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Politicians, environmentalists, industry divided on B.C.’s forestry plan

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CBC British Columbia
June 1, 2021


B.C. Greens, Sierra Club B.C. say old growth forests still at risk; industry council praises announcement

Conservationists with the Ancient Forest Alliance say old growth forests like this one are crucial to the overall health of ecosystems. (Submitted by TJ Watt)

After weeks of arrests and attempts to block old growth logging on Vancouver Island, the province’s anticipated forestry announcement proved to be a disappointment Tuesday to protesters and environmentalists.

The province unveiled a plan Tuesday for “sustainable forest policy” that largely focuses on redistributing forest tenures — the agreements between government and harvesters.

While the province said the plan is to include more Indigenous Nations, forest communities and small operators in forestry agreements, critics say the move does little to address the need to preserve old growth forests that are actively being logged, including trees inside lots at the Fairy Creek Watershed.

“It was heartbreaking,” said Jens Wieting, forest and climate campaigner with the environmental group Sierra Club B.C. “We are seeing thousands of people across B.C. joining protests, and they know we are in the midst of a climate and biodiversity crisis.”

The province says there are currently 13.7 million hectares of old growth in British Columbia, and 10 million of those hectares are protected or considered not economical to harvest. There are about 57 million hectares of forested land in B.C.

But for the past decade, conservation groups like the Ancient Forest Alliance, the Wilderness Committee and Sierra Club B.C. have all used provincial data to argue that old growth trees in the areas where the trees grow biggest are being cut down at an unsustainable rate. 

Last year, more than a dozen recommendations were made to the province in a report aimed at protecting old growth forests. The province maintains it is committed to implementing them by 2023.

Critics say that’s not soon enough and would rather see immediate deferrals of old growth logging.

“We are losing any and all remaining trust that the B.C. government is serious about implementing these changes before it’s too late,” said Wieting.

The recently released Old Growth Strategic Review lays out an ambitious set of recommendations meant to help change forest management policies on a systemic level. (Kieran Oudshoorn/CBC)

It’s a sentiment echoed by Sonia Furstenau, leader of the B.C. Green Party and MLA for Cowichan Valley.

“This really shows a lack of leadership and a lack of understanding of the moment we’re in,” she told CBC News. “British Columbians want to see the last of this land protected.”

Torrance Coste, national campaign director for the Wilderness Committee, said that while many of the policy intentions laid out by the government are worthy, such as more tenure for First Nations and strengthened enforcement for companies that break the rules, the most important missing component was immediate action.

“These forests are falling now,” he told All Points West host Kathryn Marlow. 

“There needs to be some interim action. There needs to be some, not permanent action, but some protections for some holds on logging right now. And instead, we’re seeing [Horgan] make more commitments and broaden the issue and really sidestep the commitments that he has already made.”

Industry support

The premier was asked why Tuesday’s announcement did not include immediate action to prevent logging of old growth trees in the Fairy Creek watershed, where protesters have been defying an injunction in Horgan’s own riding.

“The critical recommendation that’s in play at Fairy Creek is consulting with the title holders,” said Horgan. “If we were to arbitrarily put deferrals in place there, that would be a return to the colonialism that we have so graphically been brought back to this week by the discovery in Kamloops.”

In a statement, the B.C. Council of Forest Industries applauded the government’s announcement, saying a collaboration with various stakeholders moving forward will help “sustain good jobs for British Columbians.”

Between wildfires, the mountain pine beetle, and a declining timber supply, the province says there have been 1,620 permanent, 420 temporary and 820 indefinite job losses in the forestry sector.

With files from Chad Pawson

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‘A Garage Sale for the Last Old Growth’

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The Tyee
May 14, 2021

Two summers ago, Brenda Sayers knelt atop what was left of British Columbia’s likely ninth widest Douglas fir tree. Sayers, a member of the Hupačasath First Nation, has long fought to protect old growth in her territory on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

“The old growth holds a lot of our history,” she said. “That tree must have been 800 years old.”

It had been felled in the Nahmint Valley by companies given the go-ahead by BC Timber Sales, the province’s own logging agency, and the largest tenure holder in the province.

On Wednesday, B.C.’s forestry watchdog found that BC Timber Sales erred when it allowed that tree and the forests surrounding it to be clearcut.

Three years after it was launched, the investigation found that the province wrongly greenlit a plan from BC Timber Sales that failed to protect land-use objectives for biodiversity and old growth protection in the Nahmint River Watershed as set out by the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan.

According to the BC Forest Practices Board report, “gaps” in BC Timber Sales’ planning “occurred over a long period of time and are creating real risks to ecosystems.” It also found that although BC Timber Sales knew about those gaps, it didn’t adequately address them.

The investigation was triggered by a complaint filed by the Ancient Forest Alliance in 2018 after its campaigners and members visited BC Timber Sales cutblocks in the Nahmint along with the Port Alberni Watershed Alliance. 

“We witnessed just horrendous logging of some of the finest remaining old growth on Vancouver Island,” said Andrea Inness, forest campaigner for the alliance.

Behind the scenes, the province responded by commissioning two internal investigations on what happened in the Nahmint. 

Their conclusions — made visible through a freedom of information request filed by the Ancient Forest Alliance — found that logging in the Nahmint should be halted until the issues were addressed.

Now the board is calling on the province to create a new plan for the Nahmint region with clear targets to protect rare, old growth ecosystems. That includes halting any current or future auctions until that happens. 

“We would say you probably shouldn’t be investing in developing those kind of timber sales until this plan is figured out,” says BC Forest Practices Board chair Kevin Kriese.

BC Timber Sales and the province have until Sept. 15 to respond to the recommendations.

Meanwhile, BC Timber Sales continues to auction off cutblocks across the province. On the Island, over 50 per cent of that is considered old growth.

