Tag Archive for: Pacheedaht First Nation

The Tyee
September 15, 2020

Its future in doubt, no other tree has provided such abundance and identity for northwest peoples, or such habitat and carbon storage in the forest. First in a series.

[Editor’s note: This is the first of a series about the cedars of British Columbia, their vital role in this place’s ecologies, their endangered future, and people working on ways to save them from impending extinction.]

Western red cedar takes hold of the senses. The Big Tree Trail boardwalk in protected Wah-Nah-Jus Hilth-hoo-is (Meares Island Tribal Park), a short boat ride from Tofino in Tla-o-qui-aht territory, is built of hand-split cedar planks redolent of the tree’s sweet oil. All around is shaggy cedar bark. Branches of feathering leaves dance in the breeze like a fringe skirt, curving upward at the ends as if giving thanks to the sun.

The trail leads to a sign marking “Hanging Garden.” From the decaying trunk of a 1,500-year-old, five-and-a-half-metre-wide red cedar — one of the largest and oldest life forms on Earth — lichens cling, hemlock and alder trees sprout, sword ferns unfurl, and bats and bears make their roosts. It may be slowly dying, but this tree is full of life.

Elsewhere in British Columbia, the red cedar is not so lucky. It’s having trouble adapting to capitalism and climate change, and living out its long life in a shifting forest.

Red cedar, proclaimed the official tree of B.C. in 1988, naturally grows in cool, moist climates from Northern California to Alaska and just west of the Rocky Mountains in one of the world’s only inland temperate rainforests. The tree is known to scientists as thuja plicata, but it goes by many names: Pacific red cedar, giant cedar, canoe cedar, giant arborvitae. Not a true cedar but a woody member of the cypress family, the Latin arbor-vitae may be most accurate; it translates to “tree of life.” Indigenous terms of affection include “mother” or “grandmother cedar,” “maker of rich women,” and “long life maker.” The Nuu-chah-nulth name is huu-mis, huu signifying something long-lasting, perhaps across space and time.

While plant fossils show that a tree like red cedar has been growing around the northwest for as long as 50 million years, the species has only become widespread in the past 4,000 to 5,000 years — long after humans arrived in the region, says Richard Hebda, a paleontologist and adjunct associate professor at the University of Victoria.

Coast Salish oral history tells that before there was red cedar, there was a generous man. Whenever his people were in need, the man gave food and clothing. Recognizing the man’s good work, the Creator declared that when he died, a red cedar would grow where he was buried and continue to provide for the people. Red cedar did just that, co-evolving with First Nations and helping them build sophisticated societies of unparalleled wealth, abundance and ingenuity.

Prior to cedar, canoes and homes on the coast were often built of Sitka spruce. But once abundant, mother cedar became the tree of choice at least 3,000 years ago. “Without the environment we live in, we are not who we are,” Hebda says.

There are several likely reasons for the shift. The wood is lightweight and straight-grained, making it easy to split without a saw. Perhaps more important, mature cedars produce a natural fungicide, thujaplicin, which prevents rot in moldy northwest climates.

The largest cedar trees offered their wood for homes, totem poles and canoes. These vessels were packed with cedar tools, from paddles and nets to hooks, lures and fishing floats. Cedar’s soft inner bark supplied clothing and comfort; it was woven into tunics, mats, and blankets or shredded to make fluffy towels, diapers and sanitary pads. (Yellow cedar is also prized for its strong, dense wood and silky inner bark; see sidebar for more about B.C.’s other sacred cedar).

Red cedar withes — vine-like appendages that swoop down from branches — were twisted into ropes so strong they could haul in 40-tonne whales. Roots were coiled into baskets tight enough to boil water. And the flat green leaves, which look like scaly braids, offered spiritual protection or calcium-rich medicine.

Babies were delivered into woven cedar cradles. Placenta was sometimes buried at the base of an old cedar to ensure long life. At the end of that life, people were laid to rest in cedar canoes and coffins, the tree embracing its people for eternity.

But industrial logging and climate change threaten to cut the tree’s future short, severing ancestral connections that spread wide and strong like roots. A central question may define red cedar’s fate: Can we learn to respect and protect the great giving tree before it’s too late?

The ‘tree of life’ and its people

Despite the forced separation from their native lands and cultures by white colonizers, many Indigenous people have maintained an intimate bond with red cedar. Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks guardian and educator Gisele Maria Martin grew up with the sound of crackling cedar kindling and the smell of cedar sawdust on her father, Tla-o-qui-aht master canoe carver Joe Martin.

