News Coverage Archives

Why Vancouver Island’s Walbran Valley rainforest matters

Nov 12 2015/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

A new Sierra Club map of B.C.’s southern coastal rainforest shows why the Walbran rainforest on Vancouver Island matters, and what we stand to lose for species, carbon and beauty, if the proposed logging goes ahead.

A few weeks ago, the B.C. government issued the first of eight logging permits for the Walbran requested by logging company Teal Jones, despite a public outcry and opposition from many environmental groups.

In the last few days, activists have reported on social media about road crew and helicopter activity near cutblock 4424, indicating that Teal Jones could start logging any day.

To defend the issuing of the permit, the B.C. government has stated that a large portion of the Walbran remains protected in a park. This is correct. But to allow further logging of the remaining old-growth in this area is inexcusable considering that the Walbran is literally the last place on Southern Vancouver Island with old-growth rainforest of this type, size, and intactness.

The state of the awe-inspiring, “big tree” old-growth rainforest ecosystems on Vancouver Island reflects what author J. B. MacKinnon has described as our 10 percent world. Globally, there are now countless examples which show that we have reduced the original biological richness of our lands, oceans, ecosystems, plants and animals by about 90 percent.

The same happened to the biggest ancient trees in the rainforest valleys in the southern portion of the B.C. coast. About 90 percent of the most productive forests with the capacity to grow the largest trees have been logged and converted to young forests. Today, there remain very few old-growth areas that are big enough to support healthy populations of salmon and endangered species like the marbled murrelet.

In fact, our analysis shows that the Walbran Valley is the most urgent opportunity to increase protection of contiguous, old-growth rainforest and habitat on Vancouver Island.

We examined 155 landscape units on Vancouver Island and B.C.’s south coast (landscape units are areas of land used for long-term planning of resource management and usually 50,000 to 100,000 hectares in size).

Only three percent (five landscape units), including the Walbran, remain primarily covered by “big-tree” old-growth rainforest with the highest level of intactness (with over 70 percent old-growth). Vancouver Island is home to four of these five remaining “big tree” old growth landscape units. Three of them are mostly protected, but almost 40 percent of the Walbran landscape unit with 4,500 hectares of the remaining old-growth remains unprotected.

Our analysis focused on the remaining percentage of good and medium productivity old-growth forest, i.e. types of forests that are characterized by towering trees and high bio mass and carbon storage per hectare. Of these types of forest, combined, less than 30 percent remain as old-growth on Vancouver Island and the South Coast, and only about six percent of the original old-growth has been set aside in protected areas.

North of Vancouver Island, the Great Bear Rainforest Agreements are expected to protect the ecological integrity of one of the largest mostly intact temperate rainforest regions of the world. In Clayoquot Sound, northwest of the Walbran, the Ahousaht First Nation announced in October an end to industrial logging in their territory, which spans most of the intact rainforest valleys in this region.

But we must not allow these important refuge areas for species that depend on ancient rainforests to become isolated from other old-growth areas. With its outstanding intactness, the Walbran represents the only remaining opportunity in the southern half of the island to save a more contiguous area of productive old-growth rainforest, create connectivity and allow species like the marbled murrelet to find quality habitat between Clayoquot Sound and the Olympic Peninsula.

A larger protected area would give species that depend on this rainforest at least a fighting chance to survive, considering the level of degradation and fragmentation of rainforest on Vancouver Island. And only larger areas are resilient enough to withstand increasing climate change impacts like stronger droughts, stronger storms and other extreme weather events.

In addition, old-growth coastal rainforest store record high amounts of carbon per hectare, accumulated over thousands of years, and steadily sequester more carbon from the atmosphere. Clearcutting old-growth releases enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

A recent Sierra Club B.C. report revealed that, over the past decade, B.C.’s forests as a whole have shifted to being net emitters of carbon. This contrasts starkly to their historic role capturing huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. While the mountain pine beetle and more wildfires have tipped the balance, our analysis shows that destructive logging practices have been, and remain, the biggest factor contributing to B.C.’s forest carbon emissions.