This year, BC Timber Sales plans to auction off over 1,100 hectares of old growth on Vancouver Island. That’s more than half of the land mass of the City of Victoria.

Since 2018, BC Timber Sales’ old growth cutblocks on the Island have been four times as large — over 4,000 hectares.

Last September, the province promised a “paradigm shift” in its approach to managing old growth, agreeing to implement all 14 recommendations from the province’s Old Growth Strategic Review Panel report released last year. It committed to doing that through government-to-government consultation with First Nations.

In an emailed statement to The Tyee, the province acknowledged issues around old growth. “We know, and we’ve said clearly, that the status quo on old growth isn’t acceptable.”

When questioned about BC Timber Sales’ own old growth logging activity on the Island, the province said that the Old Growth Strategic Review Panel “did not say there needs to be a complete halt to old growth logging,” adding that, “it’s important to understand that B.C. forests are among the most well-regulated and sustainably managed in the world.”

Who is BC Timber Sales?

BC Timber Sales was founded by the province in 2003 in an attempt to address a longstanding softwood lumber dispute with the U.S.

Before BC Timber Sales, major companies did most of the logging in the province. They also enjoy financial benefits flowing from their long-term tenures. “They’re essentially rent-controlled,” says Torrance Coste, national campaign director with the Wilderness Committee. 

As a result, the U.S. claimed those companies had an unfair advantage. The province responded by taking back one-fifth of their allowable cut and giving it to the newly founded BC Timber Sales, which would operate as a “semi-autonomous” Crown corporation. 

Because of its open-bid system, the lumber sold through BC Timber Sales-owned cutblocks are said to reflect the fair market price, which in turn helps the province set the rates for other forest licenses in the province.

BC Timber Sales suggests that the open market system distributes employment to rural communities. In a promotional video, the agency says that “by providing a reliable supply of timber through open and competitive auctions to loggers, wood processors and other forestry businesses, BCTS supports workers in rural communities across B.C.”

As of 2018, its operations supported 8,000 jobs in B.C, providing over $50 million in net revenue per year to the province, and it awarded $140 million in contracts per year to the private sector.

Calls by The Tyee to the Truck Loggers Association and the BC Council of Forest Industries were not answered by press time.

BC Timber Sales blocks come almost ready-made: they do the timber cruising, build the main roads, and make sure their blocks comply with forest policies and regulations. According to the province, “a number of biodiversity, wildlife, cultural and social values correlate to old growth stands and are specifically considered during the planning and development phases.”

But in the Nahmint, the BC Forest Practice Board’s report put that process in question.

The board found that throughout its history, BC Timber Sales sold cutblocks without an adequate forest stewardship plan to tell them how to translate the old growth and biodiversity requirements in the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan to their cutblock planning in the Nahmint. That’s because of a lack of checks and balances within the agency, said Kriese.

“Checking in on land use plans and how they’re being implemented is a weak spot,” he said, adding that oversight is largely “complaint driven.”

“Unless someone raises the issue, there actually isn’t a lot of investigation to see whether that’s being followed or not.”

Even if the agency was following the rules correctly, that would still pose problems for old growth, says Inness. “We can only hold BC Timber Sales and any other logging company accountable to the laws that exist,” she said. “Those laws are extremely outdated, and clearly put timber values well ahead of any other values — like biodiversity.”

That puts the onus on government, says Inness, to legislate rules that put old growth protection front and centre. “That’s why we need those old growth recommendations from the independent panel implemented.”

Ross Muirhead, forest campaigner with Elphinstone Logging Focus, agrees. “They’re part of the hidden levers of government,” says Muirhead, “they’re going to keep going until they’re told — until there’s actual new legislation around how much old growth can be logged or how much old growth should be protected. It’s just business as usual.”

Then there’s the issue of accountability from companies buying BC Timber Sales blocks. 

The best way to find out what companies are actually doing on the ground, said Mark Worthing, coastal projects lead for the Sierra Club of BC, is to visit the site itself. That’s also the only way to know which company is actually logging the block. 

Companies that buy BC Timber Sales tenures tend to contract logging out to smaller operations. Sometimes those operators re-contract the job out again.

Worthing points to a picture of a BC Timber Sales cutblock with a sign nailed to a tree. The logging company’s name and phone number is written down in black Sharpie.

“They’re wholesale auctioning out stuff off to contractors who have very limited liability,” says Worthing. “They’re basically like a garage sale for the last old growth.”

Rare ecosystems on the cutting block

The Tsitika and Nahmint valleys are home to some of the island’s largest remaining tracts of unprotected, old growth forest on the island — they’re also hotspots for BC Timber Sales cutblocks.

These forests are extremely rare, according to a recent study by Karen Price, Dave Daust and Rachel Holt, who found that only one per cent consists of the big tree ecosystems that often come to mind when we hear about old growth.

“When it comes to BC Timber Sales, they are often located in the last remaining highest productivity, high biodiversity sites,” said Andrea Inness, campaigner with the Ancient Forest Alliance.

The Nahmint is a prime example. After Clayoquot Sound, the Nahmint is one of the largest tracts of old growth remaining on Vancouver Island. It’s home to endangered species like the marbled murrelet, whose habitat depends on old growth. 

“It’s very devastating to see the amount of trees being taken down,” said Brenda Sayers. “There is no regard for wildlife.”

BC Timber Sales is planning to auction off 212.6 hectares in the Nahmint region this year — a marked increase from its rolling average of 56 hectares per year in the region since the agency began. In the coming years, the agency has over 600 hectares of old growth in the Nahmint mapped out for logging.

According to the BC Forest Practices Board report, those sales and planning processes should be halted immediately until a new plan is in place.

BC Timber Sales’ operations in the Nahmint throws its operations across the province into question, says TJ Watt, campaigner for the Ancient Forest Alliance.

“If we caught that there, what’s going on in other places as well?”

