WestJet Magazine's “Up!” includes a photo and write-up of the Avatar Grove on Page 27 in their “Going Coastal” article of Southern Vancouver Island destinations.
Check it out here:
https://cdn1.upmagazine.com/up-digital-issues/upapril-2013/index.html
The Ancient Forest Alliance is taking provincial political parties to task this election in terms of committing to preserve B.C.’s remaining old growth forests.
The Victoria-based environmental organization that caught international attention with its advocacy for old growth near Port Renfrew coined “Avatar Grove,” says the province is running out of its oldest forests, and has little legislation in place to protect what’s left.
“Industry still logs thousands of hectares of old growth every year,” said Ken Wu, executive directior of the AFA. “We can and must develop a sustainable second growth industry.
“Without handcuffs on industry, this is going to be the end of this resource. It’s up to government, be it the Liberals or the NDP, to make a commitment.”
Last week, the AFA and the University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre issued proposed legislation to protect old growth forests. Part of that plan involves engaging an independent scientific council to assess the ecological risk associated with varying levels of remaining old growth forests.
“While some legal mechanisms are available today under various statutes, we feel there is a need for new legislation and planning that is based on science, governed by timelines, and plugs existing loopholes or inconsistencies,” said Calvin Sandborn, legal director of the UVic Environmental Law Centre.
This week, the AFA criticized the B.C. NDP’s platform as continuing the “unsustainable status quo of old-growth forest liquidation and over-cutting.” It said the B.C. Liberals remain convinced the forests aren’t endangered, and the party has left a legacy of forestry job losses, raw log exports and unsustainable harvests.
Wu noted the B.C. Green party has committed to key parts of the proposed legislation.
The Pacific Carbon Trust would be scrapped if the NDP forms B.C.’s next government, leader Adrian Dix said Monday as he unveiled the party’s environmental platform.
The Climate Action Secretariat would take over from the trust, with carbon-tax revenues used to fund transit and other green projects, he said. Levies paid by hospitals, Crown corporations and post-secondary schools would fund energy-efficiency upgrades for those institutions.
“Since 2008, our public institutions have been paying tens of millions of dollars in levies to the Pacific Carbon Trust,” Dix said. “Instead of using those funds to invest in energy-efficiency initiatives in schools and hospitals, the bulk of the money has been gifted to profitable corporations.”
Read more election coverage HERE
The Pacific Carbon Trust was formed in 2008 to help reduce carbon emissions. Businesses and institutions pay $25 a tonne to the trust for emissions and the trust then buys carbon offsets. However, that meant cash-strapped schools and hospitals had to come up with funds that often then went to for-profit companies offering offsets. Auditor general John Doyle recently found the trust was investing in projects that would have gone ahead anyway.
Environment critic Rob Fleming, who is seeking re-election in Victoria-Swan Lake, said the aim is to make the fund work better.
“It will enable us to expand transit service. Literally more buses on the road. The big flaw is that since 2008, the Liberals haven’t invested a dime into public-transit service.”
But Environment Minister Terry Lake said Dix apparently doesn’t understand the concept of carbon neutrality.
“Turning it over to the Climate Action Secretariat doesn’t change anything and we’ve made some really good improvements, so I’m not sure how he intends to maintain carbon neutrality in the public sector, or maybe he doesn’t think that’s important,” he said.
The Liberals invested $75 million in making public buildings more energy efficient, saving institutions millions of dollars in energy costs, and another $5 million has gone into the carbon-neutral capital program for school districts for energy-efficiency projects that lower their carbon emissions, Lake said.
The NDP also pledged to ban cosmetic pesticides as part of its environmental platform. But a sparse announcement that the NDP will protect endangered species and habitats and reinvest in B.C.'s parks system, with few specifics, drew criticism from Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “The NDP’s environment platform is like a blurry moving sasquatch video in regards to potential old-growth forest protections and park creations,” he said. “You can’t discern if it’s real and significant or if it’s just Dix in a fake gorilla costume.”
The cost of the NDP’s environmental commitments is estimated at $36 million in 2013-14, $47 million in 2014-15 and $60 million in 2015-16.
