CTV news clip on Alberni-Pacific Rim MLA Scott Fraser receiving a Forest Sustainability Award from the Ancient Forest Alliance and Youbou TimberLess Society.
Watch the video on our YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/vQbEH7u2Efc
Link to full media release: www.ancientforestalliance.org/news-item.php?ID=606
Direct link to video: https://youtu.be/NOz232HDx3Y
Conservationists are calling for much stronger, comprehensive old-growth protection policies in BC after having discovered a major logging threat to Canada's most famous old-growth forest, Cathedral Grove in MacMillan Provincial Park on Vancouver Island. Conservationists came across survey tape marked “Falling Boundary” and “Road Location” in an old-growth Douglas fir and hemlock forest only 300 meters from the park boundary.
Direct link to video: https://youtu.be/xyRGH1eFipk
About 500 people protested in front of the BC Legislature on Saturday afternoon to bring awareness to the loss of B.C. endangered old-growth forests.
Organized by the Ancient Forest Alliance, the group wants the BC Liberal government and the NDP to commit to an plan that will protect B.C.’s old-growth forests, and ensure sustainable, second-growth forestry jobs.
More than 3,700 people have sent messages so far to the BC Liberal government and NDP Opposition to protect old-growth forests and ensure sustainable second-growth forestry through the organization’s website: www.BCForestMovement.com
“With an election coming up, now is the time for BC’s politicians to commit to protecting our endangered old-growth forests, to ensure sustainable second-growth forestry, to end the export of raw logs to foreign mills, and to implement First Nations land use plans,” said Ken Wu, the AFA’s executive director.
“The status quo of liquidating the biggest, best old-growth stands and exporting massive amounts of raw logs abroad is destroying ecosystems, jobs, and communities. Now, of all times, BC’s politicians must develop some wisdom, foresight, and a backbone for a sustainable forestry overhaul in this province. No politician or party will escape scrutiny on their forestry agenda this electoral season, we’ll see to that.”
On Vancouver Island, 75% per cent of its original ancient forests have already been logged, including 90 per cent of the valley bottoms where the largest trees grow. The AFA said B.C.’s old-growth forests are vital to support endangered species, tourism, the climate, clean water, wild salmon, and many First Nations cultures.
Watch the original story on our YouTube channel here.
Let’s forget about the end of oil for a moment and worry about something more immediate: the end of old-growth forests.
British Columbia is the last place in Canada where you can still find ancient, monumental trees standing outside parks. We are not talking here just about big, old trees, but about trees 250 to 1,000 years old, that tower 70 metres in height. If one grew on the steps of Parliament, its tip would block out the clock face on the Peace Tower. And set down in Vancouver, they would be as tall as many office towers.
Surprisingly, it is still legal in B.C. to cut down trees like that. And so many of these giants have been cut over the past 20 years, says Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance, that the end of old growth is near.
“We’ve just about hit it already in the coastal Douglas-fir zone,” he said. “On eastern Vancouver Island, we’ve got 1 per cent of old growth left. On the south Island, south of Alberni, we’ve got about 10 per cent left.”
Three years ago, Mr. Wu founded the Ancient Forest Alliance, a small group dedicated to just one task – saving old trees. Since then, he and his colleagues have spent a lot of time tramping around coastal forests, mapping groves of giant trees – and pleading with the government to protect them.
They have successfully saved some patches of forest, such as the now-famous Avatar Grove, which has become a tourist attraction near Port Renfrew. But Mr. Wu has lost a lot of fights, too, returning to find stumps where there had been a majestic cathedral of trees.
“The place that stands out for me is in the Walbran Valley [on the West Coast of Vancouver Island.] … It really is a Jurassic Park landscape. You’d think there would be Brontosauruses walking through there, with enormous trees, hanging mosses and ferns everywhere. … But in the last few years, we’ve seen the area logged. It looks like Swiss cheese now. Huge stumps as large as my living room where there used to be trees as tall as a downtown skyscraper.”
Mr. Wu doesn’t mince words when asked what he thinks of scenes like that.
“So when you are getting down to the last of an ecosystem and the government is not doing anything to stop that, not only is that criminal negligence, it’s being an accomplice to the crime,” he said.
Of course, it is perfectly legal in B.C. to take a chain saw and cut down a tree that is 200, 400 or even 1,000 years old. Loggers don’t have to get special permits just because a tree is exceptionally old, or remarkably big. If it is in an authorized cut block, it can be logged – and for a long time, it seemed only Mr. Wu and a handful of other environmentalists have heard those giants fall.
