News Coverage Archives

The fight to save Echo Lake’s old trees and wildlife has begun

Jul 12 2016/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

Here's a new story in today's Globe and Mail about the old-growth forest campaign, spearheaded by local landowners Susan and Stephen Ben-Oliel and supported by the Ancient Forest Alliance, to protect all of the forests in the mountains surrounding Echo Lake (a rare lowland old-growth forest between Mission and Agassiz in Sts'ailes territory, and also the world's largest night-roosting site for bald eagles) from logging.

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Ken Wu hunts down giant, old trees for a living.

As executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance, he has hiked most of the watersheds on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland, hoping to find – and save from logging – the last remaining pockets of old growth.

At Echo Lake, just a 90-minute drive east of Vancouver near Harrison Hot Springs, local landowners brought him a few years ago to see a magical forest, draped in moss, with towering trees where up to 700 eagles come to nest when salmon are spawning in the nearby Harrison River.

“Echo Lake is home to the largest night-roosting site for bald eagles on Earth,” said Mr. Wu, who in 2012 launched a campaign to save the area, then slated for logging.

In 2013, the British Columbia government set aside 55 hectares, protecting just over half the old-growth cedars and Douglas firs around the lake.

Mr. Wu wasn’t satisfied and since then has been pushing for the addition of another 40 to 60 hectares to the reserve, which would protect the key eagle area. “That would get the bowl, essentially the mountain and forest that rings Echo Lake. So it should be a no-brainer at this point,” he said.

But last week, he was shocked when he walked through the forest around the lake to find that the biggest and oldest trees in the unprotected area had been tagged and numbered. A small company with cutting rights to a woodlot on Crown land at the lake has laid out the route for an access road, which it plans to build while awaiting logging authorization, Mr. Wu said.

“The government hasn’t approved any cutting plans yet … so I think there’s still some time here to fight this. My worry is that if the road-building progresses too far, they will have sunk enough cost into the whole thing that they are going to argue they have to recover those costs by logging the cut blocks. So right now, we are cranking up the pressure,” said Mr. Wu, who is trying to raise public awareness about the threat to Echo Lake.

The Harrison area was logged in the early 1900s, but Mr. Wu said pockets of trees around Echo Lake weren’t touched because they couldn’t be easily reached. Others were passed up because they were considered too small at the time. Since then, they have grown into giants.

“Those cedars that are flagged now I suspect were about 50 years old [when the area was first logged] and 100 years later they are … essentially old-growth trees,” he said.

And they are rare.

“If you look at the entire region, and we’ve done it, we’ve explored this whole area, and it is exceedingly hard to find these types of lowland stands of ancient cedars. They are virtually non-existent – all logged, long ago,” Mr. Wu said.

In an e-mail, Vivian Thomas, a spokeswoman for B.C.’s Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, said trees have been marked by the woodlot owner as an inventory, “with the goal of retaining as many of the large Douglas fir older trees as possible.”

She also provided a fact sheet that states appropriate environmental measures are being taken around Echo Lake.

“Forest and resource values, including eagle habitat, are being adequately addressed by balancing established OGMAs [Old Growth Management Areas], a proposed wildlife management area and other reserve areas, with areas that remain available for timber harvesting,” the ministry states. “The woodlot holder is aware of the eagle roosting habitat potential and has committed to further identify and manage the values within the woodlot area.”

But Mr. Wu said it is clear when hiking through the forest that many giant, old cedars and firs will be lost if the government doesn’t change course. And if those trees fall, the eagles and other wildlife will suffer, he said.

“I would say logging these trees would have a detrimental effect because the eagles use the entire bowl. Essentially you see them come in from the Harrison River, they circle around the bowl and then they settle in the big trees along the side of the lake,” he said.

“Even if they left some high-value eagle trees, essentially you get the loss of the ecosystem on the north and west side of the lake,” Mr. Wu said. “When you go there, it is jam-packed with wildlife. There’s a giant bear that hangs out there, … there are cougars in the area; you can see the trees that they’ve scratched. There’s a little bobcat. … Ospreys are always over the lake. There’s a group of otters … so it’s not just an eagle issue, it’s a biodiversity issue.”

In his treks through the forests of the Lower Mainland, Mr. Wu has found only a few places with giant, old trees like those around Echo Lake.

And they are all in parks.

New calls for a moratorium on old-growth logging

Jul 10 2016/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

Here’s a new Focus magazine article by Briony Penn about Vancouver Island’s old-growth forests, featuring forest ecologist Dr. Andy MacKinnon, Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce president Dan Hager, Jens Wieting of the Sierra Club, AFA, Ahousaht and Tofino councils, and the growing support among businesses, chambers of commerce, and municipal councils for protecting BC’s old-growth forests.

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WHEN THE BC CHAMBER OF COMMERCE and the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities (AVICC) recently came out championing the protection of old-growth forests on Vancouver Island, it was hailed as a historic and tectonic shift by environmentalists. Yet it’s probably more accurately described in earthquake terms as “fault creep”—the “slow, more or less continuous movement occurring on faults due to ongoing tectonic deformation.”

Political and business associations have finally caught up with the economic reality, climate change, public attitudes, business opportunities, and scientific data—and not a moment too soon.

In typical island fashion, it takes a poster boy from elsewhere with home-spun prairie logic to signal that shift. Handsome Dan Hager, the head of the Port Renfrew Chamber and business owner of Handsome Dan’s Wild Coast Cottages, looked in his guest books one day and noticed that his guests were coming year round to visit old trees at the Avatar Grove. Since then, with just a handsome Saskatchewan smile and anecdotal stories of full beds and full-time staff, he’s managed to convince the entire BC Chamber of Commerce of the value of leaving old growth close to towns.

This likely amuses botanist and Metchosin Councillor Andy Mackinnon. His 30 years of collecting compelling scientific data on the value of old growth on Vancouver Island is not as “hot” on the current media radar, although he’s being effective in other ways. With his own moniker the “fun guy” (pun on fungi, his research specialty), Mackinnon has spread his own charismatic mycelia alongside Hager’s in the slow and continuous movement towards improving Vancouver Island land use planning.

