NOTE: The BC government’s weak regulations on private managed forest lands and sales of Mosaic private lands for conservation are inadequate measures and have failed to stem the large-scale destruction of BC’s globally rare, coastal old-growth forests.
According to BC government data and satellite imagery, only 8% of original productive old-growth forests are protected in parks and Old Growth Management Areas on BC’s south coast.
http://15.157.244.121/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/mt-horne-old-growth-logging-16x9-6.jpg8441500TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2020-03-08 18:08:232024-06-17 15:53:54Cathedral Grove at risk from old growth logging uphill from popular site, say conservationists
Environmental groups are calling for government action to protect the forests surrounding one of B.C.’s most famous old-growth forests, Cathedral Grove. Linda Aylesworth reports.
http://15.157.244.121/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Screen-Shot-2020-03-09-at-11.04.18-AM.png6431238TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2020-03-05 18:05:522023-04-06 19:07:15Logging concerns around Vancouver Island’s famous old-growth forest
The BC government wants to hear from the public as it reviews old growth logging policies.
The Tyee, OPINION- Joe Martin January 28, 2020
Joe Martin is a master canoe carver and artist from the Tla-o-qui-aht Nation, a tribe of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth First Nations, located in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island.
The unprotected Eden Grove Ancient Forest, located on Edinburgh Mountain near Port Renfrew, BC, in Pacheedaht First Nation territory. Photo by TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance.
The B.C. government is reviewing its policies to manage the province’s old growth forests and seeking public input.
This should be the opportunity for the government to start righting the mistakes of the past.
This new approach must obey the law of nature, under which we all live. This means we must understand Earth’s ecological limits and learn to respect them and live within them.
In Nuu-chah-nulth culture, the teachings of responsibility and respect for the land are passed down by our Elders as soon as our lives are conceived, and they continue until we die. These teachings are cornerstones of our culture, but they are foreign concepts to the provincial government and industry, who view our old growth forests as limitless resources to be plundered.
In my 12 years as a logger in Clayoquot Sound, I witnessed the destruction of some of the biggest trees and finest old growth forests I had ever seen. I witnessed the decimation of salmon streams, once teeming with steelhead, chum and coho, due to the clearcutting of entire valleys and landslides on the steep mountain slopes.
Although there have been significant conservation achievements in Clayoquot Sound through Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks, the destruction of old growth forests continues throughout much of B.C., and the province has continually failed to acknowledge how much has already been lost.
I was eventually fired from my job as a logger for refusing to haul two big logs across a salmon-bearing stream, knowing the logs would destroy key salmon habitat. I felt as though a weight had been lifted. I had become increasingly bothered by how horrible it was, what was happening to the land, so I joined in the effort to save the forest ecosystems I had once been paid to log.
I also took up fishing with my father, who worked as a fisherman, hunter, trapper and canoe builder. Throughout my life he taught me those skills and about how to respect the land, how to avoid disturbing the creeks in the forest to protect the coho, and the protocol to follow when selecting a cedar to cut for our cultural items — spending time in the forest, observing the birds and wildlife and avoiding trees with eagle’s nests or bear or cougar dens close by.
Our people practised for abundance rather than “sustainability.” To me, sustainability means keeping our natural resources on a lifeline until they’re eventually gone or until industry has finally had enough and moved on. Practising for abundance is making sure that your grandchildren won’t have to work as hard as you did. It’s ensuring that when we leave this garden for them, they will have everything they need.
This abundance is what allowed the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples to develop such a rich culture, which depends heavily on the availability of old growth red cedar in particular. We use cedar bark and wood for many cultural items such as woven hats, dugout canoes, totems, bentwood boxes and regalia. Our relationship and respect for these trees, the land and wildlife is represented and reinforced when we create and use these items, and we continue to rely on healthy forest ecosystems to maintain our culture.
Old-growth logging on steep slopes can impact rivers and streams, potentially damaging sensitive salmon habitat. Photo by TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance.
The destruction of old growth forests, for Nuu-chah-nulth peoples, equates to a loss of identity. The loss of connection to the land and of our languages threatens our survival and is the cause of many of the social problems in our communities.
Many communities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, are struggling due to the destruction of forests caused by provincial government mismanagement. On Vancouver Island, about 80 per cent of big-tree forests have been cut and replaced with tree plantations. Much of what remains are bogs or scrub.
Yet companies are still clearcut logging across most of B.C., destroying rivers and streams and harming salmon and other wildlife. Jobs have been lost due to the failure of the province to stop industry from cleaning out the best old growth in the valleys and support slower, careful forestry and processing second-growth timber instead. With so little old growth forest remaining, now is the time for the province to act.
We must listen to what Indigenous wisdom and science tells us, which is that we need to protect more forests to ensure their integrity and our own survival. The B.C. government needs to heed this wisdom and science in its old growth strategy. That means deciding what must be protected before deciding what can or can’t be logged. It means prioritizing biodiversity, fisheries, monumental trees, carbon storage, Indigenous culture, recreation and clean water over timber.
This must be coupled with support for Indigenous communities and economies. Without economic alternatives, many nations do not have the option of refusing logging in their territories.
The author Joe Martin, photographed in his workshop in Tofino, BC, next to a traditional dugout canoe made of old growth red cedar. Photo by TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance.
We must all make a living, and if there are few employment alternatives to destructive resource extraction, what choice is there? None. And so our lands and our culture are sacrificed. The government must provide funding for First Nations’ economic diversification to create jobs while allowing remaining old-growth forests and culturally important areas to be protected.
The Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks in Clayoquot Sound are a good example. Tourism and recreation are big economic drivers here, and there is much work to be done in the tribal parks like building and maintaining infrastructure, which could lead a lot of our people away from jobs in logging and fish farming. I believe this would make the whole community much happier and it would be a great investment for future generations.
The province must recognize the cultural significance of the old growth forests that play such an important role in our lives. They must legally recognize and support Indigenous protected areas like tribal parks, starting in Clayoquot Sound, but also across B.C., and work with nations to support Indigenous-led land-use planning. It’s an important part of our peoples governing ourselves.
We have a responsibility to our future generations, and to uphold the teachings of our ancestors. We have to learn how to live together, how to listen to each other, and how to manage our remaining old-growth forests for abundance for the sake of our children and grandchildren.