This year, BC Timber Sales is auctioning off four old growth blocks consisting of over 190 hectares in the Tsitika valley.

The Tsitika, located between Ma’a̱mtagila and Tlowitsis territories, was once the lesser-known site of old growth blockades in the 1990s. The province established the Lower Tsitika River provincial park in response, protecting about 10 per cent of the area adjacent to the coast and Robson Bight. 

“The big, gut-wrenching trade-off was that it meant that they weren’t able to protect the upper Tsitika,” said Worthing. “So what we’re seeing now is the consequences of that.”

“They’re taking out the guts and feathers of the valley,” says Muirhead, who has been tracking BC Timber Sales activities on Vancouver Island. “They’re just taking everything. The valley bottom is gone, it looks like 50 per cent of the mid elevation is gone, and now they’re going higher up the slopes.”

The region is home to all five species of Pacific salmon whose spawning beds require consistent water flows and temperatures — both of which are impacted by logging. “We’re seeing less and less return and that’s a direct impact of logging — all the runoff goes into the creek,” said Seneca Ambers, spokesperson for the Ma’a̱mtagila First Nation.

“We’re the salmon people. We live off the salmon year-round — or we used to,” says Ambers, whose family now receives only one or two salmon for the year.

Among the proposed blocks in the region, Tsitika Main, a 35-hectare clearcut to be auctioned off this July, nudges up against a stream that flows into the Tsitika River. 

The Tsitika and the surrounding forests are also rich in culturally modified cedars. These trees are landmarks for traditional territory, says artist and hereditary Ma’a̱mtagila Chief Rande Cook (Makwala), but he’s seen BC Timber Sales cutblocks where these trees were felled. “To wipe these trees out, and to cut us down in the process, officially removes the Indigenous people from those territories for good.”

Consultation versus consent

BC Timber Sales consults with Indigenous Nations before logging occurs in their territories. “A primary objective is to work towards reconciliation with Indigenous peoples,” said the province in an emailed statement, adding that BC Timber Sales integrates the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act into its planning decisions.

But Sayers said those commitments are falling short.

In 2018, the Hupačasath band council released an open letter calling for the B.C. government to extinguish all approved old growth cutblocks in the Nahmint Valley. The province committed to entering into talks with the Nation, but BC Timber Sales’ cutblocks continued to be sold in the territory. 

The same year, the BC Assembly of First Nations passed a motion calling for BC Timber Sales to be dissolved, and its tenure lands redistributed to First Nations.

“I’ve always said that reconciliation begins on the land,” said Sayers. “Until companies like BC Timber Sales and federal and provincial policy support First Nations and their right to protect the land, they can call it whatever they want on these websites. To me, it’s just talking out of both sides of their mouth.”

The Hupačasath First Nation were not available to respond to The Tyee’s request for comment at press time, and the Tseshaht First Nation did not respond to our request. 

BC Timber Sales does not consult with the The Ma’a̱mtagila hereditary chiefs whose territory that includes the Tsitika, Naka Creek and Schmidt Creek regions. That’s because government accepted a resolution proposed by the Tlowitsis band administration that functionally erased the Ma’a̱mtagila claim to their territories in the eyes of the province, said Ambers. “We ended up not having any voice in any of the decisions being made.” 

The Ma’a̱mtagila Nation is currently working to reassert their title through the courts.

Instead, the province confirmed that BC Timber Sales consults with the Tlowitsis First Nation through the Nanwakolas Council, which represents five Nations in the region and does not include the hereditary chiefs of the Ma’a̱mtagila.

Ambers says BC Timber Sales is shirking its responsibility to consult with the Nation. “It’s just a blatant disregard for that complexity and a disregard for the Ma’a̱mtagila people” she said.

Cook said BC Timber Sales should put old growth logging in the Tsitika region on hold until title issues are resolved. 

“Industry never stops,” he said. “It’s like, okay, let us spend a year figuring this out and taking it into court. But in a year, you could have areas completely wiped out from logging.”

Dallas Smith, board president of the Nanwakolas Council, oversees BC Timber Sales referrals for the Tsitika region.

Smith said he is concerned about old growth in the region, but revenue from old growth logging continues to be an important source of funding for the council’s member Nations. 

“We still need to keep harvesting in these areas,” he said. “BC Timber Sales is a vehicle that does that because they’re the biggest tenure holder in the area.

“But there has to be room in there to find that balance,” said Smith, referencing the need to protect some of the region’s old growth forests.

Amidst government’s promises of a new era of growth protection, Smith said he’s noticed industry ramping up its logging activity in the region.

The council has a 30 to 60-day window to provide feedback on referrals from BC Timber Sales, and they’re struggling to keep up. “We can make sure we’re putting as much lipstick on the pig as we can on their bad plans. But now we’re seeing these bad plans come a little quicker and sooner.”

“Our message to the province is going to be you know what, no more of these bad plans. You need to sit down with us. And we need to figure this out. We can’t keep kicking the can down the road on this issue.”

For Smith, that also means slowing down or stopping the rate of cut until a plan can be established. “We can’t let that talk-and-log happen anymore.”

For Ambers, the problem with BC Timber Sales’ approach with Indigenous Nations lies in the difference between consultation and consent. 

“Consultation just means that you’ve asked for their opinions,” said Ambers. “Consent implies that you’re asking for permission and that you’re honouring it if somebody says no.”

If BC Timber Sales began to use a consent-based model, Ambers thinks the practices of BC Timber Sales would need to change. “A lot of our Nations don’t consent to the total wipeout of our forests.”

‘This is the low-hanging fruit’

Torrance Coste thinks that as a crown corporation, BC Timber Sales could model the paradigm shift on old growth the province has committed to. 

“It’s like — this is the low-hanging fruit, you guys,” said Coste. “You could write a directive that says, hey, however much old growth you laid out this year, lay out half next year, and then half the year after that.”