Mackinnon, a forest researcher with the provincial government, has recently retired from public service and jumped into political life. He won a seat on Metchosin council in 2014 and has been looking for ways to get science back into policy and planning ever since. Mackinnon managed to get a resolution asking for a moratorium on the logging of old growth on Vancouver Island passed by his Metchosin Council, and then Colwood’s, this spring. That was subsequently endorsed at AVICC’s AGM in April. His advocacy was triggered by his frustrations as a government scientist. He says, “You felt you were gathering a lot of good information that wasn’t being incorporated into policy and management.” Mackinnon’s first priority was to stop the old-growth logging while Vancouver Island still had some left to save.

His resolution for a moratorium was borrowed from the Ahousat chiefs—also known as the Hawiih of Clayoquot Sound— who had announced their own moratorium on industrial logging of old-growth forests in October last year. It hasn’t gone unnoticed by Mackinnon that the Ahousat have been slowly, more or less continuously, suggesting to Western governments the values of old growth. Their data goes back several thousand years. Their resolution included a community “Land Use Visioning” process intended to protect a traditional way of life while diversifying livelihoods.

The mayor of Tofino shared this resolution with Mackinnon and he fashioned a similar moratorium for Metchosin with a request to the provincial government to revise the old Vancouver Island Land Use Plan. The resolution’s preamble states that old-growth forest is increasingly rare on Vancouver Island and has significant values as wildlife habitat, a tourism resource, a carbon sink and much more. It also noted that current plans on provincial Crown land call for logging the remaining old-growth forest outside of protected areas, Old-Growth Management Areas (OGMAs), and similar reserves, over the next 10-20 years.

Mackinnon is not new to the science of why it is important to protect old growth. He was on the scientific team that wrote the provincial Old Growth Strategy (OGS) starting in 1989. At the time, the OGS was cutting-edge policy. The 1992 report began with the acknowledgement that old-growth forests “represent a wide range of spiritual, ecological, economic and social values” and outlined the framework to plan for conserving old growth. It was the time of the “war in the woods”—from Clayoquot Sound to Carmanah—and logging still constituted the dominant industry in parts of northern Vancouver Island. The same year, the NDP created the Commission on Resources and Environment to provide independent land use recommendations to cabinet for Vancouver Island, and the OGS was folded into this new Vancouver Island Land Use Plan (VILUP) and the Forest Practices Code. (Clayoquot Sound was excluded from VILUP because it came under a separate scientific commission.)

According to Mackinnon, “those were exciting times with the opportunity to do broad land use planning and establish new protected areas.” Before 1992, only 6 percent of Vancouver Island had any protected status and what was protected was mostly rocks and ice at the top of mountains. By the end of the planning process in 2000, the protected areas reached 12 percent of Vancouver Island with a slightly better representation of diverse lowland ecosystems. That included some of the big, old trees in valley bottoms known as “productive lowland old-growth forests.” The VILUP decisions established the upper Carmanah Valley, the lower Walbran Valley, Tashish Kwoi and Brooks Nasparti Provincial Parks as large protected areas.

The target of protecting 12 percent of the land base had come from the international Bruntland Commission and its landmark report Our Common Future. The report called for doubling the area of protected areas globally—which, at that time, also sat around 6 percent.

Mackinnon supported the plan then because it at least doubled the protection and was achievable politically, but it fell short in many regards. Many scientists had recommended quadrupling the area protected to take in forest stand and ecosystem diversity, and climate change wasn’t being factored in yet. The compromise was partly addressed in a series of special management zones created to maintain areas of old growth and high biodiversity within forest tenures on Crown land.

In 2001, with a change in provincial government from NDP to Liberal, the Old Growth Strategy and VILUP were sent to the shredders, special management zones were cancelled, and the Forest Practices Code was gutted. Since then, apart from a handful of tiny isolated groves, like Avatar Grove, being designated OGMAs or Land Use Objective areas, no ancient forests have been set aside in protected areas on Vancouver Island.

In the absence of any provincial leadership on island old growth, the Sierra Club has taken the lead role in mapping island forests. Mackinnon says, “When people asked my ministry how much old growth there was left, I would have to say: ‘Go talk to the Sierra Club.’” Jens Wieting of the Sierra Club of British Columbia notes that, as of 2012, less than 10 percent of the productive lowland old-growth forests remain. These are the forests that businesses like Handsome Dan’s benefit from, not the older, scrubby trees in the mountain tops that the provincial government still includes in their tally of old growth.

According to Wieting, the state of old growth on Vancouver Island is now an ecological emergency. Of that 10 percent that remains, only 4 percent has been set aside in parks or OGMAs and 6 percent is up for grabs. The Sierra Club’s recent Google Map press release visually shows how that remaining unprotected old growth is at risk.

This situation has brought a return of the wars in the woods, with conflicts over Walbran, Klaskish and East Creek. The battle is being led by the Ancient Forest Alliance, Western Canada Wilderness Committee and others. These last watersheds of remaining unprotected old-growth lowland forest are where the greatest value are for all stakeholders. The stakes are even higher with an increased understanding of the value of these forests for sequestering carbon.

Sierra’s data shows around 9400 hectares of Island old growth being logged annually and 17,000 hectares of second growth, some of it highly endangered ecosystems. Second-growth forests eventually become old-growth forests so we need to pay attention to these as well. Only saving old-growth forests is like only looking after elders and not nurturing the young. For forest ecologists, this is a compelling rationale for reopening the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan and reconsidering the mix of different forests and age classes of stands. This would entail planning for future reserves of old growth in forest types where there is hardly any old growth left, like the Douglas-fir forests of Vancouver Island where old growth has been reduced to 1 percent of the remaining stand.

Wieting’s argument is that “with every new clearcut, more biodiversity of the original ecosystem disappears.” That’s the ecological argument for a new target of quadrupling protected areas—nature needs half. But what about the economic argument?