The B.C. government is accepting public feedback on its proposed provincial Old Growth Strategy until Friday. For more details and to provide input, go here.
http://15.157.244.121/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/eden-grove-looking-up.jpg10001500TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2020-01-28 20:32:542024-07-30 16:27:20Old Growth Forests Are Vital to Indigenous Cultures. We Need to Protect What’s Left
Conservationist Ken Wu has chronicled B.C.’s ancient trees and given them catchy names, hoping it will build support to keep them standing. Now, the province faces crucial choices about logging, biodiversity, Indigenous rights and the fate of the forests.
The Globe and Mail January 7th, 2020 San Juan Valley, Vancouver Island
Graduate student Ian Thomas and conservationist Ken Wu marvel at an old-growth Sitka spruce, dubbed ‘Gaston,’ in Vancouver Island’s San Juan Valley floodplain.PHOTOGRAPHY BY MELISSA RENWICK/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
On a foggy day in November in the heart of a primeval forest, conservationist Ken Wu and biology graduate student Ian Thomas were standing at the base of a Sitka spruce, looking way up.
“Gaston!” Mr. Wu pronounced, pointing out the thick branches in the upper reaches of the 500-year-old tree, in which he sees the bicep-flexing character of his young daughter’s favourite Disney animation, Beauty and the Beast.
More than 80 years ago, in his collection of poems, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, T.S. Eliot provided exacting instructions for the naming of cats. The conventions around the naming of ancient trees is a less complicated affair.
Mr. Wu, who heads the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance, hunts big trees and gives them nicknames, hoping to build public support for protecting some of the last remaining old-growth forests on Vancouver Island. His nicknames aim to be as catchy as an advertising jingle. “We don’t have the luxury to be boring,” he explains.
“It’s just a fun way to draw attention – in a viral way, hopefully – to a magnificent, endangered grove.” He named Big Lonely Doug, a Douglas fir that has been identified as the second-largest in Canada, which stands alone in the middle of a clear-cut. He helped win protection for nearby Avatar Grove so its trees would be spared the same fate.
A fern brushes against a tree branch in Eden Grove, one of the old-growth forest regions Mr. Wu has explored.
These groves, spread out over roughly 500 hectares of the San Juan Valley floodplain, are largely unprotected. Two-thirds of the known old-growth forests here are on private forestry land, and one-third are on Crown land, within the operating area of BC Timber Sales.
The province has approved sections of land in the valley for logging, and Mr. Wu and Mr. Thomas are racing to catalog what they hope to save before the logging trucks roll in.
Forestry remains a major economic driver in British Columbia for many communities, and the provincial government is under pressure to protect the industry, which depends on a steady supply of both old- and second-growth logs to feed the province’s sawmills.
The tree Mr. Wu dubbed Gaston stands in a rugged section of Vancouver Island’s west coast. Sitka spruce are the largest in the world, and have been found reaching close to 100 metres in height next door in the Carmanah Valley. In these wet valleys on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, the trees thrive in a foggy, boggy micro-climate that incites fast growth.
Together, the pair have charted 22 similar groves on this floodplain that features trees no less than 250 years of age. Mr. Thomas, who ought to be finishing his thesis on bird song, has been distracted for weeks, scouring hectares of the valley bottom.
Port Renfrew, B.C., calls itself the Tall Tree Capital of Canada.
To visit some of these groves, we drive past the town of Port Renfrew (which bills itself as the Tall Tree Capital of Canada), eventually turning onto a rough and narrow gravel road. Then, on foot, we pick our way through a forest floor thick with giant sword ferns and lichen-draped salmonberries.
“I love these ecosystems, but it’s a hellish sort of bushwhack through a lot of it,” Mr. Wu warns.
This is what Mr. Wu refers to as the Serengeti of Vancouver Island’s rainforest: It is home to Roosevelt elk, black-tailed deer, wolves, cougars and black bears.
The easiest part of the hike is where the elk have broken a trail; their fresh hoofprints after the recent rain suggest we are following a busy thoroughfare.
The forest understory is quite unlike what is found in the region’s second-growth forests – there is a luscious disorder here, with branches draped in solid curtains of moss, trees growing out of the decay of fallen nurse logs. In one grove, a young hemlock tree grows up and into the side of a massive spruce. Perhaps one day it will take over the space.
It is not a wilderness – the Pacheedaht First Nation people have occupied these lands for thousands of years, and their ancient villages and campsites have been recorded up and down the San Juan river, an important spawning ground for chinook salmon and green sturgeon.
Mr. Thomas climbs ‘Gaston’ to take a closer look.
“Gaston” is growing about two kilometres east of a former summer fish camp near Fairy Lake. In these forests, the Pacheedaht have harvested red cedar to make long-houses, masks and canoes. Spruce roots were used to make rope, fishing line and thread.
Yet as we hack our way further into the forest, any hint of human intervention disappears. The vibe is very lost-in-time.
“This feels like a dinosaur should be stomping around,” Mr. Wu says.
These floodplains that nurture both old-growth Sitka spruce and salmonberries are rare, classified by the Ministry of Environment as “red-listed” ecosystems – endangered or threatened.
However, these trees could be up on the auction block at any moment. A large cedar here can be worth $50,000 to a logging company. The old giant Gaston would likely be destined for two-by-fours, if it ends up in a sawmill.
Mr. Wu, right, and T.J. Watt of the Ancient Forest Alliance walk down a logging road on Edinburgh Mountain near Port Renfrew. The forest was recently logged by the forestry company Teal-Jones.Mr. Wu sits on one of the felled Douglas fir stumps. He has spent eight years documenting the ancient trees of the San Juan Valley, which he thinks of as the Serengeti of Vancouver Island.
Today, B.C.’s provincial government, the New Democratic Party, is poised to make some critical decisions about the future of old growth.
Doug Donaldson, Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, appointed an independent panel last summer to consult with British Columbians about how to manage old-growth forests.
The deadline for public response to a questionnaire is Jan. 31, and the panel’s recommendations are due back in the spring of 2020. When he announced the panel, Mr. Donaldson said in a statement that he is “committed to developing a new thoughtful and measured approach to managing this resource for the benefit of all British Columbians.”
Mr. Donaldson has also promised what he describes as significant amendments to the Forest and Range Practices Act, after his initial consultations showed strong public support to protect old growth forests.
But B.C. has yet to say how it will assist Canada in its commitment to meet its targets in a global effort to stem the tide of biodiversity loss.
The government is under intense pressure to keep logging. The B.C. forest sector is in crisis. Mills are closing as the timber supply shrinks and trade disputes drive up costs. The labour-friendly provincial government, now 2½ years into its current mandate, is wary of measures to curb logging and to date has offered few, and small, victories to conservationists.