“I remember learning to make feathers to start fires with cedar and the tuck tuck tuck of a big log being carved with a hand adze,” Martin says.

But she’s wary of the focus on cedars’ many “uses,” which she says is a colonial frame that ignores the deep and spiritual relationship, built on care and reciprocity. “We did use cedar, of course,” Martin says. “But we also have a huge responsibility to cedar.”

Some Nations cut down whole trees for canoes and poles, but wood has been more often sourced from windfalls, or from standing trees without killing them. People were taught not to cut trees in the summer when eagles are nesting, and to avoid taking too much wood or risk being cursed by other cedars.

Before women collect bark from a young cedar, only in spring when the sap is running, prayers are offered and songs are sung. Removing bark triggers scars to heal over, but signs of historic and modern harvests are etched in the trunks — living archaeology.

“It’s impossible to not see cedar in a very particular way when you’re Indigenous to the west coast,” says Rande Cook, an artist and carver who’s a hereditary chief of the ’Na̱mg̱is and Ma’amtagila (Kwakwaka’wakw) First Nations.

Cook grew up with his grandparents in ’Na̱mg̱is territory (Alert Bay). He remembers cedar baskets full of berries, cedar bowls of eulachon oil, and teachings about red cedar trees holding the spirits of his ancestors.

“The trees are alive, they talk to each other, they create oxygen, they protect us,” Cook says. “They are serving a great purpose for all of us on this planet.”

Red cedar in the forest

Red cedar’s home — the northwest temperate rainforest — is a globally rare ecosystem that’s critical for purifying air and water, protecting biodiversity, defending salmon, and cooling the Earth. Old-growth temperate rainforest gulps and stores more carbon in its biomass than any other terrestrial environment and is less vulnerable to fires, floods, and other natural disturbances, making it one of our best defences in the fight against global climate change. Intact ancient rainforests with large trees are our greatest shield.

You can’t separate trees from the forest, but if you could, red cedar would play an outsized role. Commonly growing alongside western hemlock, Sitka spruce, and Douglas fir, red cedar is the largest tree in Canada. Record holders reach more than 20 stories tall, 20 metres around, and 450 cubic metres in volume. If you stacked five city buses vertically, you’d have something nearing the size of the Cheewhat Giant, the king of the B.C. forest. It’s not the biggest tree in the world — that’s red cedar’s cousin, the giant sequoia — but it’s up there.

Adding to its biomass, red cedar can reproduce asexually in a process known as layering. Branches or foliage that touch damp earth can sprout roots and become new saplings. Cedars are sometimes found in clusters of three to five, like a family or close circle of friends. Red cedar growing in isolation might just develop a mutant limb or a second head. But the finest cedars, those born under an old-growth canopy with feet deep in wet soil, rise straight and tall, slowly, toward the light.

“Red cedar shows its age and beauty but never looks old,” Hebda says. “It’s like an Ent in The Lord of the Rings, just this incredible, venerable being.”

Cedar is one of the best natural carbon banks on the planet thanks to its burly biomass and slow rate of decay. It can live for more than 1,000 years and, because of its anti-rot properties, dead trees or “snags” take hundreds more years to decompose. That can mean several metric tonnes of carbon stored by a single tree.

In fact, a dead cedar left in place is arguably even more important than a live one. Downed cedar trees become “nurse logs,” their spongy bark welcoming mosses, lichens, seedlings and insects to move in. Ancient cedars often hollow out like upside-down ice-cream cones, becoming favoured hibernation dens for black bears.

From talking trees to Timber Kings

Once considered a nuisance for the logging industry to cut down, red cedar became profitable starting in the late 1960s, as primary stands in Oregon and Washington were depleted. Before that, cedar was sometimes dumped into lakes where it floated until values increased enough for companies to come salvaging. But by 1988, the tree’s commercial reputation had turned around; red cedar was declared B.C.’s provincial tree due to its increasing worth and profound significance to First Nations.

Today, old-growth red cedar, defined by the province as being 250 years or older, is the most valuable log type, currently selling for two to five times the price of other conifers. Red cedar is made into a diverse range of products from acoustic guitars to utility poles, but it’s mostly cut into lumber, shingles, and shakes — more than 80 per cent of which is exported to the U.S.