Lastly, B.C.’s coastal temperate old-growth forests are a global treasure and spectacularly beautiful. Parks and protected areas offer immeasurable recreational joy for visitors and tourists from near and far and support our billion dollar tourism industry.

Many are shocked to see the sea of clearcuts they must traverse to access the remaining larger, less developed rainforest wilderness areas on Vancouver Island. The Walbran with its unique intact ecological rainforest values is one of the fantastic areas people on Vancouver Island care about and want to see fully protected.

Sierra Club and Wilderness Committee activists explored the area slated for logging in September and found monumental cedars, massive Sitka spruce, hemlock, amabalis fir, and Douglas fir trees. They named the area Black Diamond Grove for its steep slope. The crown jewel of the Black Diamond Grove is the Leaning Tower Cedar, a cedar approximately three metres wide at its base and probably as old as 1,000 years.

With so little left, how can our society allow logging the last of the endangered old-growth on the Island, instead of protecting it for our children, for example my friend Leonie (11 years). She wrote a letter to the Times Colonist and asked the B.C. government to protect the endangered rainforest in the Walbran. I am standing with Leonie: we should protect all of the Walbran.

Sierra Club B.C. is calling for a provincial government action plan to protect and restore B.C.’s forests in light of climate change impacts. Protection of rare and endangered old-growth rainforest ecosystems on Vancouver Island and the south coast is particularly urgent, because once cut, old-growth as we know it will not grow back. B.C.’s forest industry must shift to harvesting sustainable levels of second growth forest and value-added manufacturing. The transition will not be easy, but in a 10-percent world, denial is no viable option. The logging permit for the Walbran should be our wake-up call.

War in the Woods? Activists seek to end logging

Nov 11 2015/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

See this clip on CTV News about a rally at the Ministry of Forests for the Central Walbran Valley, thanks to the Friends of Carmanah Walbran: https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=747533&binId=1.1180928&playlistPageNum=1

Sustainable forestry cause draws 100 for Duncan rally

Nov 5 2015/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

A march and rally for sustainable BC forestry garnered a crowd of upwards of 100 at Charles Hoey Park Friday afternoon.

The event, organized by the Pulp, Paper, and Woodworkers of Canada Public and the Ancient Forest Alliance, and attended by folks from up and down the Island, had a message for the provincial government: exported logs equals exported jobs and that’s not acceptable.

“If you’re going to cut a tree down and give it to somebody else, leave the goddamn thing in the ground,” PPWC president Arnie Bercov told the group. “Leave it in the ground. Let it get bigger. Let your kids take it.”

He said it’s not that far away from election time and the province better take notice.

“It’s hugely important that we make these changes and that we stand up for ourselves,” Bercov said, noting the protestors want the return of local mills and jobs to the industry.

“We are going to make sure that our kids don’t have to go up to Fort Mac or the oil fields…they should be able to get a job here, learn a trade, raise a family and do all the things that most of us got to do. We’re not asking for the world, we’re saying give us fair treatment, give the environment fair treatment, give the workers fair treatment,” Bercov added.

“We’re not going to lose this fight, you guys. We are not going to lose this fight. If we have to build every goddamn sawmill ourselves in this province, we’re going to do it.”

Ancient Forest Alliance executive director Ken Wu explained it was the BC Liberals that took sawmills away from the workers in the first place.

“In 2004, at a critical juncture, as the majority of the prime old growth forests were logged out and huge areas of second growth forest matured, the BC Liberal government removed the local milling requirement that would have required that the licensees for the Crown lands would have had to convert their old growth mills to handle second growth logs,” Wu said. “But, at that critical time they removed the requirement through the so-called Forestry Revitalization Act, then came a wave of mill closures across the province to the tune of 100 mills in the last decade here.”

Wu said in 20 years the number employed in forestry has been slashed in half, from 100,000 to about 50,000.

“There’s been no incentives and regulations by the government, no leadership by the government to ensure that there’s a sustainable value-added second growth industry even though literally 90 per cent of the forests on Vancouver Island are second growth,” Wu said.

“We are here because we have common ground on an urgent issue. We believe that we can have a sustainable forest industry, protect our last remnants of old growth forest and ensure a sustainable second growth forest industry that maintains employment levels in the industry if there was government leadership.”