Moss grows on Douglas maple trees near Port Renfrew. B.C.’s government is under increasing pressure to continue logging in old-growth forests like these.
In December, forest industry workers gathered on the front steps of the B.C. Legislature in Victoria to demand the government intervene in a months-long strike by 3,000 Western Forest Products employees on Vancouver Island.
Ron Tucker was among the protesters. A second generation logger who now owns his own small logging outfit, Mr. Tucker represents the dilemma for the government.
These workers come from NDP-held ridings. While ecologists such as Mr. Wu say the industry needs help to adapt to second-growth logging and more secondary manufacturing, the protesters say B.C. has already created enough protected areas.
“It would shut the forest industry down if you took old-growth logging out of the program,” Mr. Tucker said in an interview. He works in a tree farm licence on the north end of Vancouver Island where the harvest is one-fifth second growth, and four-fifths old growth.
“This industry is far too important for this province to lose. It is still the biggest economic driver in B.C. I mean, they’ve got new hospitals planned, and new schools planned, and all these big expenditures,” he said. “Without forestry, there’s no way that they can can do what they say they’re gonna do.”
The image of Big Lonely Doug does not sway Mr. Tucker and his colleagues, who just want to get back to work and meet their mortgage payments.
“I’m not gonna deny clearcuts are ugly. They are. And [conservationists] take pictures of this ugly clearcut and then basically go back to the general public and say this is what logging is. It’s so far from the truth. I’ve been in logging my whole life. I’m actually almost falling timber that was planted when I first started hauling logs.”
Just outside Port Renfrew stands Big Lonely Doug, which was saved from clear-cutting in 2011.
Mr. Wu argues there is far more to be gained by leaving these forests intact. Old-growth forests can foster tourism and recreation jobs, while supporting endangered species, clean water, wild salmon and carbon sequestration to contribute to the battle against climate change.
His Endangered Ecosystems Alliance has called for a moratorium on logging of the most intact old-growth tracts. They want funding to establish Indigenous Protected Areas – tribal parks – that would allow local First Nations to manage the lands. And they want government to offer incentives and regulations to encourage the development of a value-added, second-growth forest industry so that people such as Mr. Tucker can still make a living, without threatening the biodiversity that depends on old-growth forests.
The Indigenous component would be critical to this, as many First Nations communities rely on forestry partnerships to build their own economies. That includes the Pacheedaht First Nation. In September, B.C.’s chief forester increased the amount of timber available to be harvested in this region, through Tree Farm Licence 61, because the forests are growing faster than estimated in the previous timber supply review. The Pacheedaht First Nation has a joint venture to log in TFL61, which includes 2,900 hectares of forests that are older than 240 years. Any new protected areas here will have to provide for the human well-being of the people who have traditionally occupied these lands.
Mr. Watt looks up at a western red cedar in Jurassic Grove, an unprotected stretch of old-growth forest along the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail. For generations, these forests have been home to the Pacheedaht people, who build longhouses and carve masks from red cedar wood.‘I love these ecosystems, but it’s a hellish sort of bushwhack through a lot of it,’ Mr. Wu says.
Mr. Wu’s quest for big trees along the San Juan river started eight years ago, when he was running the Avatar Grove campaign in the next valley over. He suspected there were some stands of old growth hidden in the mature second-growth forests, but he didn’t have time to explore.
It was Mr. Thomas, who happened to take a tour of old growth with Mr. Wu, who sparked the hunt. “I was blown away. It’s incredible this still exists,” Mr. Thomas said as we explored the valley. He started studying satellite maps of the San Juan Valley bottom to plan his next visit. “I wanted to check out all these groves when I should have been writing my thesis.”
For a biologist, the San Juan Valley floodplain is a gold mine of eco-diversity. Standing at the base of a 300-year-old tree, Mr. Thomas sees a natural sculpture that is impossible to replicate in a second-growth tree plantation. He points out where bats can roost, and how the massive roots that grew over a long-decayed nurse log have left an opening for a black bear’s den. A pine marten has retreated up the trunk to safety while we invade its turf. The diversity of form and function makes space for them all.
“We hit the big-tree jackpot here,” Mr. Wu says.
This year, the provincial government will decide whether it is a jackpot to be protected, or harvested.
Overview: Where B.C.’s old forests grow
Some of Vancouver Island’s last old-growth forests can be found in the San Juan Valley floodplain, the traditional territory of the Pacheedaht people. Sitka spruce can grow to gigantic size there. But two-thirds of these forests are on private forestry land, and the rest on Crown land. Across B.C., Old Growth Management Areas protect ancient forests from development, but the province’s plan for safeguarding old-growth trees is now under review by an independent panel.
http://15.157.244.121/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Screen-Shot-2020-01-10-at-11.35.18-AM.png6431010TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2020-01-07 17:30:002024-07-30 16:27:22For Vancouver Island’s old-growth explorers, naming trees is a delight – but saving them is a challenge
Logging of ancient fir trees in Nahmint Valley is expected to continue despite investigations that point to violations of old-growth protections by the government’s timber auction agency.
Logging of ancient fir trees in Nahmint Valley is expected to continue despite investigations that point to violations of old-growth protections by the government’s timber auction agency.
Why?
“That’s the way it’s always been,” said Brandy Lauder, Hupacasath First Nations councillor and natural resource manager.
Lauder doesn’t expect any great consequence from an ongoing investigation of Nahmint logging by the B.C. Forest Practices Board and wasn’t surprised to learn the results of internal investigations by the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations.
“The only way this is going to change is if (Premier John) Horgan himself gets involved and says this is going to stop,” Lauder said. “Otherwise it’s just going to carry on.”
Reports on internal investigations, one by the ministry’s Compliance and Enforcement Branch (CEB), were obtained through Freedom of Information requests from the Victoria-based conservation group Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA). After visiting Nahmint logging sites in 2018, the group lodged a series of complaints against B.C. Timber Sales, the ministry agency responsible for auctioning timber cut blocks in Crown forest.
The CEB investigation concluded the Nahmint forest stewardship plan doesn’t comply with old-growth biodiversity protections in VILUP, the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan, and warned of long-term impacts on a land base designated as a special management zone.
“Our assessment suggests that the Nahmint demonstrates failure of professional reliance at maintaining publicly agreed upon values and priorities,” the report concludes.