The NDP also announced its agriculture platform, including a program to promote local food in hospitals and resurrection of a cancelled food-marketing program called Buy B.C.
Link to Times Colonist online article: www.timescolonist.com/sports/a-provincial-ndp-government-would-kill-pacific-carbon-trust-1.116909
1. TJ Watt, Victoria, British Columbia
Avatar Grove on Vancouver Island is a protected forest of towering trees that have survived on the planet for centuries, and in some cases millennia. TJ Watt of the Ancient Forest Alliance has been integral in promoting sustainable practices that will ensure Avatar Grove’s existence. An activist and photographer, Watt has so far managed to help preserve 59 hectares of forest near Port Renfrew from logging.
2. Marc Kielburger, Toronto, Ontario
Along with his younger brother, Craig, and his wife, Roxanne Joyal, Kielburger has launched Me to We Trips, promoting volunteer tourism vacations that help improve the lives of children in the developing world. The Me to We Trips are eco-travel journeys that have less impact on the environment than similar excursions by other companies to Africa, Asia and Latin America. Half of the profits of the company go to Free the Children, the charitable organization founded by the Kielburgers and Joyal that has done tremendous work fighting against the exploitation of children around the world.
3. Katie Hayes, Bonavista, Newfoundland & Labrador
The owner of the Bonavista Social Club, a bakery and pizzeria overlooking the gorgeous northern coast of Newfoundland, Hayes has opted for an entirely organic menu. She relies on ingredients from the Bonavista Social Club’s garden, makes her own bread and pizzas in a wood-fired oven, and hopes to one day produce cheese from the goats on the restaurant’s grounds.
4. Hugo Germain, Montreal, Quebec
As the director of development of ALT Hotels, Germain has overseen the implementation of industry-leading green initiatives, including a geothermal heating system in the Toronto Pearson Airport franchise location that reduces its energy usage dramatically, says Germain, who is also the nephew of acclaimed hotelier Christiane Germain.
5. Cliff Speer, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
One of the most well-regarded tour operators in Saskatchewan, Speer is devoted to exploring Canada’s natural wonders with his clients. With his company, CanoeSki Discovery, Speer educates visitors on how to see his part of Canada in ways that have little impact on the environment. Whether it’s canoeing through Saskatoon on the South Saskatchewan River or cross-country skiing in one of the province’s parks, Speer gives you a thorough understanding of the ecology in the region and how urbanization threatens it.
Link to VayCay.ca online article: https://vacay.ca/2013/04/5-canadians-to-salute-on-earth-day/
VANCOUVER – British Columbia’s political leaders made Earth Day the backdrop to their campaigning Monday, using environmentally-themed events that said as much about their approaches as the substance of their announcements.
NDP Leader Adrian Dix was in Environment Minister Terry Lake’s Kamloops riding to broadly imply a government led by him would likely put a stop to the proposed twinning of the Kinder Morgan pipeline through Burnaby, B.C., to the Burrard Inlet off Vancouver.
Dix said he would await the results of the necessary reviews held into the project that would triple the capacity of the Trans Mountain pipeline, but he added: “We do not expect Vancouver to become a major oil export port as appears to be suggested in what Kinder Morgan is proposing.”
In the past, Dix has taken a similar stance on the development of the Northern Gateway pipeline, saying an NDP government would opt out of a joint federal review already underway for more than a year and conduct its own environmental probe. Dix has also said in the past he is opposed to the project.
Liberal Leader Christy Clark took her campaign to two Vancouver-based environmental tech companies to talk about jobs the green economy can provide.
Solegear Bioplastics makes plastics from plants instead of oil. The company says in its promotional material that its products, which can be used in everything from packaging to office furniture and toys, are compostable and non-toxic.
The second company, Saltworks Technologies Inc., has developed desalination technologies that have been used by customers as diverse as NASA and the Alberta oil patch.
“Clean tech is creating the jobs of tomorrow,” Clark said after touring Saltworks, which employs 40 people and last year, was named to the Global Cleantech 100, a list produced by a global research and advisory firm.