The 1992 VILUP included a careful economic analysis with projections to 2012. What is most interesting is how accurate those projections were. They predicted continuing declines in the resource sectors and continuing increases in importance of tourism and other service industries like high tech and filmmaking, light manufacturing and pension and investment incomes. The plan states, “These shifts in economic structure will be reinforced by the in-migration of retirees to the Island, the aging of the resident population, increasing demand for and scarcity of wilderness recreation opportunities, technological change, and resource depletion.”

According to the VILUP, back in 1992 forestry and logging provided 10,565 jobs (3.6 percent) on Vancouver Island. By 2012, StatsCan numbers show, that had declined to 4700. Pulp and paper mills employed 12,900 people in 1992, but by 2012 that had fallen to one-half of that.

Compare that to 4800 jobs in the “information and cultural industries,” 9800 in the “arts, entertainment and recreation industries” and 5800 in the mysterious-sounding “personal and laundry services.” The largest employers—by far—on Vancouver Island are in the service industries with 20,000 to 50,000-plus jobs, per sector, in health, education, professional services, high tech, trade and tourism (accommodation and food services). Even the recent Vancouver Island State of the Economy report by the Vancouver Island Economic Alliance, in a curiously conservative analysis, points out the only fast growth areas are in the professional, scientific and high tech sectors—the people who fill up Handsome Dan’s Wild Coast Cottages.

The age-old problem for northern Vancouver Island rural communities of boom and bust resource-based economies was pinpointed accurately in the 1992 plan, with various recommendations for diversification.

In the ensuing years, though, there was minimal action taken to diversifiy. There was little public investment in a number of critical areas: infrastructure for making value-added wood products, transportation systems, an old-growth strategy, marketing of tourism to these areas, and creating value for ecosystem services. The BC Liberals weren’t, apparently, paying heed to the shifting economic landscape. New Zealand, with roughly comparable economic forecasts, land base and population, looked at its data back then and brought in a moratorium on old-growth logging while investing heavily in ecotourism infrastructure and marketing. Total tourism expenditure today in New Zealand is $29.8 billion, increasing at 10 percent per year. Vancouver Island tourism generates $2.2 billion annually.

Better late than never, Mackinnon’s resolution will now go to the Union of BC Municipalities AGM in September. So far the provincial government hasn’t responded to his request for a meeting. With Hager working the business community on a modified resolution specifically referring to old growth close to settlements, both Mackinnon and Hager argue that it will be hard for the provincial government to ignore both local governments and the business sector.

Once a moratorium is in place, Mackinnon would like to see innovative planning—with a foundation based on scientific principles—adapted for Vancouver Island. He points to the land use plans for Clayoquot Sound and the Great Bear Rainforest, both of which he participated in and which were spearheaded by First Nations. The Great Bear Rainforest Agreements in particular incorporated First Nations concerns, economic realities that included real conservation financing, and carbon credit projects for First Nations.

As Jens Wieting suggests, “We have a lot to learn from what went on in both these regions—and fast, because climate change means that we have even less time to save rainforest as we know it.”

As for Handsome Dan, he says, “I’m no treehugger and I don’t need to rely on any science. I just see the logic because the economics are black and white. The trees left standing are good for my business.” Hardly earthshaking, but a welcome tectonic nudge to an island that has so much natural capital to offer its inhabitants and the world.

[Original article no longer available]

Voice of BC: Water, Trees & Climate

Jun 18 2016/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

The AFA's Ken Wu joins Ben Parfitt of the Centre for Policy Alternatives on a pundit panel on the Voice of BC (aka “the Vaughn Palmer show”) on aspects of forest, water, and climate policy in BC. Here it is: https://vimeo.com/171124862

Axing old growth a crime against nature

Jun 18 2016/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

The Vancouver Sun's columnist Stephen Hume came with us to see the endangered Cameron Valley Ancient Forest (ie. “Firebreak”), a truly spectacular lowland stand of densely-packed, monumental old-growth Douglas-firs akin to a “second Cathedral Grove”. This grove stands out as among the finest remaining old-growth Douglas-firs anywhere left on the planet and is of international conservation significance. Please share and add your voice to the comments section at the end!

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CATHEDRAL GROVE — When I pulled into Cathedral Grove, the stand of 800-year-old Douglas fir about half way between Nanaimo and Port Alberni on Vancouver Island, every parking space was occupied.

Camera-wielding tourists stood enthralled. They stared up into a canopy soaring the height of a 20-storey building overhead, thronged the trails flanking Highway 4 and posed for selfies beside trees so thick at the base it would take 15 people standing shoulder-to-shoulder to circle the trunk.

Most visitors wouldn’t know — but might certainly care — that a scant 30 minutes drive away is the Cameron Valley Firebreak, another, equally accessible, equally stunning equivalent to Cathedral Grove that’s apparently destined to be mowed down for two-by-fours and toilet paper.

It was once protected as critical winter range for Roosevelt elk and blacktail deer. But in 2004, during a push for deregulation, the province removed the lands from its regulatory authority under a tree farm licence. Logging began in 2012.

Environmentalists, biologists and ordinary citizens describe the Cameron Valley Firebreak — it was originally left as a dense water-soaked barrier intended to stall wildfires — as a sacred space at the spiritual core of what we mean by Super Natural B.C. They can’t believe the province would stand by while it’s turned into stumps and slash.

After a rain-soaked hike through the grove, I can only agree. You’d have to be bereft of sensitivity to let such a place be destroyed.

At Cathedral Grove, I waited on the shoulder until someone left, then dashed in to grab a spot before the next tourist arrived, of whom there have now been more than eight million. And they just keep coming.

Anyone who doubts the long-term economic value of parks need only pass through this small but world-famous example of the coastal forest for which B.C. is renowned, probably unjustly considering the disrespect with which we treat this near-sacred legacy. In fact, when CBC ran a national survey to determine the seven wonders of Canada, Cathedral Grove outscored the Stanley Cup.

What’s officially MacMillan Provincial Park, a 300-hectare patch that took 25 years of lobbying by the public, including loggers, who seem to have a better developed ideas of transcendent spiritual value than politicians, was finally set aside in 1944. It is considered an internationally significant example of the Douglas fir old growth forest that once covered much of Vancouver Island.