But slowly a public distracted by debates over tanker traffic, oil pipelines and coal ports, is turning its interest back to the fate of B.C.’s iconic old-growth forests.
When the Ancient Forest Alliance started a petition recently calling for the protection of B.C.’s endangered old growth, 22,000 people signed up. Another 1,800 confirmed on the group’s website and Facebook page that they would attend a protest rally at the legislature.
Mr. Wu is hopeful that this growing public awareness will encourage the government to make policy changes. “The main goal is to get a provincial old-growth strategy in place that would inventory old growth and protect it in regions where it is scarce,” he said. “At the same time, we recognize that there’s a lot of people working in the forest industry.” Mr. Wu believes B.C. could get more value out of logging second-growth timber. He also thinks the province should stop exporting whole logs.
He feels confident government can be persuaded to act before the last old growth is logged.
But on Sonora Island, near Campbell River, a group of residents went for a walk in the woods recently and this is what they found – towering, 600-year-old trees marked to be cut.
If that logging goes ahead, B.C. will have lost another piece of the 1 per cent of old growth that remains in the area. That puts us pretty close to the end of the game.
Link to online article: www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/the-fight-to-protect-whats-left-of-old-growth-forests/article9868144/
https://bcove.me/la6w1bkg – link to CHEK TV news clip on the battle to stop Island Timberlands from logging the mountainside above Cathedral Grove!
VICTORIA — The B.C. government has backed off on a plan that critics said would have sold out public control over Crown forest land.
Forests Minister Steve Thomson says he’s withdrawn proposed changes to the Forest Act that would have allowed volume-based forest licences to be converted to area-based forest licences, essentially giving private companies more power over government-owned land.
Thomson says it’s become clear more public input is needed on the idea, so the government will conduct broad consultations this summer on the recommendations of a special committee that first proposed the change.
That means nothing will be done until after the May election.
NDP forests critic Norm Macdonald welcomed Thomson’s move.
“The proposed changes were deeply problematic and went in exactly the wrong direction,” MacDonald said in a news release.
“They threatened public control over B.C.’s land base and risked hard-won environmental standards.
“I’m glad to see that the minister listened, not only to what I had to say, but to the concerns of thousands of British Columbians who let the Liberal government know that this was simply unacceptable.”
Independent MLA Bob Simpson also praised the government’s decision to shelve the amendments, saying the Liberals responded to mounting public concerns over plans to make sweeping changes to B.C. forest policy.
He also called for a public inquiry into future forest policy.
“The last inquiry into B.C.’s forests and forest policy was in the 1990s, and given all that’s happened with the mountain pine beetle epidemic, our shrinking timber supply, corporate concentration and control of log supply, and climate change’s threat to our public forests, we need a full public inquiry before considering any forest policy changes,” Simpson said in a statement.
Ken Wu of the environmental group Ancient Forest Alliance is also applauding the Liberals for backing down.
“The BC Liberals wanted to give a ‘parting gift’ to the major logging companies before they leave office, but in this politically sensitive pre-election period that’s not going to happen now — thanks to thousands of people who spoke up and the great work of Bob Simpson,” Wu said in a statement.
The provincial government has backed away from a plan that critics claim would have radically reduced public control of forest land.
Conservationists, who were girding for a full-fledged fight over proposed changes to the Forest Act, reacted with delight Tuesday after Forests Minister Steve Thomson said he was withdrawing plans to allow a rollover of volume-based forest licences to area-based tree farm licences.
The backdown appears to be sparked by a massive public uproar, said Ancient Forest Alliance executive director Ken Wu.
“The forest-giveaway bill would have taken us backward,” he said. “The B.C. Liberals wanted to give a parting gift to the major logging companies before they leave office, but, in this politically sensitive pre-election period, that’s not going to happen now.”
Under a volume-based system, licence holders have the right to a specific volume of timber within an area. Under an area-based system, companies are given exclusive tenure in defined areas.
Critics of the changes said they would increase private property rights for forest companies, making protection harder, First Nations treaty settlements more complicated, and resulting in less land available for other foresters.
The changes were contained in a multi-faceted omnibus bill. Thomson said Tuesday that more public consultation was needed.
Thomson had previously said that, although conversions from forest licences to tree farm licences would have been at the minister’s discretion, there would be public reviews and consultation before changes were made.