While there has been some consultation with First Nations over logging in the Nahmint, Tseshaht and Hupacasath have been negotiating with the province for greater authority over forest management in the valley, unceded territory 30 kilometres south of Port Alberni. Tseshaht is aiming for a cedar management strategy and share decision-making as part of talks around a reconciliation agreement. Ucluelet also considers Nahmint part of its traditional territory.
“It’s constant negotiation,” Lauder said.
While some limited protections are in place for sacred sites and cultural values, they fall far short of expectations in a valley cherished by all, one of few left unlogged until recent years.
“They’re only protecting what is non-operable,” such as steep-slope trees that would require heli-logging, Lauder said. “It’s really restrictive when they try to do this.”
According to forest ministry figures, there are 250 ancient trees protected within the Nahmint’s old-growth forest and 2,760 hectares of the valley will be left in its natural state.
Special management zones require an all-encompassing plan for biodiversity, all that needs protection in the valley, the “monumentals” as well as the trees that will grow to be monumental and the plants and animals that rely on them, Lauder explained.
In August 2018, Hupacasath council called on the provincial government to halt logging, a call echoed by environmental groups. Chief Councillor Steve Tatoosh raised concerns about unnecessary harvesting of old growth in contradiction of the NDP’s 2017 campaign promises, undermining government-to-government consultation.
Last week, Green Party MLA Adam Olsen raised the Nahmint controversy in the B.C. legislature.
“Two separate investigations appear to have found that B.C. Timber Sales are auctioning off cut blocks that are violating their own rules,” Olsen said. He raised the report’s recommendations to halt logging and put future logging plans on hold in the Nahmint. “Yet the logging of this pristine valley continues with no end in sight.”
Responding to the criticism, Forests Minister Doug Donaldson defended the government’s track record. Donaldson cited the province’s legacy tree policy, which they promised to strengthen after AFA raised public objections to old-growth logging in the Nahmint. An old-growth strategic review panel will be travelling the province to report back next year with recommendations on strategic policy, he added.
“Staff in my ministry are currently working as part of a working group with First Nations and staff from B.C. Timber Sales (BCTS) to legalize old growth management areas (OGMA) in the Nahmint Valley,” Donaldson said. “This involves using new and up-to-date information and incorporating other important values including legacy trees and large cultural trees to ensure additional protection.”
Lauder said the OMGAs in their current form don’t fully represent the biodiversity that needs to be protected. AFA contends that the Nahmint investigations confirm too much old growth forest is being logged in the valley, a practice they say extends across B.C.
“Legalizing the OGMAs would essentially allow BCTS get away with years of non-compliant logging in the Nahmint Valley,” said Andrea Inness of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “But it’s not enough to ensure that future planning is compliant with B.C.’s outdated, pro-industry laws. There is an urgent need for sweeping changes to B.C.’s forest system, starting with legislation that prioritizes biodiversity and ecological integrity over timber supply.”
FLNRO maintains the internal investigations found no violations.
“The CEB investigation did not conclude there was a violation,” a ministry spokesperson stated, responding to questions via email. “The investigation into compliance with the Forest Stewardship Plan was identified as being outside of the scope of the CEB investigation.”
Referring specifically to OMGAs, BCTS maintains that the draft Nahmint landscape unit plan achieves VILUP requirements for old-growth ecosystems, biodiversity, wildlife habitat and cultural trees valued by First Nations.
Despite the apparent contradiction and an ongoing review by the B.C. Forest Practices Board, BCTS plans to auction an additional 490,000 cubic metres of Nahmint trees next spring, overriding the government’s own protective order and the area’s special status.
“The Nahmint Valley was never intended to be logged like they are,” said Bryce Casavant, a Port Alberni resident who conducted the CEB investigation and later left the forests ministry.
The valley was specifically designated a special management zone, he said. “Those intentions of conserving that area have not been abided by.”
Non-compliance and over-harvesting are fairly regular occurrences throughout the coast, but this case was different, Casavant said. Nahmint Valley is one of only two areas in B.C. designated as special management zones in recognition of the need to preserve biodiversity and old growth. He concluded that OMGAs are out of date and inadequate for ensuring old-growth biodiversity.
Despite a decade of logging, there may still be time to properly protect the valley’s old growth in keeping with the land use plan, Casavant said. The forest practices review is scheduled for completion by year’s end.
“They don’t point fingers,” Inness said of the forest practices board. “They will do a thorough job and they will make recommendations.”
Results will be made public, Donaldson said in the legislature last week.
AFA, meanwhile, continues to call for an immediate halt to logging in the Nahmint and other old-growth “hot spots,” urging the province to modernize its land-use planning in partnership with First Nations.
What they hope not to see is more ancient giants levelled in the Nahmint Valley.
“This is unacceptable,” Inness said. “The B.C. regulatory system was already failing to protect biodiversity.”
Check out this great Weather Network video about BC’s endangered old-growth forests, featuring the AFA’s TJ Watt, Big Lonely Doug (Canada’s 2nd largest Douglas-fir tree), and nearby Eden Grove in Pacheedaht territory near Port Renfrew.
http://15.157.244.121/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Screen-Shot-2019-10-22-at-1.25.58-PM.png6991211TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2019-10-18 20:22:092024-07-15 17:25:55Meet ‘Big Lonely Doug’ And Other Historic Trees That Need Saving in BC
The AFA’s Andrea Inness was interviewed on CFAX last week about the damning results of the Ministry of Forests investigation into BC Timber Sales’ logging of old-growth forests in Nahmint Valley. Hear her breakdown of the findings, what they mean, and how the BC government should respond.
http://15.157.244.121/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Nahmint-Valley-May-2018-806.jpg8001200TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2019-10-10 23:00:542024-07-30 16:59:28THE OLD GROWTH TREES ARE IN DANGER
Watch this Global News story, where Forests Minister Doug Donaldson manages to dodge responsibility for BC Timber Sales’ non-compliance in the Nahmint Valley.
Instead of taking ownership, this government is choosing to bury its head in the sand, silence its own Compliance and Enforcement Branch by stripping them of their authority to investigate BCTS, and look the other way while tens of thousands of endangered ancient forests are liquidated in BC every year.