Yet since it was established, more than 90 per cent of the remaining ancient forest it represents has been destroyed under a provincial forestry strategy that calls for liquidation of old growth. Less than three per cent of this original forest type is protected.

Indeed, Cathedral Grove is one of those places in danger of being loved-to-death by enthusiasts. The province was only narrowly prevented from going ahead with a 2001 scheme for a football field-sized parking lot, gift shop, food concession, interpretive centre, picnic area and facilities, all of which required clearing precisely what people were coming to see.

I was there to meet with Jane Morden, a conservation-minded woman from Port Alberni, the heartland of coastal logging culture; Mike Stini, an expert in ungulate habitat who’s concerned about disappearing winter range for deer and elk; and Ken Wu and TJ Watt of the Ancient Forest Alliance, a group of environmental activists anxious to save the last fragments of this seriously endangered ecosystem.

They wanted to show me the accidentally preserved stand farther up the Cameron River. Given the endangered nature of this Douglas fir old growth, they argue, the province has a moral duty to intervene on the public’s behalf to ensure that it’s saved from the chainsaws and toilet paper factories.

So we went bouncing back into the bush — and not far into the bush, at that — in TJ’s 18-year-old van.

We hiked into an astonishing, breathtaking grove of ancient forest, trees growing when Magna Carta was signed. Beneath them, the atmosphere cooled abruptly. Underfoot the ground was springy with mattress-like layers of needles and moss. Unusual, colourful fungi burst from the forest floor. Streams cascaded over old logs.

Among the immense Douglas fir were many cedar trees showing distinctive signs of cultural modification — bare trunks where First Nations harvesters had stripped bark for baskets, dress and ancient spiritual ceremonies.

Frankly, the activists are right. This shouldn’t be destroyed. We don’t need to cut down any more of these mystical fragments of ancient forests that define the place we choose to live. If we do, it’s only out of greed.

Vancouver Island growing away from old growth logging?

Jun 5 2016/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

Here’s a very insightful article about the shift underway in the economy and attitudes among the business community and in rural communities (spearheaded by the efforts of the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce and the Ancient Forest Alliance, with a growing chorus of voices gathering steam, including the BC Chamber of Commerce and the AVICC) towards favouring increased protection of old-growth forests – in part to support a more sustainable economy! This is worth sharing!
Again take note that the BC government and logging industry’s stats on how much old-growth remains and is protected are deliberately misleading by including stunted non-commercial bogs and subalpine stands on steep rocky mountainsides with the productive stands with big trees targeted by the logging industry, and by combining the northern rainforest (the Great Bear Rainforest) where huge progress in protection levels has occurred as a result of environmental boycotts of logging companies (followed by 15 years of negotiations) along with the southern rainforest (Vancouver Island and the southwest mainland) where protection levels are very minor, old-growth forests have been much more heavily logged, and the forests are different (ie. different biodiversity, ecosystems, and generally much larger, grander ancient trees), ie. the northern and southern coasts are two very different regions and should not be confused and mixed together, unless your goal is to mislead people…

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It stands at a little more than 70 metres high, 14 metres taller than the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Experts believe it may have been around even longer than the world-famous Italian landmark, which began to take shape nearly 850 years ago.

Big Lonely Doug looms over a clearcut hillside in the Gordon River Valley, surrounded by stumps and scrub brush, maybe 15 kilometres northwest of Port Renfrew.

The second-biggest tree in Canada, this massive Douglas fir is, for some, a a stark reminder of the glory days of Vancouver Island logging, when massive old-growth timber fed myriad sawmills, sparking a booming industry that made towns like Port Alberni and Lake Cowichan rich.

But in the wake of a media blitz in 2014, Doug has found itself with something else in common with the Leaning Tower: it has become a destination.

And with that, it has also become a symbol of a dramatic shift in Island thinking.

Citing the power of old growth trees as a tourism resource, Vancouver Island communities voted in April to seek a total ban on old growth harvesting on the Island’s Crown land.

And they received support this week from a surprising source: the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, which voted to support the same principle across the province in instances where old growth trees “have or can likely have a greater net economic value for communities if they are left standing.”

The Renfrew Tall Trees Experience

Dan Hager runs a Port Renfrew cottage rental business called Handsome Dan’s Accommodations. He is the president of the community’s chamber of commerce and the one who successfully pitched the old growth resolution to the B.C. chamber.

While he lauds old growth for its environmental benefits, he said the main motivations for the chamber motion were dollars and sense.

“It just boils down to basic math. This is not a comment about logging. It’s about economics and marketing,” he said. “Port Renfrew now has a product people can’t get anywhere else.”

In 2012 the Victoria-based environmental watchdog group the Ancient Forest Alliance successfully lobbied to protect an extraordinary grouping of trees near Port Renfrew it dubbed Avatar Grove.

In the months that followed, increasing numbers of visitors began to pour into the community. Hager said the community didn’t do any scientific studies as to why, but conversations and guestbook entries made it obvious: prompted by media reports, they were there to see the majestic trees.

He told the B.C. chamber that since that summer, accommodation providers in Port Renfrew have reported demand for accommodations has increased 75% to 100% annually. And he said the visitor streams continue outside the summer fishing season — typically the only time visitors had previously been coming.

Entirely by accident, the environmental movement had given the 300-resident town an unexpected economic boom.

“Thanks to the trees, Port Renfrew is no longer a one-industry tourism town and has been able to successfully brand itself the Tall Tree Capital of Canada,” he said. “They created Avatar and we benefitted from it.”

Hager said he no trouble convincing the business community this is an opportunity other B.C. regions can and should be taking advantage of. He relayed his message through the following example.

“In 2012 a kayaking company in Discovery Islands did an illuminating economic analysis. It calculated the economic value of 60 hectares of timber scheduled to be logged above and around the kayaking base camp across from the world-famous Robson Bight.