Its long fibres are good for paper and pulp production, too. The Harmac Pacific pulp mill in Nanaimo has been churning out red cedar pulp to make the disposable blue masks and hospital gowns fighting COVID-19. The “tree of life” is literally saving lives.

BC’S SECOND CEDAR

Western red cedar has much in common with its sister in the cypress family: the yellow cedar, or yellow cypress. Both trees are long-lived, rot-resistant, revered members of the temperate rainforest, but yellow cedar is more rugged, rare, and lean. The heartwood is strong and dense, making it good for First Nations’ totem poles, house posts, and support beams. Yet, the inner bark is more pliable, absorbent, and anti-inflammatory than red cedar bark, so women often preferred it for baby diapers, sanitary napkins, wound dressings and fleecy nests to catch newborn infants.

In Hesquiaht oral history, three women were drying salmon on a beach when trickster raven scared them by pretending to be an owl. The women ran up the mountain in fright. Out of breath, they were transformed into the beautiful yellow cedars we often see on hillsides.

Like red cedar, yellow cedar can survive in diverse terrain. But it’s being hit hard by climate change, particularly receding snowpack that leaves its roots exposed to winter frost. Yellow cedar is, counterintuitively, freezing to death in a warming climate. Ancient yellow cedar is also being targeted by timber companies, notably on the Sunshine Coast and near the Fairy Creek watershed on southern Vancouver Island, where logging blockades broke out in August.

Bryan Reid Sr., a co-owner of Harmac Pacific, founded Pioneer Log Homes of B.C. in 1973. The company, now run by his son Bryan Reid Jr., builds and sells log homes almost entirely made of red cedar. Reid, who starred in the HGTV show Timber Kings and lives in a red cedar log home in Williams Lake, chose to base his business on the tree because of its durability against weather and termites. The wood also shrinks 30 per cent less than white woods such as spruce, fir, and pine, Reid says, making it less likely to crack.

“[Other wooden shakes would] rot or just split and blow off the roof,” Reid says, adding that red cedar wood has low density, making it a great insulator from heat, cold, and sound. “Cedar shines as being probably the most desirable fibre in the world for log homes.”

Pioneer Log Homes works with timber companies to select red cedar logs that have unique flutes, bark seams, and character for “Family Trees,” named by the Mormon family that first ordered one. These distinctive cedars, harvested down to their roots, often star as the centrepiece of a multi-million-dollar home.

“It’s like building a castle,” Reid says. “And you build it out of cedar, so you know it’s going to be there.”

The canary in the cutblock

But concern is mounting that red cedar, along with the old-growth forests that shelter them, may not always be with us. Once a prominent member of the coastal rainforest, red cedar made up 15 per cent of coastal vegetation by 2011, according to the B.C. Vegetation Resources Inventory. A recent scientific report found that less than one per cent of provincial forests contain the largest trees today.

Since becoming a high-value species in the mid-1990s, the forest industry has targeted old-growth red cedar to boost timber sales. And this may be getting worse. Representing about 20 per cent of the coastal wood supply, red cedar has comprised nearly 40 per cent of recent cuts.

Cedar struggles to reestablish after logging and is often browsed by deer, making it much less abundant in post-harvest stands than in mature and naturally regenerated forests. There’s a growing movement among First Nations, environmentalists, communities and ecologists to protect the ancient cedars and old-growth ecosystems that remain.

Adding to the assault on red cedar is climate change. It’s believed that drought stress causes leaves to turn reddish-brown and branches to drop off the crown, creating the characteristic “candelabra” or “cake fork” spikes (which also result from wind and other types of disturbance).

“They will essentially prune the less efficient parts distant to the supply of water,” Hebda says. “So the top of the tree will die, but the core of the tree lives, and can sprout and grow again.”

Climate models run by Hebda and others project that much of red cedar’s current range will be too warm and dry in the not-so-distant future. An extreme scenario shows the tree only surviving on about five per cent of Vancouver Island by 2080, as favourable climatic conditions migrate upslope, northward, and to parts of the interior predicted to get wetter.

Climate models aren’t perfect, Hebda admits, but the warnings for red cedar are clear: “It gets warm, it gets dry, you lose cedars,” he says. “It plays the canary in the coal mine when it comes to climate change.”

The same tree performs a vital function in reducing atmospheric carbon that causes climate change. It’s a paradox that Hebda muses may be understood, in some primal way, by the cedars themselves. “Some of these trees have experienced multiple cycles of climate variation in the last 1,000 years, and their connections to the past stretch back 50 million years, so they genetically know about this,” he says. “And the trees are going to be taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, saving us from ourselves.”