Inness agrees. “They’ve promised big, big, big things,” she said, pointing to the province’s commitments to halt logging in at-risk areas within six months and to develop a strategy to transition to the second growth sector in a year. 

With those deadlines looming, Inness says the province is shirking its opportunity to use BC Timber Sales as a vehicle for change.

“Instead of championing conservation and forestry solutions that support communities, they’re using BC Timber Sales to continue to destroy rare ecosystems,” she said. “It’s more than a missed opportunity. It’s willful ignorance on the B.C. government’s part.”  [Tyee]

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Systemic errors in managing Nahmint’s old growth, says B.C. watchdog

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Ha-Shilth-Sa
May 13, 2021

B.C.’s forestry watchdog has released a report critical of logging practices in the Nahmint valley, pointing to inconsistencies in protecting the area’s old growth forest.

On Wednesday, May 12 the Forest Practices Board released its findings, nearly three years after a complaint from the Ancient Forest Alliance sparked the investigation into old-growth logging in the valley. The independent watchdog found that forestry management standards set by the government were not met in how the Nahmint was handled by BC Timber Sales, a provincial agency responsible for auctioning off Crown land for harvesting.

Covering nearly 20,000 hectares south of Sproat Lake, the Nahmint Valley lies within Nuu-chah-nulth territory, containing old growth forest that includes some of the largest Western red cedar and Douglas fir trees in British Columbia. According to the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan Higher Level Plan Order, the Nahmint is designated as a special Management Zone. The valley is also considered one of the five “high biodiversity landscape units” in the Vancouver Island plan, a designation that sets particularly high levels of conservation for an unprotected forest.

But the forest stewardship plan that BC Timber Sales has been operating under does not adequately protect the Nahmint according to this designation, said Kevin Kriese, chair of the Forest Practices Board.

“BCTS’s FSP did not meet the legal objective, and it should not have been approved,” he said. “We looked at the remaining forest in the watershed and found there are some ecosystems that could be at risk if more logging takes place in them.”

After a 2019 field trip to the Nahmint with the Ancient Forest Alliance, plus dozens of interviews with regional experts and government staff, the Forest Practices Board uncovered a series of systemic errors in how the valley was managed by B.C. Timber Sales.

“What we found was that the district manager made an error in approving this forest stewardship plan, even though it was not consistent with the government objectives,” said Kriese.

He noted that the necessary level of site-specific planning was never done, even though the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan prioritized the Nahmint for such a detailed assessment.  

“More detailed landscape unit planning was supposed to provide clear direction on how much and where to conserve old and mature forest, but that planning was never completed,” said Kriese. “BCTS was left with a complicated set of legal objectives to interpret, and we found it missed important details that are required to manage for biodiversity in the Nahmint.”

The investigation began when the Ancient Forest Alliance discovered enormous trees that were recently cut in the valley, including a few with dimensions comparable to stands listed on the BC Big Tree Registry, a public archive of the province’s largest examples of different species. A disturbed bear den was also discovered inside one of the logged old growth trees, raising concern that forestry practices in the Nahmint were below provincial standards for the area.

“With the Forest Practices Board’s investigation now complete, the evidence is irrefutable: BC Timber Sales are failing to adequately protect old-growth in the Nahmint Valley,” stated Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner Andrea Inness. “This failure exposes the gross inadequacies and lack of accountability that are inherent in BC’s forest system and the need for immediate, systemic change.”

But while the watchdog found that provincial standards weren’t met in Nahmint, logging can continue in the valley with no legal ramifications. This is due to gaps in the Forest and Range Practices Act, a legislative issue that made actions to protect the old growth forest by the Compliance and Enforcement Branch futile.

“It later asked BCTS to bring itself into compliance by amending the forest stewardship plan. BCTS stated at the time it was not required to comply with the higher-level plan order because it had an approved FSP,” explained Kriese of the failure in enforcement. “It closed the file and referred to the file to the Forest Practices Board.”

The FPB has recommended that the province conduct landscape unit planning, and to not sell any more timber in Nahmint’s “high risk ecosystems” until a more specific assessment of the area is conducted. An answer from the Ministry of Forests is expected by Sept. 15.

In an emailed response to Ha-Shilth-Sa, the ministry did not say logging will cease in the Nahmint’s high risk areas. But some measures are being taken.

“[T]he ministry if updating the Nahmint Landscape Unit Plan, adjusting Old Growth Management Areas to better capture rare and underrepresented ecosystems and biodiversity targets at the landscape level,” wrote a ministry spokesperson. “The updated Landscape Unit Plan will come into effect soon, ensuring biodiversity protection across the range of ecosystems in the Nahmint.”

Meanwhile, softwood lumber prices have reached records highs, with some species tripling in value since the beginning of the pandemic. These economic factors with undoubtably put demands on the old-growth trees within the Nahmint valley, where an average of 56 hectares have been harvested a year by BCTS since 2003, while another 22 hectares is typically cut annually by the Tseshaht First Nation under its current five-year license.   

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B.C. forestry watchdog finds lack of compliance in Nahmint logging

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Alberni Valley News
May 13, 2021

Forest Practices Board says old growth and biodiversity near Port Alberni are at risk

Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner Andrea Inness walks beside an enormous western red cedar stump in a BCTS-issued cutblock in the Nahmint Valley. (PHOTO COURTESY TJ WATT)

Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner Andrea Inness walks beside an enormous western red cedar stump in a BCTS-issued cutblock in the Nahmint Valley. (PHOTO COURTESY TJ WATT)

A British Columbia forestry watchdog has found that old growth and biodiversity near Port Alberni are at risk.

The report comes three years after the Ancient Forest Alliance submitted a complaint to the Forest Practices Board about timber harvesting in the Nahmint River Watershed. The board has determined that BC Timber Sales failed to comply with land-use objectives for biodiversity protection in the Nahmint Valley.