“The NDP would stifle this kind of innovation. We know they don’t understand the economy, and we know that they would move backward on the environment, too. They have opposed policy after policy that we have brought in to protect B.C.’s environment and spur innovation.”
In a rare glimmer of agreement, both leaders expressed doubts about the Pacific Carbon Trust, the agency that was created with the goal of turning B.C. into one of the world’s leading carbon-neutral economies.
Critics, including the B.C. auditor general’s office, say the agency is almost 99 per cent taxpayer funded — $14 million — and forces schools, hospitals and other public entities to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on carbon credits, while private businesses sell their credits for cash.
Dix said Monday he would eliminate the carbon trust. He said public institutions have paid millions of dollars into the program, while private companies get money in turn for simply listing an inventory of uncut forests or unused gas projects.
“The government’s view on carbon-neutral government is to take money from cash-starved hospitals and give it to big polluters,” Dix said. “We think that money should be kept to support public institutions.”
He said an NDP government would have public institutions pay to offset their carbon emissions, but the money would be used to fund green projects.
The NDP also proposes to take $30 million in accrued earnings in the current Pacific Carbon Trust account and use the money for energy efficiency projects in the public sector.
Clark agreed the Pacific Carbon Trust hasn’t worked the way it was supposed to and said if she wins the election, her government would review the program.
“It hasn’t worked that well,” she said.
But she said the NDP has repeatedly opposed efforts by the Liberals to confront environmental problems.
Dix said Monday, though, that a government led by him would seek to meet the Liberals’ legislated greenhouse gas emissions targets. The Liberals under former premier Gordon Campbell pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one-third by 2020.
In a news conference near the banks of the North Thompson River in Kamloops, Dix said an NDP government would invest $120 million over the next three years to fight climate change in urban and rural communities.
Much of that money would come from the NDP’s earlier announcement to shift revenues from the carbon tax, which currently go to tax cuts, to transit projects and green initiatives.
For their part, B.C. Conservatives issued a news release saying any talk of ending the Pacific Carbon Trust is thievery from their own long-held position.
“I’m pleased that Adrian Dix and the NDP continue to steal our policies,” leader John Cummins said in a news release.
But he slammed Dix’s commitment to expanding the carbon tax, saying the Conservatives would end that too.
The Ancient Forest Alliance, too, used Earth Day to take aim at the NDP’s environmental stance on forestry, which was outlined last week.
Ken Wu, the group’s executive director, said it’s hard to tell what Dix’s announcement last week on protecting old-growth means.
“The NDP’s environment platform is like a blurry moving sasquatch video in regards to potential old-growth forest protections and park creation — you can’t discern if it’s real and significant, or if it’s just Dix in a fake gorilla costume running to get attention,” said Wu.
“We need the NDP to commit to a science-based plan to fully protect BC’s endangered old-growth forests on Crown lands, to ensure sustainable second-growth forestry, and to commit to a B.C. park acquisition fund to purchase and protect endangered ecosystems on private lands.”
Earlier in the day, Clark appeared on a Vancouver talk show and sparred with the host about her government’s latest budget.
The Liberal party has staked its political fortunes on a balanced budget by the end of this fiscal year, but the NDP claimed the budget is actually at least $800 million in deficit. The NDP has said it would not balance B.C.’s books until the end of their four-year mandate if they were to be elected.
“Whether or not the budget is balanced isn’t based on what people believe or what municipal managers believe,” the premier said. “Go ask Moody’s. … they said it was balanced. These are the world’s experts. Dominion Bond Rating said the budget was balanced, again, the world experts in this.”
A few hours later, Clark dialed back her claim.
“What they say is we have a superior record of fiscal management and they say that our revenue targets are absolutely on,” Clark said. “In contrast, the NDP say our budget isn’t balanced because they say our revenue targets are all out, well, the NDP isn’t telling the truth about that.”
In a report issued April 12, Standard & Poor’s affirmed the province’s AAA rating but did not proclaim the budget balanced.