The NDP government needs to do much more than protect 54 of BC’s biggest trees, starting with placing an immediate halt on logging in the Nahmint Valley and other old-growth ‘hotspots’ before BC’s last, largely intact ancient forests are gone for good.
http://15.157.244.121/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Screen-Shot-2019-10-08-at-1.45.47-PM.png269514TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2019-10-07 18:09:192024-07-30 16:59:30Conservationists attack NDP government over old-growth logging
Two investigations, released under Freedom of Information laws, show a government agency ignored best practices and available data when auctioning cutblocks in the Nahmint Valley — home to some of Vancouver Island’s last remaining stands of unlogged ancient forest — where clearcutting continues to this day
Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner TJ Watt surveys a sprawling clearcut filled with rare, old-growth Douglas-fir trees. Watt told The Narwhal that despite multiple and ongoing investigations into BC Timber Sales’ auctioning of ancient forest in the Nahmint Valley, he worries the agency will “just continue on with business as usual.” Photo: TJ Watt
Some of you may have already seen the pictures.
Vast stands of old-growth douglas firs and cedars, toppled. A grim-looking individual, perched atop a stump, staggering in size, its history harkening back to pre-colonial times, sap oozing beneath their feet.
British Columbians are near-immune to such images these days, with old-growth clearcutting a common sight and common practice. But something about the images coming out of Vancouver Island’s Nahmint Valley struck a chord.
A photo gallery posted by the Ancient Forest Alliance to Facebook in May of 2018 became a near-immediate viral sensation, being shared more than 4,800 times.
The organization, during an ancient forest expedition with the Port Alberni Watershed-Forest Alliance, found exceptionally large douglas fir, including the fifth and ninth widest ever recorded in B.C., scattered among the remains of an extensive clearcutting operation.
The groups documented old-growth cedar stumps measuring a staggering 12 feet (3.7 metres) in diameter.
Something felt wrong about the scope and scale of the logging operations in the Nahmint Valley to the expeditioners.
And they were right.
Investigations point to government agency at heart of B.C.’s old-growth logging
Following their expedition, the Ancient Forest Alliance submitted a complaint to the compliance and enforcement branch at B.C.’s Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations.
The findings of two subsequent investigations would confirm a deep-rooted suspicion that BC Timber Sales (BCTS), the government agency responsible for auctioning provincial logging permits, was thwarting protection rules and violating the principles of old-growth management plans.
The results of those investigations, obtained by the Ancient Forest Alliance through a Freedom of Information request, and reviewed by The Narwhal, show BC Timber Sales is not complying with rules designed to ensure sufficient old-growth forest is retained to avoid loss of biodiversity.
One of these investigations, conducted by a compliance and enforcement officer with the Ministry of Forests, recommended logging in the Nahmint Valley be halted, that future harvesting tenures be put on hold and that the agency should be prevented from establishing Nahmint old-growth management areas — which are created to protect old growth and achieve biodiversity targets — while problems are addressed to avoid legitimizing ongoing overcutting.
The second investigation was conducted outside the ministry and came to similar conclusions, documents released through the Freedom of Information request revealed.
Yet despite the clear and unequivocal tone of recommendations made by investigators in the summer of 2018, little change has been effected on the ground, where clearcutting in the Nahmint has continued unabated.
“None of the recommendations have been implemented,” Andrea Inness, Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner, told The Narwhal.
Compliance officer told to ‘close the investigation down’
The ministry report was conducted by senior compliance and enforcement specialist Bryce Casavant, who is no longer working for the provincial government.
“When I left government a few weeks ago, logging was continuing and there were 490,000 cubic metres scheduled to go to market by next spring,” Casavant told The Narwhal.
“Suffice it to say they are planning on extensive logging in that area despite the findings of the report,” he said.
Making the situation more frustrating, Casavant said he was told during the investigation that, in future, the compliance and enforcement branch would no longer investigate BC Timber Sales as government would not charge the organization.
“I got told at one point to close the investigation down and not to write a report and just send an internal memo and they would sort it out,” Casavant said.
BC Timber Sales, which was created in 2003 by the former BC Liberal government, manages 20 per cent of the province’s annual allowable cut, making it the biggest tenure holder in B.C.
When asked whether the compliance and enforcement branch is still able to investigate BC Timber Sales, a ministry spokeswoman, in an emailed response, said “compliance and enforcement can investigate BCTS and they can charge BCTS with infractions.”
But Casavant, who now works for Pacific Wild as a conservation policy analyst, said he was left with no doubt that investigations into the timber sales agency were not welcome.
BC Timber Sales and the law enforcement services at the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations are closely related and so, when problems arise, the answer is to come up with some fancy spin-doctoring, Casavant said.
“The problem is that there’s no true independence in the law enforcement service and forestry officers. The government will tell you that they are not related to BCTS, but in practice it’s not true. They all work out of the same office, side by side, day in and day out. They share the same deputy minister. There’s no true separation,” he said.
The timber sales agency is treated more favourably than other logging corporations, Casavant said.
“They are not treated the same as everyone else.”
The second, independent investigation found that planning for old-growth management areas appears ad hoc, “aiming to achieve the bare minimum required legally, rather than following good conservation design.”
“Our assessment suggests that the Nahmint demonstrates failure of professional reliance at maintaining publicly-agreed-upon values and priorities,” the report found.
Inness said it might be a good thing existing draft old-growth management areas in the Nahmint haven’t been legalized.
“The planning that went into the delineation of those OGMAs was flawed. When those areas were mapped, when those lines were drawn on maps, BCTS didn’t even look at ecosystem data or consider best practices,” she said.
Inness further suggested those draft areas were designed to support a bigger take for logging companies.
In addition to the two 2018 investigations, a Forest Practices Board investigation into the Nahmint is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
That investigation means the ministry cannot comment, according to a spokeswoman.
“The Forest Practices Board is currently investigating. That is all the information we can provide at this time,” ministry spokeswoman Dawn Makarowski said in an emailed response to questions from The Narwhal.
Despite investigations, old-growth logging continues in Nahmint Valley
On the ground in the Nahmint Valley — under parcels auctioned by BC Timber Sales — giant trees continue to fall, threatening habitat for species such as the marbled murrelet and northern goshawk.
The agency has plans underway to auction off more than 400,000 cubic metres of old growth and, despite a specific recommendation to pause such actions, BC Timber Sales is moving to have draft Nahmint old-growth plans legalized.
In the formal complaint, submitted to the Ministry of Forests, Ancient Forest Alliance’s Inness wrote operations in the Nahmint appear to be in violation of the official land-use plan for Vancouver Island.
“After walking through various recent cutblocks planned by BC Timber Sales in the Nahmint Valley, we believe BC Timber Sales’ forest stewardship plan fails to meet the results and strategies set out in the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan … that rare and underrepresented site series and surrogates be represented and protected,” Inness wrote.