“Old-growth has to be saved everywhere, whether it be cedar or otherwise,” Hebda adds. “And, of course, that means respecting and preserving the deep, multi-millennial relationship between the people and these ecosystems.”

Read the original article

CBC News British Columbia
August 14, 2020

Protesters want the B.C. government to release recent review of old-growth forests in the province

Protesters have spent nearly a week blockading a logging road near Port Renfrew in an effort to defend what they say is the last unlogged watershed on southern Vancouver Island, outside of protected parks. 

“Enough is enough,” said Saul Arbess, a spokesperson for the Friends of Carmanah Walbran, a group with a history of fighting logging in the region. “It’s time to protect these areas.”

Arbess and other protesters want the provincial government to stop Teal-Jones, a Surrey-based logging company, from building a road into the Fairy Creek watershed, home to numerous old-growth yellow cedars, including one nearly three meters in diameter, the ninth-widest known yellow cedar in the province.

Clear-cutting Fairy Creek, they say, could wreak havoc on the local environment, threatening species diversity and exacerbating flooding in the San Juan River Basin. 

Loggers remove equipment 

In response to the blockade, which began Sunday, Teal-Jones removed machinery from the site Tuesday, after cutting trees and blasting rock to make way for the road. 

When reached earlier this week, the company told CBC News it had no comment at this time. 

• B.C. vastly overestimates size of its old-growth forest, independent researchers say

Teal-Jones holds the tree farm license (TFL) that includes the watershed. Though the company has not yet applied for a cut block in Fairy Creek, activists worry that move may be imminent, pointing to the recent road construction, which they say is common practice ahead of making a cut block application. 

Swell of action to defend old growths

This week’s demonstration follows recent protests outside NDP MLA offices and a two-week-long hunger strike to raise awareness over the loss of old-growth forests across B.C. 

A study by a group of forest researchers released in April showed that only three per cent of all B.C. forests are suitable for growing very large trees like those found in Fairy Creek. 

• Cathedral Grove at risk from old growth logging uphill from popular site, say conservationists

Besides safeguarding Fairy Creek, protestors have pushed for the release of a recent government review on old-growth forest habitats in the province. The Ministry of Forests received the report on April 30 with a stipulation that it be released to the public no more than six months later. 

“Yet, they’re sitting on this to allow another full season for the [logging] companies to continue to destroy the old growth,” Arbess added, calling this moment the “11th hour” to save the province’s heritage forests.

Two-thirds of watershed already protected

B.C.’s Ministry of Forests told CBC News it plans to release the review either later this summer or in the fall. 

An emailed statement from Forest Minister Doug Donaldson’s office also noted that “about two thirds” of the Fairy Creek watershed is already protected by the Marbled Murrelet Wildlife Habitat Area.

Logging in the area remains an important livelihood for some members of the local Pacheedaht First Nation, added the ministry.

According to Arbess, the Pacheedaht nation has offered neither support nor opposition to the blockade. 

• Concerned loggers take forestry rally to B.C. Legislature
• ‘People may not recover’: B.C. lends $5M to forestry contractors for equipment costs as strike continues

Despite a long history as a logging community, Port Renfrew has recently rebranded itself as an ecotourism destination, the self-proclaimed Tall Tree Capital of Canada. 

TJ Watt, a campaigner with the Victoria-based Ancient Forest Alliance, understands why. 

“These are some of the biggest, most remarkable yellow cedars we’ve ever seen,” said Watt in a press release on Thursday. 

They’re also, Watt said, among the longest-lived life forms in the country. He hopes it stays that way.

With files from Kieran Oudshoorn

Read the original article

The BC government wants to hear from the public as it reviews old growth logging policies.

The Tyee, OPINION- Joe Martin
January 28, 2020

Joe Martin is a master canoe carver and artist from the Tla-o-qui-aht Nation, a tribe of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth First Nations, located in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island.

The B.C. government is reviewing its policies to manage the province’s old growth forests and seeking public input.

This should be the opportunity for the government to start righting the mistakes of the past.

This new approach must obey the law of nature, under which we all live. This means we must understand Earth’s ecological limits and learn to respect them and live within them.