“It was determined that the value of the 60 hectares of timber was worth about $3.6 million. Since the regeneration cycle meant the area could be cut only once every 60 years, the yearly economic value of the timber was $60,000.

“The economic value to the kayaking company, however, was $416,000 per year, or $24.96 million for the same 60-year period. In stark contrast to the approximately 300 person-days employment from logging the 60 hectares just once, the kayaking company provided 20,160 person-days of employment during the 60-year cycle.

“And this simple economic analysis didn’t include the employment and earnings for the 40 other ecotourism businesses using the same area.”

He said it is the government’s role to do what’s best for communities and increasingly that means letting trees stand.

“In Port Renfrew there are maybe a a half-dozen people that gain their living from forestry. A lot more than that get it from tourism.”

Concerned Industry Warns Of Crisis

Hager wants to make it clear: the B.C. chamber did not endorse an old-growth logging ban, what it endorsed was protection for those old growth stands that generate more economic benefits for communities if they are left standing.

But the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities went a step beyond that in April when members voted to ask the provincial government to amend the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan to protect all of Vancouver Island’s remaining old growth forest on provincial Crown land.

According to David Elstone, executive director of Truck Loggers Association, a ban on old growth logging would devastate the industry.

Elstone was caught off guard by both motions and unclear why there has been a shift in thinking from organizations that have traditionally been in the industry’s corner.

“In general, I am concerned about the tone and the concept. Don’t know if all the facts are being drawn forward,” Elstone said. “I don’t want to fall back on being alarmist, but if you suddenly turn that off there doesn’t take much imagination to see the impact.”

Rick Jeffery, president and CEO of Coast Forest Products Association, agreed and was concerned both the AVICC and the B.C. chamber may have made decisions in absence of all the facts.

“I have no idea on what basis they are making these claims. I just don’t,” he said. “I was surprised they didn’t ask us.

“Our take-home message is that we have to sit down and talk. We will bring facts and figures.”

One message Jeffery wants to get across is that forestry and conservation already co-exist in local forests. Another is that 55 per cent of the old growth on the B.C. coast is already protected, something he says will increase over time due to conservation practices in the unprotected areas.

“Old growth is going to be here forever,” he said. “People don’t understand that.”

Elstone said 45 per cent of the coastal harvest comes from old growth trees. Forestry accounts for 38,000 direct jobs on the Island and the neighbouring coast, and 61,000 across the province.

Would a ban old growth harvesting mean a loss of 45% of the jobs?

“You’d probably lose a lot more than that,” he said.

Jeffery said certain mills are only set up to process old growth and the industry as a whole depends on economies of scale it would not be able to sustain, leading clients to look elsewhere.

“You would have an average allowable cut drop,” he said. “It would put a lot of mills out of business and put pulp mills in jeopardy.”

According to Elstone, the word “crisis” would not be an overstatement.

“It’s a vital part of our history and always will be an integral part of the success of our communities,” he said. “There are still a hell of a lot of communities that rely on forestry. We need to protect our working forests or else there will be significant impact.”

To help determine the degree of that impact, Black Press contacted Susan Mowbray, senior economist with MNP and author 2015’s State of the Island Economic Report.

Her answer is that it is impossible to tell when the economic benefits of an old growth logging halt would exceed those of continued harvesting without further study. One can’t simply subtract the loss of those logs without considering the spin-off effects.

“If, all of sudden, you can’t harvest the old growth (in a certain location), it may not make sense to harvest the low value timber there either,” she said.

She added the lack of consideration of such variables makes her very skeptical that the Discovery Islands kayaking case presented by Hager to the BC chamber painted a realistic picture. For example, every forestry job creates 1.5 other jobs. Tourism jobs don’t have the same impact.

“There are some jobs that get substituted. The difference is forestry jobs are higher-paying,” Mowbray said. “There needs to be a better understanding of what it means. In some communities forestry is all there is.

“More analysis has to be done before I can unequivocally say.”

A shifting community mindset?

A possible test case for such an analysis could be Tofino, the poster child for replacing a resource-based economy with eco-tourism. Mowbray said she has yet to crunch those numbers.

Anecdotally, Tofino Mayor Josie Osborne said embracing and protecting the rainforest certainly seems to working there.

A lifelong Island resident, she agreed the mindset of Island residents has definitely been shifting.

“Yes, I really think it is. Global tourism is on the rise, the role of primary resource extraction has changed.”

While councillors from communities like Port Hardy and Port Alberni spoke out against the AVICC motion — presented by Metchosin — as being too broad, or too damaging to the north Island, she said a majority embraced it as necessary in shaping the direction of the Island’s future.

“I think that 10 or 15 years ago it would have been more contentious,” she said. “When things become rare, we value them more. Frankly it’s something I’ve come to expect from Vancouver Island. There has been much more thinking like an Island, realizing that we are all in this together.”

Port Hardy councillor Fred Robertson believes part of that should also be a recognition that well-managed forests are crucial to a healthy north Island. While he respects the opinions expressed by his neighbours further south, he thinks they have to consider that old growth logging may still have a net benefit in some parts of the Island.

“In my mind it doesn’t have to be an either-or,” he said. “It’s important to understand all perspectives. There is an economic and social impact in communities like ours.”

”You can have working forests and still attract people to a pretty spectacular part of the world.”

Elstone said that as the industry has shrunk residents of some communities may have lost their perspective on its overall importance.

“There has probably been a migration from urban centres into our smaller communities,” he said.

James Byrne, regional managing partner with MNP and another lifelong Island resident, said some may have lost sight of how valuable logging is in communities like Campbell River, Port Hardy and Woss and how the harvest feeds businesses further south.

“Don’t estimate the importance of old growth. Logging is not what it used to be, but it still has a significant impact up and down the Island,” he said.

Sierra Club campaigner Jens Wieting doesn’t dispute that, only its relative significance.

“Logging no longer has the same economic importance,” he said. “We have two trends: there are fewer benefits from logging and increasing benefits of keeping trees standing.”

Wieting echoed Osborne in saying old growth preservation has worth beyond the economy: water conservation, clean air and the spiritual satisfaction of preserving an ecology found nowhere else in the world are values more Vancouver Islanders have embraced.