The plan identified the Nahmint Valley as a special management zone, which prioritizes “environmental, recreational and cultural/heritage sites” rather than old-growth logging, but the investigation found that, although mapping of the valley’s unique biological features exists, the best available data was not used to protect unique ecosystems, retain biodiversity or protect large diameter trees.
The ministry’s internal inspection found logging in the Nahmint suggests a “high likelihood of government noncompliance” with the land use plan.
Investigators concluded that there appear to be “legacy compliance issues” with timber harvesting in the Nahmint — meaning the overcutting probably dates back 18 years.
This failure to implement proper protections for the Nahmint is what led investigators to warn BC Timber Sales should not legalize new old-growth management zones until those failures have been addressed.
Yet, although there have been tweaks to the system, with small changes to cutblock locations, there is no indication that BC Timber Sales is planning to act on the investigation’s recommendations.
“It seems that eventually they will just carry on with business as usual,” TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance co-founder, told The Narwhal.
In the internal documents detailing the investigations, a BC Timber Sales response claimed the agency’s planning is “generally” consistent with best practices and stated that logging in the Nahmint Valley cannot be in violation of the land use plan because the region’s forest stewardship plan was approved by a district manager.
That defence drew outrage from Inness.
“Approved forest stewardship plans do not override legal orders or government set objectives and can’t be used as a shield to allow non-compliant logging to occur,” she said.
“This is indicative of a truly corrupt system where, according to BCTS, logging can never be in non-compliance with the law, so long as a district manager signs off on it.”
The justification has Inness worried BC Timber Sales might be out of compliance with land-use plans for other areas of Vancouver Island.
“This has broader geographic implications as other special management zones and geographic areas managed by BC Timber Sales may have been — and continue to be — similarly mismanaged,” Inness said.
“They have been way over-logging and it opens up Pandora’s box. If it is happening in the Nahmint and they have completely misinterpreted the targets here, where else is it happening?” she asked.
‘This is the way government works’
Many contentious areas controlled by BC Timber Sales have high recreational value or are close to communities, which increasingly puts it at odds with local communities and First Nations. The Nahmint Valley is in traditional territories of the Hupacasath and Tseshaht First Nations.
Brandy Lauder, Hupacasath First Nation elected councillor, said she is not surprised that BC Timber Sales is ignoring recommendations to stop logging old growth.
“I am not shocked … This is the way government works,” said Lauder, adding that she is witnessing over-logging of old growth throughout the Alberni Valley, which is affecting the movement of wildlife as habitat is lost.
“Until the province actually tells BC Timber Sales not to log, they are going to continue. It will have to come from (Premier) John Horgan. They will just keep on operating and saying they are working on it. As long as they say they are working on it, they think they can just keep on going,” she said.
Last year, Hupacasath sent an open letter calling on the provincial government to halt old-growth logging in the Nahmint and work collaboratively with the band to protect the area’s old growth and, especially, the biggest trees and monumental cedars.
The letter to the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation called on the government to immediately extinguish all approved cutblocks in Hupacasath traditional territory and establish “best management practices for coastal legacy, monumental and old-growth trees.”
In July the province announced new protections for 54 old-growth trees listed in the B.C. Big Tree Registry, four of which are in the Alberni-Clayoquot region. But the plan drew criticism from those concerned with the scale of old-growth logging in some of the last intact zones on Vancouver Island.
In its announcement for the big tree protections, the province claimed 55 per cent of old-growth forests on Crown land in B.C.’s coastal region are protected from logging. Yet the majority of that protection exists in the Great Bear Rainforest while on Vancouver Island 1,300 hectares of new old-growth cutblocks have been approved in 2019.
Long-time environmental advocate Vicky Husband, who worked to tighten up the Vancouver Island land-use plan before it was adopted in 2000, said she always feared the plan lacked teeth.
“We got some important changes, but not nearly enough was fully protected and now the ancient forests are in fragments over most of the island,” she said
“Nahmint is very, very contentious and what BCTS is doing, with the B.C. government’s backing, is promoting logging in some of the last areas left.”
Forests are being gutted and government can be misleading about how much ancient forest is left on Vancouver Island, Husband said.
“We have protected only 5.5 per cent of the original extent of ancient, big, old tree forests on Vancouver Island and just about one per cent of the dry Douglas fir forest. Imagine how we, a so-called progressive society, have done so little to protect the amazing forest heritage that we inherited,” she said.
“I am appalled. The public must act now to save what is left and then work to restore these incredible forest ecosystems.”
Inness said it appears government agencies are either willfully ignoring or misinterpreting B.C.’s already inadequate forestry rules.
“We have such a desperate need in this province for forestry to be done differently and they can’t even follow their own laws,” she said.
Casavant said ecologically rich places like the Nahmint Valley suffer irreparable harm when the province ignores its own rules.
“In today’s society it’s completely unacceptable for government to be involved in what should be classified as unlawful activities,” he said.
“If you are in non-compliance you can’t just say, ‘well maybe there’s a problem, but we are just going to go ahead.’ If you are in non-compliance and your plan requires you to follow the legislation, it is just wrong to go ahead.”
Casavant argues there should be legislation to ensure an impartial law enforcement service can investigate BC Timber Sales’ activities and charge them when necessary.
“BCTS should be treated, instead of a branch of the ministry, as a stand-alone Crown corporation,” he said.
Having an investigative branch embedded within the ministry is “absolutely ludicrous,” he added.
“We can’t have everybody working in the same office right from the planning stage to the approval stage to the investigation when something goes wrong.”
During the summer the province asked for public feedback on the Forest and Range Practices Act, with changes expected over the next two years, but many fear changes will come too late to save the sizeable swaths of old growth needed, especially to protect biodiversity.
A report from the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre says that, in high productivity areas such as valley bottoms, less than 10 per cent of the original old growth remains.
“On Vancouver Island, only about a fifth of the original, productive old-growth rainforest remains unlogged. More than 30 per cent of what remained standing in 1993 has been destroyed in just the last 25 years,” it says.
http://15.157.244.121/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Nahmint-Valley-Old-Growth-Douglas-Fir-Clearcut.jpg12001800TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2019-10-07 14:57:052024-07-30 16:59:32‘Indicative of a truly corrupt system’: government investigation reveals BC Timber Sales violating old-growth logging rules
Old-growth logging and raw-log exports continue on Vancouver Island, but critics say big-tree tourism is a far more sustainable economic force for our future.
Harley Rustad, author of Big Lonely Doug, stands atop the stump of an ancient Western redcedar tree found in the old-growth clearcut around Big Lonely Doug. Photo by TJ Watt.