In Nuu-chah-nulth culture, the teachings of responsibility and respect for the land are passed down by our Elders as soon as our lives are conceived, and they continue until we die. These teachings are cornerstones of our culture, but they are foreign concepts to the provincial government and industry, who view our old growth forests as limitless resources to be plundered.

In my 12 years as a logger in Clayoquot Sound, I witnessed the destruction of some of the biggest trees and finest old growth forests I had ever seen. I witnessed the decimation of salmon streams, once teeming with steelhead, chum and coho, due to the clearcutting of entire valleys and landslides on the steep mountain slopes.

Although there have been significant conservation achievements in Clayoquot Sound through Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks, the destruction of old growth forests continues throughout much of B.C., and the province has continually failed to acknowledge how much has already been lost.

I was eventually fired from my job as a logger for refusing to haul two big logs across a salmon-bearing stream, knowing the logs would destroy key salmon habitat. I felt as though a weight had been lifted. I had become increasingly bothered by how horrible it was, what was happening to the land, so I joined in the effort to save the forest ecosystems I had once been paid to log.

I also took up fishing with my father, who worked as a fisherman, hunter, trapper and canoe builder. Throughout my life he taught me those skills and about how to respect the land, how to avoid disturbing the creeks in the forest to protect the coho, and the protocol to follow when selecting a cedar to cut for our cultural items — spending time in the forest, observing the birds and wildlife and avoiding trees with eagle’s nests or bear or cougar dens close by.

Our people practised for abundance rather than “sustainability.” To me, sustainability means keeping our natural resources on a lifeline until they’re eventually gone or until industry has finally had enough and moved on. Practising for abundance is making sure that your grandchildren won’t have to work as hard as you did. It’s ensuring that when we leave this garden for them, they will have everything they need.

This abundance is what allowed the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples to develop such a rich culture, which depends heavily on the availability of old growth red cedar in particular. We use cedar bark and wood for many cultural items such as woven hats, dugout canoes, totems, bentwood boxes and regalia. Our relationship and respect for these trees, the land and wildlife is represented and reinforced when we create and use these items, and we continue to rely on healthy forest ecosystems to maintain our culture.

The destruction of old growth forests, for Nuu-chah-nulth peoples, equates to a loss of identity. The loss of connection to the land and of our languages threatens our survival and is the cause of many of the social problems in our communities.

Many communities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, are struggling due to the destruction of forests caused by provincial government mismanagement. On Vancouver Island, about 80 per cent of big-tree forests have been cut and replaced with tree plantations. Much of what remains are bogs or scrub.

Yet companies are still clearcut logging across most of B.C., destroying rivers and streams and harming salmon and other wildlife. Jobs have been lost due to the failure of the province to stop industry from cleaning out the best old growth in the valleys and support slower, careful forestry and processing second-growth timber instead. With so little old growth forest remaining, now is the time for the province to act.

We must listen to what Indigenous wisdom and science tells us, which is that we need to protect more forests to ensure their integrity and our own survival. The B.C. government needs to heed this wisdom and science in its old growth strategy. That means deciding what must be protected before deciding what can or can’t be logged. It means prioritizing biodiversity, fisheries, monumental trees, carbon storage, Indigenous culture, recreation and clean water over timber.

This must be coupled with support for Indigenous communities and economies. Without economic alternatives, many nations do not have the option of refusing logging in their territories.

We must all make a living, and if there are few employment alternatives to destructive resource extraction, what choice is there? None. And so our lands and our culture are sacrificed. The government must provide funding for First Nations’ economic diversification to create jobs while allowing remaining old-growth forests and culturally important areas to be protected.

The Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks in Clayoquot Sound are a good example. Tourism and recreation are big economic drivers here, and there is much work to be done in the tribal parks like building and maintaining infrastructure, which could lead a lot of our people away from jobs in logging and fish farming. I believe this would make the whole community much happier and it would be a great investment for future generations.

The province must recognize the cultural significance of the old growth forests that play such an important role in our lives. They must legally recognize and support Indigenous protected areas like tribal parks, starting in Clayoquot Sound, but also across B.C., and work with nations to support Indigenous-led land-use planning. It’s an important part of our peoples governing ourselves.

We have a responsibility to our future generations, and to uphold the teachings of our ancestors. We have to learn how to live together, how to listen to each other, and how to manage our remaining old-growth forests for abundance for the sake of our children and grandchildren.

The B.C. government is accepting public feedback on its proposed provincial Old Growth Strategy until Friday. For more details and to provide input, go here. 

Original opinion piece here