He said despite the fact 15 per cent of the Island’s forests are protected, only three per cent of its biggest, most iconic trees are safe from harvesting.

“People are still looking for places where they can find intact nature,” he said. “When are we going to make the transition? The time to make the shift on Vancouver Island is overdue.”

Wieting was instrumental in the push that led to protection of 85 per cent of the Great Bear Rainforest. The preservation of Vancouver Island’s remaining old growth forests is the environmental movement’s next big target.

Getting a majority of Island communities, as well as the provincial business community on side is a big step.

“This is indeed huge. It is a reflection of the shifting landscape,” he said. “I feel very privileged to live in this part of the world. It is really something you can’t find anymore anywhere.”

[Original BC Local News article no longer available]

Some say the fate of British Columbia’s old-growth forests rests in the balance

Jun 5 2016/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

Here's a new article featuring renowned forest ecologist Dr. Andy MacKinnon about the fate of BC's endangered old-growth forests. Take note that the forest industry and BC government are spinning the situation about old-growth forests to make it appear as if they are not endangered and that they are already well protected – this is completely false, and they do this by including vast areas of stunted marginal non-commercial stands (bog forests, high elevation and far northern old-growth forests on steep rock faces with small trees, etc.) with the productive old-growth stands with big trees that have been heavily logged, and by combining the southern rainforest (Vancouver Island and Lower Mainland) with its different ecosystems, higher levels of logging, and far lower protection levels, with the northern rainforests (Great Bear Rainforest) where 20 years of boycotts by environmental groups of logging companies in the area resulted in a far greater level of protection in a more intact region of the province, ie. they are two different regions.

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Saanich -— The Douglas fir Andy MacKinnon leans against is 40 metres tall. It’s likely more than 500 years old and its fire-scarred trunk is almost two metres in diameter.

In most other countries, the tree would be the largest in the land, says MacKinnon, a forest ecologist who spent three decades with British Columbia’s government researching old-growth forests.

At Francis/King Regional Park, minutes from Victoria, the park’s trees are protected from logging, but about 150 kilometres west of Victoria, old-growth forests with 1,000-year-old trees twice the size of those in the park are being cut down every day, said MacKinnon.

The world’s largest trees face dangers similar to elephants, whales and bison that have been hunted to the brink of extinction, he said.

Right now, MacKinnon said it’s open season on B.C.’s old-growth forests outside of parks or protected areas.

“You hear debates about how much old growth we’d like out on the landscape and some people will say ‘X’ and some people will say ‘Y,’ but I think most people will agree that when you are down to less than one per cent, that’s too little,” he said.

MacKinnon is behind a push by some communities, business groups and politicians to stop logging in old-growth forests. The B.C. Chamber of Commerce recently endorsed a resolution to increase protection of old-growth forests where they have a greater economic benefit if they are left standing.

Port Renfrew, northwest of Victoria, has reported an increase in tourism in Avatar Grove, a 50-hectare section of old-growth forest named after the Hollywood adventure movie.

The Port Renfrew area is also known for Canada’s largest living trees, including a 70-metre tall Douglas fir named “Big Lonely Doug” by environmentalists because it was the only tree left standing after a logging clear cut.

The B.C. government is taking steps to protect forests, including the Great Bear Rainforest protection agreement. It will protect 85 per cent of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest from logging in an area on the central and northern coast of the province.

There are 1,000-year-old western red cedars and 90-metre tall Sitka spruce trees in the rainforest, which is also home to the white kermode bear.

Environmentalists, forest companies and First Nations cheered the deal as a model of compromise after two decades of protests and difficult negotiations.

The environmental applause continued with a new provincial park east of Prince George that’s the world’s only inland temperate rainforest. Cedar and hemlock trees were slated for logging, but local citizens, First Nations and academics built a series of trails into the area known as the Ancient Forest where thousands now marvel at trees with trunks measuring 16 metres in circumference.

Rick Jeffery, president of Coast Forest Products Association, said 55 per cent of B.C.’s coastal forests are under some form of protection from logging.

The days of leaving one tree in a clear cut are gone, said Jeffery, whose organization represents major forest companies that employ 38,000 forest workers in the province.

“This isn’t a jobs versus environment thing,” he said. “We can have both if we do this smartly.”

Steve Thomson, B.C.’s forests, lands and natural resource operations minister, said the Great Bear and Ancient Forest agreements highlight the government’s commitment to protecting old-growth forests.

“It’s about protecting important values and making sure we have that balance that continues to provide jobs and employment in the forest sector.”

The Ancient Forest is considered a natural wonder, a temperate rainforest inland, hundreds of kilometres away from similar coastal rainforests. The province said it would work with the federal government to declare the forest a UNESCO world heritage site.

“Scientifically, the trees are pretty amazing,” said Darwyn Coxson, a plant ecologist at the University of Northern British Columbia. “They really shouldn’t be there.”

Coxson said because the trees take 1,000 years to grow, it’s prudent to focus on what is in the forests now.

“We have a finite supply and the ones that are out there are realistically all you are ever going to have.”

B.C.’s old-growth forests by the numbers

— British Columbia’s old-growth forests boast huge trees that are more than 1,000 years old, but many fear their days are numbered. Here are some numbers on the trees:

— The government says there are 55 million hectares of forests in B.C.

— Twenty-five million hectares are old-growth forests.

— Four million hectares of old-growth hectares are fully protected from logging.

— The Red Creek fir near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island is listed as the world’s largest Douglas fir tree at 73.8 metres tall and its trunk has a diameter of 4.2 metres.

— The Cheewaht Lake cedar in Pacific Rim National Park on the southwest edge of Vancouver Island has a circumference of 18.34 metres. It is estimated to be between 2,000 and 2,500 years old.

Editorial: Good ecology is good economics

Jun 4 2016/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

What’s good for the environment is good for the economy. That’s a concept most British Columbians embrace and it’s what the B.C. Chamber of Commerce appears to have decided in seeking protection for some old-growth forests.

