Tag Archive for: Echo Lake

Near Harrison Mills, Echo Lake is a magnificent, unprotected lowland ancient rainforest, in a region where almost all such forests have long since been logged. Located by the Chehalis-Harrison Estuary near the Lougheed Highway, the region is home to one of the greatest salmon runs and perhaps the largest concentration of bald eagles on Earth –  as many as 10,000 in some years, with hundreds roosting in the ancient trees of Echo Lake at night. As such, Echo Lake is one of the great natural wonders in the province – and perhaps one of the least visited so far.

There is a reason why so few people have seen Echo Lake. The lake is surrounded by steep mountains on three sides, with private lands encompassing the flats on the remaining side by the road. Only through the permission of private landowners or via organized tours can you traverse the private lands on its east side in order to access the old-growth forests on the Crown lands on the west side. This difficulty of access has helped to keep Echo Lake as one of the last enclaves of lowland ancient forest left in the region – until now.  Echo Lake is in the unceded territory of the Sts’ailes First Nation band, who run eagle-watching tours in the area, and whose leadership has expressed concern about the fate of the old-growth cedars around Echo Lake.

In 2012, the Ancient Forest Alliance contacted the local landowners Stephen and Susan Ben-Oliel, whose private properties abut against the lake’s east side. Together we started organizing public tours, letter-writing campaigns, slideshows, outreach to attract provincial and national news media, and lobbying efforts.

In February 2013, the BC government protected 55 hectares in an Old-Growth Management Area (OGMA) primarily on the south side of Echo Lake, encompassing some impressive old-growth Douglas-fir stands. Unfortunately, the OGMA left out another 40 or 50 hectares of old-growth and mature stands on the west and north sides, within the Woodlot License of C&H Forest Products. The excluded area includes a spectacular “ancient red cedar valley” with some of the biggest trees. One tree, the East Side Giant, is almost 4 metres, (13 feet) wide. While the area at risk also includes second-growth stands, the BC government has tried to depict the entire area as a second-growth forest with just a smattering of veteran old-growth trees – which is far from the truth for those who’ve been there to marvel at the stands of giant red cedars and Douglas-firs.

In July, the Ben-Oliels discovered that C & H Forest Products had flagged a series of large red cedars near their property for logging and had been given the go-ahead to construct a 1400 metre road to access planned cut blocks on the lake’s north side. As Echo Lake is also part of the drinking watershed for local people, there are concerns about the risk to the supreme water quality in the area posed by road-building and logging.

The race is now on to mobilize concerned citizens to speak up to the provincial government, particularly in the lead-up to the May 2017 provincial election. The province could enact a Land Use Order, expand the Old-Growth Management Area, or implement some other protective designation at Echo Lake, while potentially finding an area of equivalent timber value in second-growth forests elsewhere for the licensee – something that the province is so far reluctant to do.

Already 80% of the original, productive old-growth forests have been logged in the southwest mainland of BC, including over 95% of the high productivity, valley bottoms with the largest trees. The Ancient Forest Alliance is working for a science-based provincial plan to protect all of BC’s endangered old-growth forests, and to ensure a sustainable second growth forest industry.

The protection of Echo Lake would be a vital step in the right direction.

Please speak up! Write a letter or email to your local Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), as well as Premier Christy Clark (premier@gov.bc.ca) and Forests Minister Steve Thomson (steve.thomson.mla@leg.bc.ca) at the Legislative Buildings, Victoria, BC, V8V 1X4. Ask them to protect ALL of the forests around Echo Lake – for the eagles, wildlife, drinking watershed, scenery, tourism, and because lowland old-growth forests are now extremely scarce in the Lower Mainland.

Read more: https://www.footprintpress.ca/pdf/FootprintPressIssue18.pdf

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.

Read more: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/the-fight-to-save-echo-lakes-old-trees-and-wildlife-has-begun/article30847824/

**To view VIDEO and PHOTOGALLERY, visit: https://globalnews.ca/news/1906359/clear-cutting-threatens-echo-lake-eagle-colony/ **

Every fall, hundreds of eagles descend upon the Fraser Valley to roost in the treetops surrounding Echo Lake. Experts say there is no other place like it in the world.

“This is eagle central. It’s the place that if you want to protect the largest concentration of raptors on earth, this is just about it here,” says Ken Wu of Ancient Forest Alliance.

The area is a perfect marriage of mountain and river valley, sheltering the eagles from the wind while the perch upon the branches of the ancient Douglas Firs and Red Cedars.

“It’s really the last of the last. It’s like coming across a sasquatch these days. this is a very special area,” says Wu.

The fight continues to protect old-growth forest from logging. While the B.C. Government announcing 55 hectares were protected as old growth management areas, there are still 40 hectares that fall under a woodlot license.

“It’s about one-third the size of Stanley Park. It should be a no-brainer that you protect a hundred hectares of old growth forest here when there’s so little that remains,” says Wu.