Company analyst Paul Judson said the incumbent Liberal government introduced a budget with a plan to bring the province’s operating budget “back into balance” in fiscal 2014.
Rating agencies are “agnostic,” he said.
But Helmut Pastrick, chief economist for the Central 1 Credit Union, said while the reports are not an endorsement of any political party or government, they could be considered a warning about economic direction.
“Perhaps its just a cautionary note, if you will,” Pastrick said.
In its March 26 report, Toronto-based Dominion Bond Rating Service confirmed the province’s high rating on long- and short-term debt, but also noted that the budget measures may not be implemented before the May 14 vote.
“Nevertheless, the fiscal progress made to date and a relatively low debt burden in relation to peers provide British Columbia with sufficient flexibility within its current ratings, be it to withstand further economic malaise or a potential relaxation in fiscal discipline,” said the report by Travis Shaw, vice-president of public finance.
Moody’s Investors Service affirmed an AAA rating in its April 4 report, citing the province’s “strong fiscal flexibility and track record of prudent fiscal management.”
Neither Moody’s nor DBRS declared B.C.’s latest budget to be balanced.
Link to Maclean’s online article: www2.macleans.ca/2013/04/22/earth-day-forms-backdrop-to-b-c-election-campaign/
A herd of endangered mountain caribou in Wells Gray may have dropped to its lowest number, but the latest survey data are under wraps according to a scientist who lives near the park.
Trevor Goward said this year’s count — which found only 58 animals from a herd that numbered 400 in recent years — was leaked and the figures won’t be publicly released for weeks.
“It is a disaster,” said Goward. “I guess they’re holding off for various reasons,” he speculated. “It wouldn’t look good for the government.”
In response to a request from The Daily News, a spokesman with the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations said the March data are under analysis and it would be premature to comment on them.
A lichenologist who studies the tree lichens on which the caribou feed, Goward has been lobbying for a moratorium on low-elevation clearcut logging that borders the park in the upper Clearwater Valley.
Clearcuts drive up populations of ungulates such as deer and moose, along with their predators, wolf and cougar, which in turn prey upon the caribou. Caribou are particularly vulnerable; they typically produce one calf every second year.
“It’s got to be this constant eroding of the population by predators,” Goward said. “It’s obvious something is going on. They’re not evolved for high predation.”
For the past five years, the provincial government has focused on a mountain caribou recovery implementation plan in an attempt to rebuild populations. Despite those efforts, the Wells Gray herd has continued to decline, evidence that the plan has failed, Goward contends.
The underlying issue is vanishing old-growth forest, primary caribou habitat. Neither the NDP nor the Liberals has said they would take additional measures to protect old-growth forest, said Ken Wu, founder of the lobby group Ancient Forest Alliance.
“They’re the largest old-growth dependent species in Canada,” Wu said. “This is a large mammal. It’s really one of the iconic species in B.C.” The southern Interior represents the largest concentration of what remains of the species.
The NDP’s forestry plan does not stress old-growth protection, which represents a broken promise by party leader Adrian Dix, Wu said. When Norm Macdonald, NDP forest critic, was in Kamloops on Monday, he characterized old-growth concerns as primarily an Island issue.
“Old growth forests across the province are in danger, especially in areas of the southern Interior,” Wu said. The governing Liberals don’t have a good track record, he added.
“They maintain that they’re managing old-growth forests, which is simply not the case.”
Terry Lake, Liberal candidate for Kamloops-North Thompson and former environment minister, challenged that assertion.
“We have old-growth management areas throughout the province, so I think we are managing that well,” he said, adding there is always a balance between protecting environment and providing economic opportunity.
He believes Canfor has no immediate plans to log in the area and noted that the Upper Clearwater Valley is protected through a management plan established in the late ’90s.
Without seeing the latest data, Lake would not concede that the Wells Gray herd is in serious decline. That bureaucrats would withhold the data is just conjecture, he added.
“The (caribou) recovery plan is not something where you will see results in a couple of years,” Lake said. “You have to look at a 10- to 20-year horizon, and in some cases they may never come back.”