[Cowichan Valley News article no longer available]

How B.C.’s anti-logging activists are using drones to fight the ‘information war’

Oct 5 2015/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

The famous Zen saying asks, ‘If a tree falls in the forest with no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?’ It basically means what is out of sight, is out of mind.

B.C. environmentalists — seeking to raise awareness against logging plans in Vancouver Island’s old-growth forests — think they have a solution for the issue posed in the saying.

“If we can’t bring B.C.’s four million people to the forests, we’re going to bring the forests to the people,” activist TJ Watt of the Ancient Forest Alliance told The Province.

Watt and other activists are using drone technology to shoot compelling, high-definition videos of “Canada’s grandest old-growth” rain forest near Port Renfrew.

They say the area is endangered because in mid-September the B.C. Forest Service granted the Surrey-based Teal-Jones Group a permit for helicopter logging in one of the eight “cutblock” areas the company wants to log in the area.

Capturing drone footage is part of a new “information war,” activists say, that is reigniting a decades-old battle in Vancouver Island’s Central Walbran Valley.

This is the “birthplace” of B.C.’s eco-resistance movement, an area where activists used tactics including blockades and high-publicity arrests to win a public relations battle against Victoria and forestry companies in the 1990s. Activists won concessions that established a conservation area and spread their anti-logging protests to other areas in B.C.

Watt says his new remote-controlled, GoPro-camera-equipped drone, which costs about $1,000, allows him to shoot images of massive trees in the Walbran Valley that were previously inaccessible because of steep, “brutal terrain.”

“Drones are a new tool in our tool box because for many people these trees might as well be on the moon,” Watt said.

“They were out of sight and mind for most. But the drones let us raise environmental awareness about these remote endangered areas where companies believe they can log with little scrutiny.”

The activists say that, despite the 16,000 hectares of forest conserved in the Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park in 1993, new logging plans from Teal-Jones in the area go too far.

“This is the grandest forest in Canada, all the record-breaking trees are in this area,” said Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance.

“Over 90 per cent of these forests in southern Vancouver Island have been logged, so the conservation victories of the 1990s are just a drop in the bucket of what was originally there.”

The Teal Jones Group, which specializes in global sales of timber and lumber products, successfully applied for a logging permit in cutblock 4424, one of the eight areas that activists want to protect.

Cutblock 4424 covers an area of about three hectares, and all eight cutblocks that the company wants to log cover about 20 hectares.

In efforts to document trees that stand to be lost, last week activists with the Wilderness Committee and Sierra Club B.C. claimed to have discovered a “remarkable old-growth forest grove,” within cutblock 4424.

“We knew there were impressive old-growth trees in this area, but we were really blown away once we got in and explored,” Torrance Coste of the Wilderness Committee said.

They say the “crown jewel” of the area is a western red cedar about three metres wide at the base, and possibly about 1,000 years old.

Watt says the hope is that the government will rescind the logging permit already granted to Teal Jones, or that the company will bow to public pressure and agree to withdraw its plans to log in the area.

If that doesn’t happen soon, activists warn some of the groups involved in the Walbran Valley protection campaign are prepared to use civil disobedience. One group, including one of the original 1990s Carmanah Walbran protesters, has already set up an “observation camp” in the area.

“I think the hope is that we don’t have to go there,” Watts said, when asked if activists’ threat of “escalation” and “intense battle” could mean protesters standing in the way of Teal Jones heli-logging crews.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Forests said the 3.2-hectare cutblock already approved for heli-logging would not be clear-cut, and in the other seven potential Teal Jones cutblocks the government is considering “Old Growth Management” areas that would protect “significant trees” and some of the recreational features and hiking trails in the area.

The Teal Jones Group did not respond to requests for comments for this story. In previous reports, Teal Jones managers said more than 7,000 hectares already has been conceded to environmentalists for parkland in the area now owned by the forestry company.

Environmental group hopes new tech will help halt old-growth logging

Oct 2 2015/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

A remotely piloted aircraft has shone new light on an old-growth forest near Port Renfrew that has been approved for logging by the B.C. government.