Stephen Ben-Oliel owns property around Echo Lake and says over the years he’s watched the clear-cutting get closer. He says without protection from the ministry, logging companies can’t be left on their own to do the right thing.

“A cedar can be worth $50,000 and a fir tree that’s got the right grain is $10,000 to $15,000. It’s called a Class-A roller. It goes into plywood,” says Ben-Oliel.

Minister of Forests Steve Thomson told Global News that there are no plans to log the 40 unprotected hectares.

“We need to work with the woodlot operator. Woodlot operators leave wildlife trees and wildlife tree areas… I’ve been advised no logging is planned,” Thomson says.

Wu says if there are no plans for logging, why not include the patch of old-growth in the already protected lands.

Eagle expert David Hancock says the strength of the trees is a direct result of the eagle activity over hundreds of years.

He adds if the area was cleared, there is a risk the eagles may not return.

Read more and see VIDEO and PHOTOGALLERY at: https://globalnews.ca/news/1906359/clear-cutting-threatens-echo-lake-eagle-colony/

Up to 700 bald eagles roost in a small grove of old-growth trees around Echo Lake in the Fraser Valley each fall. Does this sound like the kind of place that should be logged?

It is in British Columbia, where ancient trees are seen as just another replaceable commodity.

The lake sits in a small valley surrounded by mountains near where the Chehalis River joins the Harrison, and both flow into the Fraser.

When salmon return to spawn, the eagles spend their days feasting on fish on the river banks, then, just as darkness descends, fly up to roost in the towering Douglas firs and cedars surrounding Echo Lake.

“They don’t come every night. It’s unpredictable,” says Stephen Ben-Oliel, who has lived on the lake for 20 years. “But when they come, it’s remarkable. You look up and it’s like aircraft circling a busy airport. They drop down and start to stack up in the trees.”

Mr. Ben-Oliel says bird experts who came to study the phenomenon told him the eagles have been using Echo Lake as a roost for 8,000 years.

But they might not be returning for much longer if a provincial government logging plan goes ahead.

A few years ago, Mr. Ben-Oliel went for a walk in the towering forest near his home and was shocked to find flags marking trees for logging.

Not all the trees are ancient. But many are, mixed in with younger, second-growth timber that grew after a forest fire 150 years ago.

“You can go in the forest there and there are trees 150 years old, and there are trees 1,000 years old,” Mr. Ben-Oliel said.

It is the big, old giants that the eagles like best.

“I don’t know why they choose those trees, but I think they feel safe up there, away from anything that might come in the night to kill them,” he said.

They might be safe from predators, but not from the B.C. government, which is allowing many of the last remaining patches of old growth on the West Coast to be logged.

Mr. Ben-Oliel, with support from the Ancient Forest Alliance, started a campaign in 2012 to save the Echo Lake forest. In 2013, the government protected 55 hectares – just over half the old-growth around the lake.

But Mr. Ben-Oliel is horrified the plan still allows about 40 hectares of old growth and mature forest to be logged on the north and west sides of the lake.

“The tallest old-growth firs that ever existed on Earth used to stand in the Chehalis Valley [near Echo Lake],” he said. “But if you drive up there now, you’ll see that, over the years, they’ve taken it all. It is now like the surface of Mars in many places.”

He fears that fate awaits “the last little pocket” of old growth at Echo Lake.

“They are quietly sneaking out the last of our great legacy,” Mr. Ben-Oliel said. “It’s appalling that old growth forests aren’t protected in B.C. ”

Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance has been campaigning for a provincial plan to protect B.C.’s remaining endangered old-growth forests. His team recently did a “bio-blitz” at Echo Lake, recording the richness of the ecosystem there, which is home to everything from red-legged frogs to black bears.

The government’s old-growth strategy, he said, “is piecemeal, weak and inadequate.”

Mr. Wu said only about 1 per cent of the big, ancient trees are left.

“The classic giant cedars and Douglas firs that historically built the logging industry of southern British Columbia were essentially annihilated by the 1950s [by logging],” he said. “It’s as rare as a black rhino to have low elevation, spectacular old growth [such as at the lake], so this is something incredibly rare.”

He said the Echo Lake forest has been spared the axe until now only because mountains and private land made access difficult.

“They can get in by building an expensive road, or they can heli-log it,” Mr. Wu said of logging companies working in the Chehalis area. “We heard next year they may move in.”

The government says its old-growth strategy protects the big, old trees that are becoming increasingly rare. But it does not.

On his dock, Mr. Ben-Oliel has a section of a stump from a recently cut tree. He counted 716 rings.

“That tree was cut, floated down the Fraser whole and shipped to China,” he says. “That’s a travesty.”

In B.C., that’s also government policy. And it needs to change before Echo Lake and the few remaining places like it are lost.

Read more: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/race-is-on-to-save-fraser-valleys-bald-eagles-echo-lake-old-growth-forest/article23576358/