Now, the board says the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development needs to find a way to make sure this lack of compliance doesn’t happen again.

The Nahmint, located about 20 kilometres southwest of Port Alberni, is designated as a special management zone for its high biodiversity and wildlife, with some of the largest tracts of remaining old-growth forests on Vancouver Island outside of Clayoquot Sound.

The Ancient Forest Alliance was concerned in 2018 that BC Timber Sales was harvesting large, old-growth trees, overriding its own protective order and the area’s special status.

Kevin Kriese, chair of the Forest Practices Board, said that the board took a look at BC Timber Sales’ forest stewardship plan and determined that its management of old forest was not compliant with government objectives.

“The harvesting and the issues around old forest have been going on for a while,” he said in a media presentation on Wednesday, May 12.

In addition, board staff examined the remaining forest in the watershed and found that there was not adequate old forest remaining in some ecosystems. BC Timber Sales’ forest stewardship plan does not have a strategy to protect these ecosystems—meaning that there are some ecosystems that could be at risk if more logging takes place in them.

“There is a risk…that these actually could be harvested,” said Kriese.

After a complaint from the Ancient Forest Alliance in 2018, the ministry’s compliance and enforcement branch started an investigation that ultimately determined BC Timber Sales was not compliant with government objectives. However, the compliance and enforcement branch also determined that it was not able to take enforcement action under the current legal framework, so it closed the file and referred it to the Forest Practices Board.

“That’s an oversight and that’s a gap,” said Kriese. “The current legal framework does not permit government to ensure that forest stewardship plans approved in error can be amended, and this does not give the public confidence in government’s compliance and enforcement. We are recommending government fix this gap in the legislation.”

The report ultimately found “a number of issues” with government objectives for B.C.’s forests, including the Nahmint River Watershed.

“The Board is concerned that actions are needed now to ensure biodiversity, and old forests in particular, are being adequately protected as forestry activities proceed in this watershed,” the report states. “Ultimately, the responsibility for the gaps in the planning and approval processes rests with the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development.”

The report recommends that the ministry complete landscape unit planning for Nahmint and that BC Timber Sales amend its forest stewardship plan to achieve the legal objectives. It also recommends that BC Timber Sales ensures it does not sell any timber sales in these high-risk ecosystems until a landscape unit plan is completed.

The final recommendation from the report asks the ministry to identify a mechanism that will allow forest stewardship plans to be corrected if they are out of compliance.

In light of the board’s findings, the Ancient Forest Alliance is calling on the B.C. government to direct BC Timber Sales to immediately stop auctioning off cutblocks in old-growth forests and instead champion conservation solutions and sustainable second-growth harvesting practices.

“With the Forest Practices Board’s investigation now complete, the evidence is irrefutable,” said Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner Andrea Inness in a press release. “BC Timber Sales are failing to adequately protect old-growth in the Nahmint Valley. This failure exposes the gross inadequacies and lack of accountability that are inherent in B.C.’s forest system and the need for immediate, systemic change.”

The full report can be found on the Forest Practices Board’s website at www.bcfpb.ca. The board is requesting a response from BC Timber Sales and the ministry by Sept. 15, 2021.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development says that BC Timber Sales is addressing the board’s recommendations in its operations, and that the ministry is updating Nahmint’s landscape unit plan.

“The board’s independent reports are an important check on forest practices in B.C. and highlight areas where we can improve. We take seriously the board’s recommendations and observations.”

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B.C. timber agency didn’t adequately protect old forest on Vancouver Island: watchdog

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CTV News Vancouver Island
May 13, 2021

logging

The Forest Practices Board says the investigation stemmed from a 2018 complaint about BC Timber Sales licensees’ logging of large old-growth trees in the Nahmint River watershed near Port Alberni. (CTV News)

VICTORIA — An investigation by British Columbia’s forest practices watchdog has found the provincial agency responsible for auctioning timber sale licenses did not adequately protect old forest in an area of Vancouver Island.

The Forest Practices Board says the investigation stemmed from a 2018 complaint about BC Timber Sales licensees’ logging of large old-growth trees in the Nahmint River watershed near Port Alberni.

Board chair Kevin Kriese says the findings show BC Timber Sales’ forest stewardship plan is not consistent with specific biodiversity objectives that are legally required under the Vancouver Island land use plan established two decades ago.

Kriese says more detailed landscape planning was supposed to provide clear direction on how much and where to conserve old and mature forest, but that planning was never completed and the forest stewardship plan should not have been approved.

He says BC Timber Sales was left with a complicated set of legal objectives to interpret, and the board found it missed important details required to manage for biodiversity in the Nahmint.

The Forests Ministry says it appreciates that the board acknowledged old and mature forests make up 67 per cent of the Nahmint area, and BC Timber Sales’ operations are addressing its recommendations.

The board’s report recommends that BC Timber Sales not sell any licenses in areas of “high-risk” ecosystems until the province finishes landscape planning to specify the amounts of forest to retain.

“We looked at the remaining forest in the watershed and found there are some ecosystems that could be at risk if more logging takes place in them,” Kriese says in a statement Wednesday.

The ministry says in a statement it’s updating the Nahmint landscape plan and adjusting old-growth management areas to “better capture rare and under-represented ecosystems and biodiversity targets.”

The updated landscape will come into effect soon, it says.

The board also determined that an investigation started by the Forests Ministry’s compliance and enforcement branch was reasonable. But it was cut short because the branch did not actually have the power to ensure the required objectives of higher-level land use plans are met.

The board is recommending the government fix that gap, Kriese says.

“The current legal framework does not permit government to ensure that (forest stewardship plans) approved in error can be amended, and this does not give the public confidence in government’s compliance and enforcement.”