The advent of technology has given photographer TJ Watt of the Ancient Forest Alliance, a grassroots environmental organization headquartered in Victoria, a wealth of insight into the scope of the Central Walbran ancient forest.

“It allows us to explore and document areas that were essentially impossible to reach before,” Watt said.

“There is a whole other world within the forest that, when you’re stuck on the ground, you don’t get a chance to view. But using the drone to fly upward in the canopy, we’re able to provide a new perspective on the scale of these massive trees.”

Watt released a video on YouTube this week to protest a recent decision by the provincial government that gives Teal-Jones Group, a Surrey-based logging company, permission to log a 32-hectare area for pulp, paper and solid wood products.

Rick Jeffery, president and CEO of Coast Forest Products, an industry association and advocate for the coastal forest industry, said there is no reason for the public to think the area captured on video will disappear entirely.

“[The Ancient Forest Alliance] is in there flying a drone around, and that’s lovely,” Jeffrey said.

“We’re in there with boots on the ground for hours and hours and days and days, spending the time to make sure that the development is consistent with the land-use plan and isn’t risking or threatening the values that our friends in the Forest Alliance are saying they are trying to protect.”

In fact, the Walbran “really isn’t at risk,” Jeffery said. “The development there will be small clearcuts that mimic the range of natural variation that you would find in an old-growth forest. Areas get blown over, slides happen and the new forest grows up in that small patch. That’s essentially what [Teal-Jones] is doing.”

Watt captured the video on a GoPro Hero 4 camera affixed to a drone aircraft flown remotely. He was able to capture in a few hours footage that would have taken him days to acquire had he hiked around on foot. That “new tool in the toolbox” will be an important asset of environmental organizations hoping to stop further logging the area, Watt said.

“Any footage of the canopy within the forest before would have had to be done with tree climbers and pulleys. It would be a really complicated process. Outside of the forest, when you’re separated from a hillside at risk of logging by a 500-foot ravine, you’re now able fly to the other side no problem and be back and packed in our vehicle in under 30 minutes.”

His video shows an impressive western red cedar that has been named Leaning Tower Cedar, for its similarity to Italy’s Leaning Tower of Pisa. The tree is located in the Black Diamond Grove area of the valley near Port Renfrew, a contested parcel of land that was approved for logging by the B.C. government. It is the first of eight proposed cutblocks.

Teal-Jones is legally required to manage at-risk species in wildlife habitat areas that crews come across, Jeffery said, so the plan doesn’t pose a risk to the ecosystems in the Upper Walbran or the Walbran Valley itself.

“There is absolutely nothing aggressive about these plans. We don’t just willy-nilly draw lines on a map and say we are going to go harvesting there.”

Watt is aware that video images may not change provincial government policy. However, he remains hopeful they can sway the public.

“The greatest use is to get thousands of people interested in the cause. But social media and whatnot could pressure the government, who makes the ultimate decision of whether the forest and the Walbran stand or fall.”

Logging protestors win temporary victory on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast

Sep 24 2015/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

Protesters fighting plans to log an old-growth forest on the Sunshine Coast are celebrating a temporary victory after construction of a logging road was halted temporarily.

The protesters, who have set up camp near Roberts Creek, say the area is an important bear habitat that will be destroyed if the trees come down.

Hans Penner has been taking turns blocking access to a service road in the Dakota Creek area of Mount Elphinstone, where the government has plans to auction off 53 hectares of old-growth timber, including ancient balsam, hemlock and yellow cedar.

“This is some of the last old growth forest in the world,” Penner said. “So really, the natural history, the cultural history is actually irreplaceable. It doesn't exist anywhere else.”

Penner said the area has become a sanctuary for bears. He hired biologist Wayne McCrory who identified seven likely bear dens in the one day.

Bears pushed out by logging

Penner said there are so many bears here because they've been pushed out of other areas by logging. That is why the government needs to protect what little old-growth forest remains in the province, he added.

He said he's been trying to persuade the government for years, compiling evidence, but eventually resorted to the protest in the woods.

“Blocking a road was a last resort,” he said. “We had spent over two years already doing our own studies, like the bear den report, the archaeological report, biodiversity reports, trying to convince the government that this area should not be logged.”

The protest appears to have made an impact.