A few determined rays of sunlight pierced to the forest floor, illuminating electric green moss in pools of light. Branches, filigreed with lichen, arced above like the flying buttresses of a Gothic cathedral.
Watt was moved by the sheer beauty of these old-growth giants and also by the realization that most Vancouver Island valley bottoms, like the Walbran, located outside of existing parks and protected areas, had already been razed to stumps and replaced with relatively scraggly second growth.
Roughly 1.5 million hectares, or about 75 per cent of the original two million hectares of productive old-growth forest on Vancouver Island has been cut, according to the conservation group Ancient Forest Alliance.
“Going to the Walbran completely blew my mind. Walking through this forest with thousand-year-old trees was stunning,” says Watt, who grew up in Metchosin and was no stranger to places of natural beauty. “But we had driven through miles and miles of clear cut forest to get there.”
Four years later, he and a friend were driving up and down logging spurs in search of tall trees in the Cowichan Valley, a part of southern Vancouver Island that boosted the past fortunes of logging giants like MacMillan Bloedel.
Toward the end of a so-far-fruitless day of big-tree hunting, they neared Port Renfrew and spotted huge cedar candelabras poking above the canopy next to the Gordon River. They drove up a side road for a few kilometres, parked, then walked downhill, back toward the river, into an almost magical world.
“I knew right away we had found something special,” Watt recalls about the moment he first encountered the cedars of what would soon become known as Avatar Grove.
It was remarkable given that this grove of massive trees was less than a half hour’s drive from Port Renfrew, on a road that almost anyone could manage in a low clearance, two-wheel-drive vehicle, yet likely wasn’t known by anyone other than some foresters and local Indigenous Pacheedaht people.
Avatar Grove, named for the then just-released James Cameron blockbuster movie, proved Watt’s knack for coming up with catchy and marketable names. (Recently, he was party to another big tree find near Port Renfrew, this one of moss-covered maples and Douglas firs — they called it Mossome Grove.) It triggered a feverish conservation campaign and the launch of a new non-profit, The Ancient Forest Alliance, with fellow activist Ken Wu.
“It was wild. People started visiting Avatar [Grove] by the thousands, and media coverage went viral — locally, nationally and internationally,” Watt says.
The rest is history. Avatar Grove got protected, and its international popularity eventually resulted in sleepy Port Renfrew rebranding itself as the “Tall Tree Capital of Canada.”
TJ Watt looks up at a monumental Western redcedar tree in unprotected Eden Grove in the Pacheedaht Territory near Port Renfrew. Photo by TJ Watt.
Thanks in large part to the tall-tree hunting efforts of Watt, fellow conservationist Ken Wu and others, more and more people, and not just tree hunters, are beginning to view big trees left standing as more economically valuable than trees that have been cut down and turned into lumber and paper. It’s also a sign of the times.
Raw Logs: What’s the Reality?
Vancouver Island’s forest sector is far from what it used to be. Local manufacturing capacity was in decline even before 2003 when Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government scrapped a provision in the Forest Act called appurtenance — the requirement that companies with tenures to harvest Crown forest, or publicly owned forest, must operate mills in communities located within the geographical area of given tenures.
In a 2018 study for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, longtime forest policy analyst and former Vancouver Sun journalist Ben Parfitt took a sweeping look at raw-log exports and mill closures. Between 2013 and 2016, approximately 26 million cubic metres of raw logs were shipped out of B.C., and old growth accounts on average for half of raw-log exports. In 2016, the volume of raw log exports jumped 6.2 per cent year-over-year, according to Parfitt’s research.
The three largest exporters of raw logs happen to be big players on Vancouver Island: Western Forest Products, Island Timberlands and TimberWest Forest Corporation. (TimberWest and Island Timberlands were affiliated in 2018 under the umbrella of Vancouver-based Mosaic Forest Management.)
In 2016, TimberWest, which owns 327,000 hectares of timberland on Vancouver Island, sent more than two million cubic metres of raw logs out of the province. As raw-log exports rise, manufacturing capacity stalls. Since 1997, roughly 100 mills have shut in B.C. Parfitt gathered numbers from BC Stats showing that the forest industry shed 22,400 jobs over the past decade, mostly in lumber and pulp and paper manufacturing. Parfitt’s math claims 3,600 of those job losses are due directly to raw-log exports.
The decline of Vancouver Island’s forest sector is writ large in Campbell River. In 2008, TimberWest shut its sawmill, putting 257 people out work, and the following year closed its sawdust, pulp and container board division, resulting in another 440 job losses. Then, in 2010, Catalyst Paper closed its Elk Falls paper mill and axed 350 workers from its payroll.
Today Campbell River, a city that’s proximate to some of the planet’s most productive temperate conifer forests, watches as barge and shiploads of raw logs sail past its shuttered mills destined for the Lower Mainland booms, many of them eventually shipped to offshore mills.
Parfitt says this decline has taken on an obscene twist at the Harmac Pacific pulp mill near Nanaimo where a dearth of fibre, a by-product of the sawmilling sector that was once plentiful on Vancouver Island, has forced the company to chip raw logs to feed its operations.
So what gives? Parfitt says the reasons are complex. The removal of appurtenance had an impact. Downward shifting global demand for newsprint and paper is partly to blame. However, many of the big companies like TimberWest have made conscious business decisions not to reinvest in modern coastal mills and instead go for the low value, easy dollar from raw-log exports. Though domestic buyers are supposed to have the right of first refusal to buy B.C. logs, exports continue to climb.
The B.C. government recently announced changes to the Forest Act that will give the province more control over forest tenures, and Premier John Horgan has even hinted at bringing back appurtenance.
Speaking at the annual Truck Loggers Association last January, Horgan noted that “employment on the coast has declined by about 40 per cent.
“Lumber production has dropped by 45 per cent, pulp production by 50 per cent,” Horgan said. “At the same time, log exports from Crown land have increased by nearly tenfold.”
But Parfitt believes a return to a local manufacturing regulation that died more than 15 years ago is a long shot and says the industry would likely fight it. He says he hasn’t heard anything substantive coming out of Victoria that will stem the tide of raw-log exports, curtail the cutting of increasingly rare Island old growth or stimulate investment in modern local mills, measures environmental groups like the Ancient Forest Alliance and the Wilderness Committee have been calling for in recent years. Pam Agnew is spokesperson for Vancouver-based Mosaic Forest Management, the firm that assumed management of timberlands owned by both TimberWest and Island Timberlands following an agreement struck in 2018. She is clear about the direction of these Island timber companies.