The Nahmint River watershed is within the traditional territory of the Nuu-chah-nulth people and spans just shy of 200 square kilometres.

The Forest Practices Board says its investigation was triggered when members of the environmental organization Ancient Forest Alliance saw BC Timber Sales’ licensees harvesting large, old trees in 2018.

The Nahmint Valley is considered a “hot spot” for old-growth trees with high conservation value, the alliance says in a statement.

The alliance says it complained to the board after members found very large old-growth trees had been cut in the area, including ancient cedars and the ninth-widest Douglas fir recorded in Canada.

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B.C. ‘shouldn’t have approved’ plan that failed to protect Nahmint old-growth forests: watchdog

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A three-year review by the forest practices board found the provincial government did not meet its legal objective to protect ecosystems and ancient forests in a treasured Vancouver Island watershed

The Narwhal
May 12, 2021

The B.C. government has put biodiversity and old-growth at risk in Vancouver Island’s Nahmint River watershed, which is home to ancient forests with some of the province’s largest Douglas fir trees, a Forest Practices Board investigation has found.  

The investigation, released on Wednesday, concluded the B.C. forests ministry erred in approving a forest stewardship plan put forward by BC Timber Sales, the government agency responsible for auctioning off provincial logging permits.

The plan failed to meet land-use objectives for biodiversity protection, including where and how much old-growth forest should be conserved in the 20,000-hectare watershed southwest of Port Alberni, the three-year investigation found. 

“BC Timber Sales’ forest stewardship plan did not meet the legal objective, and it should not have been approved,” Forest Practices Board chair Kevin Kriese said in a statement. 

“We looked at the remaining forest in the watershed and found there are some ecosystems that could be at risk if more logging takes place in them.” 

The investigation also found BC Timber Sales did not follow good conservation design, use available ecosystem mapping or ensure forest ecosystems were adequately represented at the landscape level through old-growth management areas. These issues have occurred “over a long period of time and are creating real risks to ecosystems,” the board found.

The board is B.C.’s independent watchdog for sound forest and range practices. It investigates public complaints about practices on public land, along with the appropriateness of government enforcement, and makes recommendations for improvement. 

“The evidence is irrefutable; BC Timber Sales is failing to adequately protect old-growth in the Nahmint Valley,” Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner Andrea Inness told The Narwhal. 

“There is such a lack of oversight and accountability inherent in B.C.’s forest system that companies and BC Timber Sales are failing to meet the already inadequate standards that are set for old-growth protection,” Inness said. “And it’s more or less gone unnoticed until now.”

Nahmin Valley old growth clear cut
Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner TJ Watt surveys a sprawling clearcut filled with old-growth Douglas fir trees in the Nahmint Valley. Photo: TJ Watt

The investigation was triggered by a complaint from the Ancient Forest Alliance, following a May 2018 trip to the Nahmint Valley by Inness and other alliance members, including photographer TJ Watt, as well as members of the Port Alberni Watershed-Forest Alliance.

Their fact-finding expedition discovered exceptionally large Douglas fir trees — including the fifth and ninth widest Douglas firs ever recorded in the province — scattered amidst the remains of an extensive clearcutting operation. The two groups also documented old-growth cedar stumps measuring almost four metres in diameter.

Inness said trip participants were amazed by the sheer beauty of the Nahmint Valley, which has some of the grandest and most intact ancient rainforests in B.C. outside of the Great Bear Rainforest and Clayoquot Sound. 

“On the flip side, we were struck by the sheer scale and pace of the old-growth logging that was happening there,” she said. “It was as though the trees could not be cut fast enough.” 

Following the expedition, the Ancient Forest Alliance submitted a complaint to the compliance and enforcement branch of B.C.’s Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations.

Two subsequent investigations — the findings of which were obtained by the Ancient Forest Alliance through a Freedom of Information request — showed BC Timber Sales was not complying with rules designed to ensure sufficient old-growth forest is retained to avoid loss of biodiversity.

One investigation, conducted by a ministry compliance and enforcement officer, recommended that logging in the Nahmint Valley be halted, future harvesting tenures be put on hold and the agency be prevented from establishing Nahmint old-growth management areas — created to protect old-growth and achieve biodiversity targets — while problems were addressed.

The second investigation, conducted outside the ministry, came to similar conclusions, the FOI documents revealed.

Nahmint logging douglas fir
Before and after images of a massive Douglas fir tree in the Nahmint Valley. According to the B.C. Big Tree Registry, this Douglas fir was the ninth-largest of its kind in Canada. Photo: TJ Watt

The Ancient Forest Alliance also called for a halt to old-growth logging in the Nahmint Valley until the Forest Practices Board investigation was complete. 

“That plea was ignored and logging continued,” Inness said. 

She said it is very troubling that the investigation has revealed nothing was done to amend the forest stewardship plan developed by BC Timber Sales — even though the forest ministry district manager who approved the plan was aware of possible non-compliance issues.  

The investigation found the forest stewardship plan was inconsistent with a 2001 Vancouver Island land use plan order, which sets specific objectives for conserving biodiversity. 

It also found B.C.’s legal framework does not permit the government to amend forest stewardship plans approved in error. 

“…[T]hat does not give the public confidence in government’s compliance and enforcement,” Kriese said. “We are recommending government fix this gap in the legislation.” 

The board’s report comes as the BC NDP government drags its heels on implementing recommendations from an independent old-growth strategic review panel it commissioned in 2019. The panel, led by foresters Al Gorley and Garry Merkel, made 14 recommendations that the BC NDP promised during last fall’s election campaign to implement if re-elected. 

In the April 12 Speech from the throne, which lays out the government’s blueprint for the current legislative session, the government appeared to backpedal on the BC NDP’s election promise, saying only that it will “continue to take action on the independent report on old-growth.” 