Earlier this week, contractors stopped building roads and preparing the land for logging. On Saturday, the government confirmed that the road building has stopped, and the company will review its options over the winter.

B.C. suspends sale of ancient forest on Sunshine Coast identified as hot spot for bear dens

Sep 24 2015/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

Environmentalists who blocked construction of a forestry road on the Sunshine Coast for more than five weeks have won a temporary victory in their bid to stop logging of an old-growth forest identified as a prime spot for black bear dens.

B.C. Timber Sales won’t put the forest up for sale as planned on Oct. 1 and instead is “going to consider its options over the winter,” said Vivian Thomas, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations. The road builder, K & D Contracting, “had other jobs, so moved (their) equipment out,” she added. RCMP attended the logging site but no one obtained a court injunction to end the blockade.

“When there’s a blockade and you can’t get past it and you’re sitting there, you have to move,” said Doug Grant, a manager with K & D in Campbell River. “It cost about six weeks of productivity.” The company had barged in its heavy equipment.

A July 2014 report by consulting biologist Wayne McCrory found “very high-quality old-growth den habitat” in the Dakota Valley near Sechelt. Based on field work within two of four cutblocks proposed for sale, he extrapolated that logging of the overall 64 hectares would impact about 32 active bear dens.

The dens he investigated were within the trunk or cavity of cedar trees at elevations of 700 to 920 metres. Three-quarters of the best old-growth den habitat has already been logged in the area, McCrory observed, adding it is important to protect what little remains.

Ross Muirhead and Hans Penner, environmental campaigners with Elphinstone Logging Focus, said in an interview that they hope suspension of the sale will give the province time to consider the ecological and cultural values of the Dakota Valley — and not just timber values.

“Any delay in issuing the cutblock is good news,” Muirhead said. “It gives both sides more time to study the other features.”

Research commissioned by the province showed one old-growth yellow cedar to be 1,100 years old — a date calculated only after cutting the tree and others down rather than using less-invasive core samples, Penner said. “We find that appalling, an outrage. They killed the trees to count their age.”

Thomas said a few trees were cut to better determine if they were culturally modified, suggesting the “decay and healing” were more likely the result of “biogeoclimatic conditions.”

Thomas said BCTS discovered two cedar trees that appeared to have been recently used by bears as dens just outside the boundary of a cutblock and excluded them from the planned harvest area. She noted that black bear populations in B.C. are healthy and not a conservation concern and that nearby Tetrahedron Provincial Park provides an abundance of bear habitat.

Penner noted that a study of the logging site by consulting archeologist Jim Stafford found 33 trees thought to be culturally modified, suggesting long-term aboriginal use such as stripping off cedar bark. The province disputes the claim. Cultural modified trees that pre-date 1846 are protected under the Heritage Conservation Act.

Tall Tree Capital: Spectacular Avatar Grove shows that environmentalism and tourism can work hand in hand

Sep 14 2015/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

Check out the article and photos (by the AFA's TJ Watt) on the Avatar Grove, Ancient Forest Alliance, and tourism in Port Renfrew, on pages 25 to 27 in Soar Magazine (an airport magazine in Nova Scotia): https://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/launch.aspx?eid=1ebb79d9-5fd5-455d-9183-0bb884a1d323

VIDEO: "Did You Know?" Ancient Trees on Shaw TV

Sep 3 2015/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

Here is another “Did You Know” clip by the AFA's Ken Wu on Shaw TV, this time regarding BC's largest trees (Red Creek Fir, Cheewhat Giant, Big Lonely Doug, Lynn Valley's historical giants) and the threat to the Central Walbran Ancient Forest. The AFA's Hannah Carpendale is seen walking around the largest trees in Canada.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cZnuN5qJus

The Guide to Being an Awesome Canadian – featuring Climbing ‘Big Lonely Doug’

Aug 27 2015/in News Coverage/by TJ Watt

MacLean's magazine has featured a photo by the AFA's TJ Watt. This shot of Big Lonely Doug was captured during the tree climb and featured in the July 2015 'Guide to Being an Awesome Canadian'! Can you spot tree climbers Matthew Beatty (near the bottom) and Will Koomjian (near the top)?