In the case of Wells Gray, it’s the buffer forests that border the park that need to be protected from further logging, environmentalists say. They are also pushing for sustainable forestry on second-growth stands.
The NDP has lost its bearing on the issue, Wu suggested. That’s why their forest plan has been described as indistinguishable from that of the Liberals.
“They have forgotten the history of what they saw in the War in the Woods in the ’90s. If there were ever a time to be bold and keep their promise, the time to do that is now.”
Yet time appears to be running out for mountain caribou. Goward calls the decline “death by a thousand clearcuts.” He’s started an online petition drive through Change.org to pressure politicians.
“We’re watching the demise of something comparable to the decline of the buffalo on the prairies.”
Read More: https://www.kamloopsnews.ca/article/20130419/KAMLOOPS0101/130419802/-1/kamloops01/caribou-count-may-be-lowest-ever
PRINCE GEORGE – New Democrat Leader Adrian Dix has released a multimillion dollar election plan that he believes will help grow and improve B.C.'s forest industry, but critics say the proposal makes promises that will be hard to keep.
In Prince George Monday, Dix announced the five-point forestry plan that would see $310 million invested in the industry over five years if his party wins the election in May.
The NDP leader announced his government would invest in skills training, to improve forest health, to expand global markets for B.C. lumber and to cut raw log exports, while it reinstates a jobs protection commissioner.
“Skills training is really the principle focus of our economic plan, to ensure young people have the skills they need for the jobs of the future,'' Dix said.
The B.C. Liberal Party immediately criticized the plan, saying it lacks policy details.
“After months of delay, I think British Columbians were expecting more,'' said Forest Minister Steve Thomson in a news release.
George Hoberg, a forest policy expert at the University of British Columbia, said Dix's promise to reduce raw log exports will be hard to keep.
“Raw logs are always something that politicians talk about, but it's actually very hard to deliver in terms of either policy or real change in the industry,'' Hoberg said.
“Our comparative advantage is in raw resource material or in commodities, not in more labour-intensive value-added production,''
he said.
The NDP's commitment to improve forest health includes an emphasis on increasing the province's research capacity, updating forest inventories and doubling the number of seedlings planted annually.
Hoberg said he is impressed with the plan's focus on forest health.
“The biggest challenge that we face in forestry is renewing the forest that has been disseminated by the mountain pine beetle and the Liberals have not been particularly effective at investing resources on that,'' Hoberg said.
“The one big change that we will likely see, if the NDP is elected, is a greater commitment to government funding of inventory and silviculture,'' he said.
Hoberg was surprised at the lack of discussion of environmental issues in the NDP plan – something he said the Liberal forestry plan also lacks.
Ken Wu at the Ancient Forest Alliance called the plan “a big disappointment ecologically.''
“It essentially continues the unsustainable status quo of old growth liquidation and over cutting which has led to the collapse of ecosystems and communities,'' Wu said.
Dix campaigned for party leadership with a promise to address old growth deforestation, but he now appears to be reneging on his commitment, Wu said.
“We are hoping that the party will move forward with additional policy commitments in the lead up to the election so that Dix fulfills his promise to develop a provincial old growth plan which was his 2011 leadership bid promise,'' Wu said.
Dix said the plan was developed in consultation with forest industry businesses, union leaders and with communities.
Some of the suggestions are in line with a 2011 report created by the B.C. Government and Service Employees Union, which suggests tightening raw log exports and increasing staff levels within the B.C. forest service.
A spokesperson from the Council of Forest Industries, which represents over a dozen forest companies in the province, wasn't available for comment.
Globe and Mail online article: www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/ndps-forestry-policy-plank-sparks-partisan-ire-disappoints-ecologists/article11253131/
The New Democratic Party's forestry platform released this morning is a major disappointment, said Ken Wu, the executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance environmental group.
“I'm just looking at this with rage here,” he said in an interview. “This is a minor deviation from the unsustainable status quo.”
This morning NDP leader Adrian Dix released a five point plan for forestry. It included a commitment to skills training for the industry, more emphasis on forest health, improved inventory and building markets for B.C. wood. It also talked about reducing the export of raw logs and re-instating a jobs protection commissioner.