Joe Foy of the Wilderness Committee said the proposed changes sparked a flurry of opposition from First Nations, environmentalists, unions, politicians and individuals.
“It really goes to show how much people value our public forests and don’t want to see them fall into corporate hands,” he said.
Greenpeace Canada forest campaigner Eduardo Sousa said the decision to pull the legislation will keep Crown land in the hands of the public and First Nations.
“This means that people remain stewards of the land, and governments, not companies, are responsible for building prosperous communities and protecting our forests,” he said.
Withdrawal of the Forest Act changes will not alter plans for a rally for “ancient forests and forestry jobs” outside the legislature on Saturday at noon, Wu said.
Images of narrow sea channels backed by towering, thickly forested mountains have long been featured in government ads promoting tourism under the slogan: Super, Natural British Columbia.
While the government maintains that branding is being protected through careful forest management, ecotourism businesses in the Discovery Islands say a prime part of the pristine landscape on which Beautiful B.C.’s image rests is rapidly being ruined by logging.
“It’s heart-wrenching,” Ralph Keller, a spokesman for the Discovery Islands Marine Tourism Group, said Tuesday. “The Discovery Islands are probably the most geographically spectacular islands in the world … [but] in some places we have gone from beautifully forested shorelines to industrial logging … these channels have just been nuked.”
Forests Minister Steve Thomson was not immediately available for comment, but he said in an e-mail his government values the economic contributions of both tourism and forestry. He said the government, through its entity BC Timber Sales, has been trying to minimize the impact of logging on ecotourism by avoiding clearcut harvesting and doing more selective cutting.
“BC Timber Sales has been working closely with the local tourism operators and to ensure there is limited visual impact from the water of their proposed cutblocks,” he said. “BC Timber Sales has also agreed not to log during the summer kayak season.”
Mr. Keller, however, notes that the Discovery Islands, an archipelago north of Campbell River on Vancouver Island’s east coast, are the second most popular marine tourism destination in the province. Only the Tofino-Long Beach area on the west coast of Vancouver Island draws more visitors. He said the Discovery Islands support 120 tourism businesses, including lodges, resorts and nature tour operations, employing 1,200 people and generating $45-million in revenue annually.
Despite that, he said, the government is managing the area primarily for its logging values – and that is starting to hurt ecotourism.
“The Internet is great for getting your message out to the world,” he said. “But at the same time, when our clients see these logged areas they can post negative reviews just as quickly. You get TripAdvisor sending out bulletins that the place has been worked over, or it’s overrated as wilderness, and that really hurts you.”
Mr. Keller said the government had been protecting “view corridors” until 2003, when “they rewrote the rules” and relaxed controls over coastal logging, allowing it to take place in key wilderness tourism zones. “We had higher visual quality objectives 10 years ago,” he said. “The government reduced them because the forest companies were having a hard time [finding timber]. So they started approving logging along the shorelines and now there are cuts all over the place.”
He said when members of the Discovery Islands Marine Tourism Group complained to the government, they were told to take their concerns directly to the logging companies, several of which operate in the area. “But when you go to the licensees, their opening comment is ‘this cut block has been approved’ [by the government]. The licensees aren’t interested in talking to us … they just want to go about the business of logging.”
Mr. Keller said logging should be stopped until stakeholders have worked out a land use plan for the Discovery Islands.
NDP tourism critic Spencer Herbert said the government is damaging tourism and putting B.C.’s brand at risk. “We’re Super, Natural British Columbia,” he said. “One of our main marketing values has always been the wilderness, the unspoiled outdoors, and that’s something we have to protect.”
Mr. Herbert said wilderness tourism and logging can co-exist, but the government has to facilitate a dialogue between the parties to find solutions. “You don’t kill off one business to support another,” he said.
Environmentalists are breathing a sigh of relief now that the BC government has backed off making changes to forestry licences.
Ken Wu with the ancient forest alliance says part of Bill 8 would have seen the logging rights to vast sections of public land granted to private companies.
“So it would have made it harder to establish new protected areas, to protect scenery and tourism opportunities. It would have made it more lengthy and difficult and complex to settle First Nations treaties, and it would have also taken away a lot of lands that communities would have wanted for community forestry.”
Wu says this proves the environmental movement is in fact a big player in BC politics — seeing as the Liberal government backed down with only days to go in the current session.