The chamber voted this week to ask the province to expand protection of old-growth forests in areas where they have, or likely would have, greater economic value if left standing.

The resolution also called on the province to enact new regulations — incorporating such strategies as an old-growth management area, wildlife-habitat area or land-use order — with an eye on eventually legislating permanent protection through provincial-park or conservancy status.

The doesn’t mean the chamber of commerce has suddenly become an environmental-advocacy group — it still has its eye firmly on the economy. The proposal applies only to old-growth forests in areas accessible for tourism — the chamber still supports loggers’ rights to harvest timber for more remote forest stands, even if they have ecological value.

Still, it’s an acknowledgment that forests can have value beyond the amount of timber than can be taken out of them.

Natural resources have always been important to B.C. — logging, mining and fishing have long been mainstays of the province’s economy. But B.C. is also known for its incredible natural environment, and the province’s two aspects often collide.

The conflict between the economy and the environment reached a peak in the mid-1990s, when protests and blockades were set up to prevent the clear-cutting of old-growth forest in Clayoquot Sound. It was a tipping point that brought about a major shift in policies and attitudes.

The timber industry was no longer “king” in B.C., and non-aboriginals began increasingly to see through the eyes of peoples for whom the forest has been home for millennia. It moved us closer to a balance between protecting the environment and sustainably harvesting its resources.

It’s an uneasy balance and, sadly, is often not achieved, but at least “sustainability” and “environmentally friendly” are widely accepted as worthwhile goals. It’s becoming more widely accepted that a healthy environment and a healthy economy are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, as the B.C. Chamber of Commerce indicates in its motion, protecting the environment can be good for business.

Old-growth forests and other pristine areas of B.C. attract an increasing number of visitors, and will continue to generate jobs forever. When an area is logged off, the jobs are gone until the forest regenerates, and that takes a long, long time. We should remember, too, that forests are about more than esthetics or recreation — they are vital to the health of our watersheds and even the air we breathe.

Businesses are increasingly recognizing that environmental sustainability is not only good business, it is essential. More and more investors are demanding that corporations be environmentally responsible as well as fiscally responsible.

They have recognized what we must all recognize — that if we don’t look after the environment, we won’t have an economy.

B.C. Chamber of Commerce hugs old-growth trees

Jun 3 2016/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

The largest business-advocacy organization in B.C. has voted to protect old-growth forests while still also supporting loggers’ access to valuable resources.

In a move environmentalists are calling a “historic shift,” the B.C. Chamber of Commerce voted this week in favour of a motion calling on the province to expand protection of old-growth forests in areas where they have, or likely would have, greater economic value if left standing.

“It’s a huge, huge tectonic shift in the politics of land use in B.C.,” said Ken Wu, executive director for the Ancient Forest Alliance.

“It changes the narrative for a lot of the province, especially rural B.C., where the traditional belief has been that if you protect old-growth forests, you undermine the economy. But the opposite is being shown to be true now.”

The proposal would apply only to accessible old-growth forests and not to isolated forest stands, even if they have ecological value.

Dan Baxter, spokesman for the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, said the members took a balanced approach, recognizing that natural resources, forestry and mining remain the foundation of the economy.

“I think our membership took a holistic look at the issue and recognized that there are certain situations and communities where old-growth forests are a viable, long-term economic generator,” Baxter said.

“At the same time, our membership does recognize that we need to have certainty and predictability accessing land, so we have a resolution that also passed that looked at ways to ensure that we don’t unduly impact access to timber harvest lands, either.”

Dan Hager, president of the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce, said his community’s economy has shifted from logging to tourism — first sport fishing, but more recently as a big-tree destination with draws like Big Lonely Doug and the Red Creek Fir.

Since Avatar Grove was protected in 2012, area accommodation providers report increased demand of about 75 to 100 per cent each year, Hager said. And while tourism used to drop significantly in winter months — off-season for sport fishing — activity has steadily increased even when fishing charters are not operating.

“Thanks to the trees, Port Renfrew is no longer a one-industry tourism town and has been able to successfully brand itself the ‘Tall Tree Capital of Canada,’ ” said Hager, who co-owns Handsome Dan’s cottage rentals. Hager sponsored the old-growth protection resolution.

Both Wu and Hager expressed hope that the resolution might push the province to give regulatory protection to 3.2 hectares of Crown land in the Central Walbran Valley, where forest products company Teal Jones Group has a cutblock permit.

The old-growth forest already draws hikers and visitors. But B.C. Supreme Court granted the logging company an injunction extension to keep environmental activists from impeding its work.

Forests Minister Steve Thomson was not available for comment and a ministry spokesman did not say whether the province would consider the chamber’s resolution.

“While some communities on Vancouver Island have successfully diversified their local economies more into tourism, many are still heavily dependent on forestry,” a ministry spokesman said.

“Given that old-growth forests make up 45 per cent of public coastal forests, it is not possible to fully stop logging in old-growth forests without having a severe negative impact on local employment.”

Seventy-five per cent of the original, productive old-growth forests have been logged on B.C.’s southern coast, according to the Ancient Forest Alliance.

‘Insane Damage’: Activist Accuses Logger of Breaking Disclosure Law

May 27 2016/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

An environmental activist says that for six months Lemare Lake Logging Ltd. has failed to meet the legal requirement to show him the company's plans for logging on publicly owned land in the East Creek valley on northern Vancouver Island.

British Columbia's Forest and Range Practices Act says that companies must make their site plans “publicly available on request at any reasonable time” at their offices.

“I've been asking for that for six months,” said Mark Worthing, a biodiversity and forestry campaigner with the Sierra Club of B.C. “They're barring access to us, obviously because they don't like us.”

A company official took a message from The Tyee on Wednesday, but the call was not returned by publication time.

A forest ministry spokesperson said the province is keeping an eye on the logging in East Creek and that it's being done properly.

Worthing wants to see for himself. He said he's had a representative visit Lemare's office in Port McNeill unannounced and he's tried setting up meetings ahead of time, but so far has not been shown a site plan. “We were given the run around for half a year,” he said. “In that time they've managed to log like it's 1920.”