Critics assert that very little has been done, with the Ancient Forest Alliance and two other conservation groups assigning the government a failing grade in a recent report card that examined progress on implementing the panel’s recommendations. 

In one recommendation, Gorley and Merkel said the government should immediately defer development in old forests “where ecosystems are at very high and near-term risk of irreversible biodiversity loss.” 

Brenda Sayers of the Hupacasath First Nation said she wants to see an end to old-growth logging in the Nahmint. 

“The Nahmint Valley is not only beautiful, its ancient forests and biodiversity are critical to our people’s culture, our identity,” Sayers said in a statement. “Yet the B.C. government is sanctioning the destruction of these ecosystems through its own logging agency, which has shown itself to be incapable of responsibly managing our sacred lands.”

The government has until Sept. 15 to respond to recommendations from the forest practices board, which said the forest stewardship plan should be amended and the ministry should complete a landscape unit plan for the Nahmint. It also said the ministry should identify a mechanism to allow forest stewardship plans to be amended if they are inconsistent with government objectives.

In an emailed statement, the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development said BC Timber Sales is addressing the board’s recommendations in its operations.

The ministry is also updating the Nahmint landscape unit plan and adjusting old-growth management areas “to better capture rare and underrepresented ecosystems and biodiversity targets at the landscape level,” the statement said.

The ministry noted the Nahmint Valley contains 67 per cent of its original mature and old-growth forests, “far more than required by the Vancouver Island land use order,” but it did not specify how much of that is old-growth.

“The board’s independent reports are an important check on forest practices in B.C. and highlight areas where we can improve,” the ministry said. “We take seriously the board’s recommendations and observations.”

Inness said the Ancient Forest Alliance is not interested in watching B.C.’s ancient forests and some of the world’s biggest trees continue to fall, even if the forest stewardship plan for the Nahmint Valley is brought into compliance with “our very inadequate laws.” 

“Those laws need to change,” she said, noting the B.C. government has not announced any new old-growth forest protections or policy changes. 

“It hasn’t even announced its plan for how to implement the [old-growth] panel’s recommendations. We’re calling on the B.C. government to stick to its promise and to deliver those things immediately. More and more of these endangered old-growth forests are falling every single day.”

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Forestry Watchdog finds BC Timber Sales failing to protect old-growth, biodiversity in Nahmint Valley

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Forest Practices Board investigation into Ancient Forest Alliance complaint reveals non-compliance by BC government logging agency in Nahmint Valley, putting ecosystems at risk, and systemic flaws in BC’s forestry legislation.

 

For immediate release
May 12, 2021

 

Victoria, BC – BC Timber Sales’s logging plans for the Nahmint Valley have consistently failed to comply with legally-binding land-use objectives for biodiversity protection, according to a long-awaited Forest Practices Board report following an investigation into old-growth logging in the Nahmint Valley near Port Alberni on Vancouver Island.

The report, released today, comes three years after the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA), together with members of the Port Alberni Watershed Forest Alliance, exposed the clearcutting of some of Canada’s grandest remaining old-growth forests and biggest trees – including Canada’s ninth widest known Douglas-fir – in the Nahmint Valley, located in Hupacasath and Tseshaht territory. The discovery prompted the AFA to submit a complaint to the Board, as well as the Ministry of Forests’ Compliance and Enforcement Branch (CEB), in summer 2018.

The Board’s nearly three-year investigation confirms one of the key findings from the CEB investigation – that BCTS’s 2017 Forest Stewardship Plan (FSP) for the Nahmint Valley fails to comply with legal biodiversity objectives set under the Vancouver Island Higher Level Plan Order.

“With the Forest Practices Board’s investigation now complete, the evidence is irrefutable: BC Timber Sales are failing to adequately protect old-growth in the Nahmint Valley,” stated Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner Andrea Inness. “This failure exposes the gross inadequacies and lack of accountability that are inherent in BC’s forest system and the need for immediate, systemic change.”

The Board’s investigation found that BCTS did not follow good conservation design, use available ecosystem mapping, or ensure forest ecosystems were adequately represented at the landscape level through Old Growth Management Areas. As a result, not only is BCTS’s FSP non-compliant, according to the Board’s report, these issues have “occurred over a long period of time and are creating real risks to ecosystems.”

“BCTS has logged too much old-growth forest in some ecosystems, including in rare and underrepresented plant communities, putting biodiversity at risk,” stated Inness. “What’s worse is they have no plan in place to ensure even more of these forests aren’t destroyed.”

Despite these issues, the FSP was given ‘rubber stamp’ approval by the district manager and when the CEB’s investigation identified possible compliance issues in fall 2018, nothing was done to amend the FSP to bring it into compliance.  

The Board’s report also reveals inherent inadequacies in the Forest and Range Practices Act – namely that there is no mechanism through which changes can be made to non-compliant FSPs once they’re approved – and loopholes that allow forest companies to substitute younger, smaller trees for older, bigger trees in retention areas, combine protection targets for old-growth and mature forests together, and stack forest reserves like Old Growth Management Areas and Wildlife Habitat Areas on top of each other.

“BC’s deeply flawed forest system not only lacks accountability, it allows forest companies and BCTS to protect the lowest possible amount of productive old-growth forests while always targeting the very best stands for logging,” stated AFA campaigner and photographer TJ Watt.

“At the end of the day, it’s not enough that BC Timber Sales amend their landscape unit plan and their FSP, as the Board suggests, so they can continue logging old-growth while adhering to BC’s outdated and inadequate forestry laws. Those laws need to be revised to reflect advancements in conservation science and the ecological crisis facing BC’s ancient forests.”

“Public trust in BC Timber Sales is already abysmal,” stated Inness. “Knowing they’re failing to meet the BC government’s grossly inadequate standards for old-growth protection is further proof of the urgent need for sweeping, systemic change in BC’s forest system.”