“We don’t manufacture. We sell logs to mills,” Agnew says.
According to Parfitt, there’s also a socio-demographic shift at play in once raw-resource-dependent communities that has resulted in forestry jobs and policy dropping from its position as public issue number 1 like it was back in the 1980s and early 1990s when the War in the Woods raged in Clayoquot Sound.
“Many people are moving to Vancouver Island to retire or for other lifestyle attributes like recreation,” Parfitt says. “The last thing they want is a new mill to open up in town.”
Forestry is Still a Factor
Still, all things considered, forestry hasn’t faded from Vancouver Island’s balance sheet. There are currently 140 wood-processing operations, employing 4,000 people and generating more than $1.7 billion in annual revenues, according to the Vancouver Island Economic Alliance (VIEA).
At a June 20 Island Wood Industry Forum sponsored by VIEA, the hot topics were improving access to fibre and stimulating value-added manufacturing, with specific focus on pressure-treated lumber, glulam and cross-laminated timber and wood-fibre insulation.
In April, as part of its forest-industry rejuvenation efforts, VIEA announced a $100,000 Waste Wood Recovery Project that will explore ways to better sort waste wood and make more of it available to manufacturers. The message from VIEA is that despite the transformation of Port Renfrew from resource to tall-tree tourism, there are still many Vancouver Island workers who derive a living directly or indirectly from forestry.
It’s bread and butter for Paul Beltgens, an industry veteran whose family founded Paulcan and Jemico Enterprises in Chemainus in the mid 1980s, specializing in the milling of both softwoods and local hardwoods, like maple and alder.
Mike Beltgens on the landing deck of his family-owned sawmill in Chemainus. Photo by Jeffrey Bosdet.
The exodus of manufacturing jobs in the form of raw-log exports angers Beltgens, who has worked in the forest sector since he was a teenager on the MacMillan Bloedel payroll.
“The bottom line is, I don’t like to see logs exported,” says Beltgens, from his Chemainus operation, which employs roughly 40 people when it’s going full throttle.
“We used to be a leader in the world, and now our big forest companies are owned by pension plans.”
Beltgens currently pays $90 per cubic metre for raw logs (roughly one telephone pole’s worth of wood). He sells products across the world, including in Mexico, China and Vietnam. He’s also made a side career over the past few decades managing the installation of sawmills in countries such as Russia, Bolivia, New Guinea and Costa Rica, built in part from machinery and infrastructure cannibalized from mothballed B.C. mills.
A New Vision
There is a bright spot in Vancouver Island’s forest economy currently shining on Port Alberni. In 2017, San Group, a diverse Langley-based forest products manufacturer, with operations around the world, bought Coulson Forest Products’ specialty cedar mill in Port Alberni. Now the company is nearing completion of a new $70 million processing facility that will have a finger-joining, lamination and small-log line capable of milling logs with three-inch diameter tops.
The San Group plant will add more than 130 high-paying jobs to the local economy. Port Alberni hasn’t seen this kind of investment in the local forest products sector in decades. (Since the economic boom days in the 80s and 90s, sawmill production has dropped more than 20 per cent, and pulp and paper is down close to 60 per cent.)
While many coastal operators double down on log exports or churning out dimension lumber, the San Group is focusing on value-added products and technology geared toward smaller second growth.
“When you butcher an animal, you try to use every part of the animal,” says company president Kamal Sanghera. “We’re trying to use every part of the log instead of selling two-by-fours and two-by-sixes. We don’t go with the grain, we go against it.”
The San Group sells to 26 countries around the world, and instead of milling a product and trying to force it down the market’s throat, Sanghera says first they ask their customers what they want. Consequently, the San Group plans to produce a wide range of products from its Port Alberni plant, from window components and fascia to soffit material, bevel and channel siding.
“We’re developing markets and technology to add value,” Sanghera says. “As a Canadian, I feel we should be developing something to bring manufacturing jobs back to Canada.”
Sanghera calls the exodus of logs from B.C. a “travesty,” and San Group is proof positive that entrepreneurial spirit can still breathe new life into forestry.
That’s music to the Port Alberni economy.
“There hasn’t been a lot of good news in the forest sector around here since I came to Port Alberni six years ago,” says Bill Collette, CEO of the Port Alberni Chamber of Commerce. “The San Group is moving fast, and they will have a significant positive impact.”
While Port Alberni experiences a mini-forest economy renaissance, Port Renfrew is headed in a different direction.
Changing Times
Back in the early 2000s, if you had asked Watt if he could ever see himself sitting on a chamber of commerce board, he probably would have laughed in your face. Times change. Today, he’s on the board of the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce, an indication that this once logging- and fishing-dependent community is looking at forests through a different lens.
Between the Avatar Grove, Big Lonely Doug, Red Creek Fir, San Juan Spruce and the Jurassic Grove, Port Renfrew is enjoying a mini-tourism boom. The community has become a poster child for tall-tree tourism. However, old-growth logging in the Nahmint Valley southwest of Port Alberni continues to put Vancouver Island forest practices in the cross hairs of conservationists and on the agendas of coastal communities.
Though the Port Renfrew chamber hasn’t quantified the economic impact, president Dan Hager says anecdotal evidence and conversations with tourists over coffee at Tommy’s Diner suggests it’s significant, alongside sport fishing.
“We’re getting people from Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the United States who are coming here for the trees. For many of them, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Hager says.
And many chambers of commerce on the Island are voicing support for old-growth forest protection. Fifteen Vancouver Island and Gulf Island chambers of commerce met with provincial officials on July 30 to urge stronger protection of “old-growth rainforest to the economic benefit of tourism-based communities,’ among a half-dozen other coast-specific concerns.
Previous to that, in 2015, the Port Renfrew chamber called for the halt of controversial logging in the Walbran. Hager, born and raised in Saskatchewan, doesn’t consider himself a “tree hugger.” He’s more of a pragmatist, willing to look at trees in a different light.
“We went against the grain when we said as a community that forestry is not the only way to get value out of tall trees,” Hager says. “It’s like bear viewing versus bear hunting. If you leave these trees standing, people will come again and again. Cut them down, and you’ll make some stuff, but the forest will never be the same.”
This article is from the October/November 2019 issue of Douglas.
http://15.157.244.121/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Screen-Shot-2019-10-22-at-1.18.48-PM.png446674TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2019-10-03 20:10:562024-07-30 17:01:30A Closer Look at B.C. Forestry and Tall Tree Tourism
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