The plan calls for $30 million in added spending on forestry in 2013-2014, building to $100 million five years from now.
“There are some aspects that are progressive, but there's not a lot of detail,” said Wu. Restricting raw log exports is positive, for example, but today's announcement didn't say how the NDP would do that, he said.
During the NDP leadership contest, Dix promised an NDP government would develop “a long-term strategy for old-growth forests,” which Wu made note of at the time.
“He has not kept his promise,” said Wu, adding the NDP could still make that commitment. “They need to do it soon. At this point I'd say the NDP just don't get it on forest conservation. They still have a chance, but this forestry platform is a flop ecologically.”
Wu said individual MLAs such as Scott Fraser in Alberni-Pacific Rim have championed the protection of old growth forests. “We need the entire NDP party to make it part of their platform to protect endangered old growth and ensure sustainable second growth forestry.”
The NDP platform says the party would take five years to double the number of seedlings planted by the government on Crown land to 50 million annually.
In a February interview, NDP forestry critic Norm Macdonald criticized the BC Liberal government for failing to meet an earlier commitment to be planting 50 million seedlings a year by 2012.
Noting at least one million hectares were already known to be not sufficiently restocked, Macdonald said, “Any competent government, and it comes down to competence, any competent government looks after its most valuable asset.”
Link to article on The Tyee website: https://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/2013/04/15/ForestStatus/
Twenty years ago today, about 30 residents of Tofino were driving up and down the highway by Long Beach, communicating via handheld radios, tracking a helicopter carrying B.C.’s premier of the day and select media.
A local guy listening in on emergency, aviation and boat communications was transmitting the play-by-play, while the helicopter sought a quiet landing spot where the premier could make a “contained” statement about the fate of Clayoquot Sound’s forests.
Nothing that followed, however, in what was to become the Clayoquot Summer of 1993, could be construed as “contained.”
The Clayoquot land-use decision of April 13, 1993, sparked a mass protest that put Clayoquot Sound’s ancient temperate rainforests on the international map. Over a period of six months, the region became an icon for an environmental awakening.
Clayoquot symbolized all that was wrong with industrial logging and was a touchstone for people’s hope for change. It shook the province, inspired people to action and hatched a marketplace-oriented strategy that has been utilized in environmental campaigns from the farthest corner of Vancouver Island to the Great Bear Rainforest to Indonesia, the Amazon and beyond.
The conflict, in fact, began in the previous decade with a group of volunteers from the Friends of Clayoquot Sound and First Nations leaders who rose to protect their traditional territories. Reaction to the 1993 Clayoquot decision transformed the local conflict into a movement with reverberations to this day.
Clayoquot Summer ’93 was triggered because the decision left two-thirds of the region, including many intact rainforest valleys, open to industrial logging. Public outrage about this decision funnelled into the largest act of non-violent civil disobedience in Canadian history, culminating in the arrest of 856 of the 12,000-plus protesters, who were tried in mass trials and jailed.
By October 1993, when the protests wrapped up, it had spilled into years known as the “War in the Woods.” Environmental groups targeted corporate customers of B.C. wood and paper products around the world, causing the province grief and the industry millions in lumber and paper sales.
In response to the non-violent but highly energized uprising, the political ground in B.C. shifted. Clayoquot marked a renaissance in First Nations land-rights discussions, and environmental groups became powerful intermediaries, both in the wood-supply chain and in the political discourse. Importantly, the public became defiant over what they saw to be legal but wrong — the destruction of the environment — and began to stir.
Out of the controversy, the First Nations in Clayoquot Sound, who hadn’t been consulted on the land-use plan, were chosen to be first in the province’s new treaty process, and a groundbreaking pre-treaty agreement was signed.
By August, then-premier Mike Harcourt established the Clayoquot Sound Scientific Panel for Sustainable Forest Practices. The outcry against wanton clearcut logging broke through barriers, sparking the province to initiate B.C.’s first forest-practices code. The logging industry circled its wagons in an attempt to defend its tarnished reputation in the marketplace, but change was apace.