Scrutiny needed, says activist

East Creek borders Mquqáµ‚in / Brooks Peninsula Provincial Park on the west side of northern Vancouver Island. Logging in the area has been controversial since at least 2003, when the Wilderness Committee campaigned to protect it.

Worthing said the area is ecologically rich, with one of the last unprotected old growth forests on Vancouver Island. It is home to northern goshawks, marbled murrelets, five species of Pacific salmon and many other plants and animals, he said.

“This is untouched rainforest,” Worthing said. “Generally speaking, logging it at all is heinous.”

But when he and others visited East Creek in October, the logging they observed wasn't up to modern standards, he said. Roads were poorly built, streams were damaged and culturally modified trees may have been logged.

“As soon as we saw it, it was pretty insane,” he said. “Everything [there] is grand in scale and so is the damage.”

Worthing tried to look further into the plans for the area, but those attempts were frustrated by the company's refusal to share the site plans, he said. “Civil society or the public can't even do their job to scrutinize what's happening on Crown land,” he said. “Without public access, there can't be public scrutiny.”

He said he complained to the government, but that they never reported back to him on what they did. A couple weeks ago he also complained to the Forest Practices Board, he said.

Ongoing inspections, says gov't

Steve Thomson, the minister for Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, was unavailable for an interview.

The minister can levy up to a $10,000 fine for a failure to provide access to a site plan under the Forest and Range Practices Act, a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. In this case, however, the ministry believed the matter had been resolved, he said.

“In January, the ministry's Compliance and Enforcement branch had discussions with the Sierra Club,” the statement said. “At that time, Sierra Club indicated that while they had initial problems getting access to the site plans, arrangements had been made with the licensee to visit with them in their office and view the plans.”

Worthing said there was a meeting arranged, but the company cancelled it and rescheduled, then cancelled again and rescheduled. “I proceeded to get the run around,” he said.

The ministry spokesperson also said that the government has been actively monitoring logging in the area. “So far in 2016, the ministry's Compliance and Enforcement branch has conducted over 10 inspections in the East Creek area including road maintenance and construction, streams and riparian reserves, culturally modified trees, timber transport and scale site inspections,” he said.

While inspectors found a few “non-compliances” with regulations for timber marking and roads, the licensee has addressed the issues, he said, adding that ministry staff will continue inspections in areas where there is active logging.

There are targets for the amount of old growth to be protected throughout the 5,012 hectare watershed, and sections of the valley are protected as marbled murrelet habitat (896 hectares, plus another 151 hectares proposed) and ungulate winter range (93 hectares), he said. There's also a 744 hectare wildlife habitat area that includes the creek itself.

Sierra Club wants science-based plan

Jens Wieting, a forest campaigner with the Sierra Club, said that for Vancouver Island there is no science-based plan for forestry like the one that was recently agreed to for the Great Bear rainforest on B.C.'s mid-coast.

“It's like night and day,” he said, noting the land use plan covering East Creek is from 1993 and outdated. “We have almost no conservation based on science on Vancouver Island.”

He said logging in East Creek, which he estimates is at about 100 hectares a year, is an “extreme example” of what's wrong with forestry on Vancouver Island. “[We are] asking the B.C. government to take action to put logging on hold in the area because it's clear there's no due diligence whatsoever.”

The Sierra Club's Worthing said that at the current rate of logging there will be no old growth forests left on Vancouver Island in another 20 years, so it would make sense for the government to act now to save what's left.

“They have no plan for the end of old growth logging,” he said. “They're literally just going to log it until it's gone.”

ELF sets up new protest camp, wins backing from Sierra Club

May 26 2016/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

The Elphinstone Logging Focus is working to stop a BC Timber Sales (a BC government-directed logging cutblock) cutblock in the biologically rich mature forests on the slopes of Mount Elphinstone near Gibsons. You can see their website here: www.loggingfocus.org

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Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) is making another effort to stop, or at least delay, the auctioning of a BC Timber Sales (BCTS) cutblock on the slopes of Mount Elphinstone.

Block A87125 is in the area ELF calls “Twist and Shout Forest.” It’s also within the boundaries of what the group is hoping will someday become an expanded Mount Elphinstone Provincial Park.

ELF’s Ross Muirhead told Coast Reporter a 24/7 camp was set up last weekend on an old spur road that accesses the cutblock. He said the group plans to hold events at what they’ve dubbed “Elphinstone Forest Protection Camp” throughout the summer.

The group has backing from Sierra Club BC, which issued a statement Wednesday calling for the province to “rescind the auctioning of this cutblock and commence a comprehensive park expansion/connectivity implementation process through engagement with the Squamish and shíshálh nations and local communities.”

ELF was instrumental in getting BCTS to delay the auction of the cutblock last year.

In a Factsheet published May 18, the Ministry of Forest, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (FLNRO) said, “A87125 comprises second-growth forest on Mount Elphinstone, and specific measures incorporated into the design of A87125 that go above and beyond legal requirements include: buffering a popular mountain bike trail from harvest; placing additional setbacks on streams; and retaining veteran Douglas-fir trees that survived historical fire and logging.”

FLNRO also notes that “the province has no plans to expand the existing park,” and it’s been talking with First Nations, local governments and community groups since it added A87125 to its harvesting plan.

ELF released a statement just before setting up the protest camp, quoting a 2015 study it commissioned from biologist Wayne McCrory that concluded the area is worth preserving.

“If this cutblock is allowed to proceed it will take out approximately 30 hectares [74 acres] of prime older forests that’s already in between two former cutblocks,” ELF’s Hans Penner said in the statement. “We encouraged BCTS to look to the north outside the 2,000 hectare [4,942 acre proposed park expansion] across the Sechelt-Dakota Forest Service Road where harvesting can take place in actual tree farms. This reasonable request has been met with silence.”

The public comment period on the cutblock auction ended April 18, and the bidding is scheduled to end June 3. According to FLNRO, the successful bidder will have 11 months to start logging before the licence expires.