The fight for Clayoquot was a polarizing issue. Wedges were driven between communities as we grappled with the biggest issues of our day with nowhere but the public forum to play them out. And yet, we all crept, agonizingly, toward breakthroughs that British Columbians can be proud of.
What happened in Clayoquot Sound, beginning in April 1993, has had a major influence on global environmental movements, the Great Bear Rainforest campaign and even the oilsands and pipeline campaigns of today — as well as on conservation of Clayoquot’s forests.
It has been 20 years. Just over half of Clayoquot’s rainforests are now off-limits to logging. But many of the region’s intact rainforest valleys are still unprotected, and the region’s First Nations communities still struggle economically.
As the anniversaries of the Clayoquot Sound land-use decision and subsequent uprising of the Summer of ’93 are marked, we see new opportunities for conservation and human well-being growing again in Clayoquot Sound. A lasting solution may soon be at hand that honours the movements for environmental and social justice begun those 20 years ago, in the magnificent, inspiring place that is Clayoquot Sound.
There are many more stories to tell about those times. There are more in the making there now.
Valerie Langer is with ForestEthics Solutions. Eduardo Sousa is with Greenpeace. Maryjka Mychajlowycz is a member of Friends of Clayoquot Sound. Torrance Coste is a campaigner for the Wilderness Committee.
*Note: The Green Party has adopted the key recommendations of the Environmental Law Clinic’s proposed Old-Growth Protection Act. It appears that the NDP support the scientific assessment component of the proposal, however they have not yet committed to the calls for protection and fully ending old-growth logging in endangered regions.
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Up-to-date science and legislation without massive loopholes is needed to protect B.C.’s remaining old-growth forests, says the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Clinic.
The proposed Old-Growth Protection Act was produced by the clinic at the request of the Ancient Forest Alliance. The group’s executive director, Ken Wu, hopes it will spur the government to action.
“It’s time for a new, science-based plan,” he said.
An industry transition to second-growth trees is inevitable as the last unprotected old-growth stands are logged, Wu said.
“We simply want the B.C. government to ensure the transition is completed sooner, while these ancient forests still stand.”
The proposal, which is similar to a plan released Friday by the Green Party of B.C., is based on immediately stopping old-growth logging in critically endangered forests and phasing out old-growth logging where there’s a high risk to biodiversity and the ecosystem.
Major elements of the plan include appointing a science panel to carry out inventories and forest risk assessments, establishing different harvest rates for old-growth and second-growth, and legally designating old-growth reserves so there are consistent, enforceable rules.
Calvin Sandborn, the clinic’s legal director, said the plan is practical, science-based and politically doable.
“We wanted something that would fix the flaws in the current system, and the flaws are numerous,” he said.
Protection now offered by old-growth management areas is limited, Sandborn said.
Boundaries are adjusted to move protected areas away from valuable old-growth stands, logging is conducted under the guise of protecting forest health, small, stunted old-growth trees are protected, rather than big stands, and areas protected under forest rules can still be harvested by the oil and gas industry, Sandborn said.
If science and current mapping were used to establish which areas should be protected, much of the political heat would disappear, especially as protecting ancient trees produces more jobs over the long term than cutting them down, he said.
“These trees are our equivalent of the ancient cathedrals of Europe,” he said.
Forests Minister Steve Thomson could not be reached Friday.
NDP environment critic Rob Fleming said the proposed legislation “speaks to the urgency of the issue.”
“The idea of a science panel to assess the inventory of old growth on the Island is a good one, and I think it’s supportable,” he said. “It echoes an earlier call from the Forest Practices Board.”
The Green party is also calling for more science-based assessments and a provincial inventory of remaining old-growth forests.
“Given the scarcity of remaining productive old growth in much of our province, it is clear that we need to head in a new science-based direction to manage our forests,” said Green leader Jane Sterk.
The party also wants to see incentives for companies to retool mills so they can handle second-growth trees, and emergency protection for endangered ecosystems, such as the eastern Vancouver Island coastal Douglas fir zone.