In its 2020 report, the NDP government-appointed Old Growth Strategic Review Panel concluded that productive old-growth forests are endangered across most of BC and a complete paradigm shift in BC’s forest sector, as well as immediate steps to protect the most at-risk old-growth forests, are urgently needed. In October, Premier Horgan committed to implementing the Old Growth Panel’s recommendations “in their totality,” but very little has been done thus far and the province is falling far behind on the panel’s suggested timeline.

In light of the panel’s recommendations and the Board’s findings, the AFA is calling on the BC government to direct BCTS to immediately stop auctioning off cutblocks in old-growth forests and instead champion conservation solutions and sustainable second-growth harvesting practices.

Brenda Sayers of the Hupacasath First Nation in Port Alberni is also urging the province and BC Timber Sales to end the destructive logging of old-growth in the Nahmint.

“The Nahmint Valley is not only beautiful, its ancient forests and biodiversity are critical to our people’s culture, our identity. Yet, the BC government is sanctioning the destruction of these ecosystems through its own logging agency, which have shown themselves to be incapable of responsibly managing our sacred lands.”

“The province needs to enact the paradigm shift that Premier Horgan committed to last October so that biodiversity and ecosystem integrity – which are what sustain First Nations cultures – are given the highest priority, not just in the Nahmint, but everywhere in BC.”

Background information

  • The Nahmint Valley, recognized for its high biodiversity, important wildlife and conservation values, was designated a “low intensity area” in the 1994 Vancouver Island Land Use Plan (VILUP) and a special management zone with “high biodiversity” priority in the ensuing VILUP Higher Level Plan Order in 2000.
  • The Board found BCTS failed to meet legal-binding protection targets for many old-growth ecosystems in the Nahmint. In some cases, the gap between the legal retention targets and how much old-growth remains is significant. For example, for four rare and underrepresented ecosystems in the Nahmint, BCTS has only achieved between 20 and 55 per cent of the targets.
  • The Nahmint Valley is considered a “hotspot” of high-conservation value old-growth forest by conservation groups, with some of the largest tracts of remaining old-growth forests on Vancouver Island outside of Clayoquot Sound. The Nahmint River supports significant salmon and steelhead spawning runs and the area is also home to Roosevelt elk, black-tailed deer, cougars, wolves, and black bears as well as old-growth dependent species like marbled murrelet and northern goshawk.
  • Old-growth forests are vital to sustaining unique endangered species, climate stability, tourism, clean water, wild salmon, and the cultures of many First Nations. On BC’s southern coast, satellite photos show that at least 75% of the original, productive old-growth forests have been logged, including well over 90% of the valley bottoms where the largest trees grow. 

 

Falling fast

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Three decades after the so-called ‘War of the Woods,’ the logging of B.C.’s ancient forests goes on, prompting protest from a new generation of eco-activists

Watt’s ‘before and after’ photos have drawn worldwide attention to old-growth logging in B.C. (TJ Watt)

McLean’s magazine
April 13, 2021

It came as a bit of a shock to Shawna Knight, a 43-year-old mother of two who runs the Buddha Box, a locally sourced food outfit in Shirley, on Vancouver Island’s southwest coast. Co-founder of the famous Cold Shoulder Cafe in the local surfing mecca of Jordan River, Knight says she figured she was as clued in as anyone to what was happening in the wild world around her. “We hunt for mushrooms, we do nettles every spring. I felt like we were connected. But we weren’t. We so obviously were not.”

Knight says she’d taken it for granted that the days when British Columbia was internationally notorious for cutting down the world’s last remaining stands of temperate old-growth rainforest were well and truly over. She thought the “War in the Woods” that had brought thousands of protesters to Canada’s West Coast from all over the world, when she was in her teens, had been fought and won. “Boy, was I wrong,” Knight tells me. “I just assumed we weren’t old-growth logging anymore. Turns out we’re doing it as fast as we can, right now.”

The realization came like a bolt out of the blue following a chance find on a Facebook chat group last summer—the ancient trees were still falling. It’s what prompted Knight to shut down the Buddha Box and spend her time ever since, a week on and a week off, where I met her: at a blockade on a remote logging road known as the Edinburgh Main, a branch of the Gordon River Main, in the mountains above Port Renfrew, an old fishing and logging town about two hours’ drive northwest of Victoria.

The camp on the Edinburgh Main is one of a half-dozen protest sites that have been springing up and moving around since last August on roads that the Teal-Jones logging company has been trying to punch into the Fairy Creek watershed, one of the last unprotected old-growth valleys on Vancouver Island.

The Teal-Jones Group is a 70-year-old logging and milling firm that bought the provincial timber rights to a huge tract of Vancouver Island’s southwest forests—Tree Farm Licence 46—in 2004. Ever since the first blockade appeared last August, the company has been in and out of court, hoping for an injunction that would order the dozens of protesters who have been encamped on its roads to get out of the way.

Although no cutblocks had been authorized within the Fairy Creek watershed, Teal-Jones says it is within its rights to log there, and it intends to take trees from only about 200 hectares of the 1,200-hectare watershed. The company is just trying to build logging roads to get at the trees. It sounds like a fairly straightforward contest. But it isn’t.

It’s not just about the Fairy Creek watershed, and it’s not just about TFL 46. In some ways, it’s as though the War in the Woods that began in the mid-1980s and lasted a decade is still going on. “It never really ended,” Knight tells me.

***

But there’s a lot that’s different about “protest” this time around: digital technologies, the rise of social media, the new capacities available to First Nations authorities, the economic transformation of formerly logging-dependent communities, and the realigned roles of the federal and provincial governments.

It’s not even clear how it came to pass, exactly, that all those protesters suddenly showed up last summer camping in cars, tents and old buses in the mountains around Fairy Creek. But it would appear that word of a Teal-Jones logging road breaching a ridge line above the watershed first came from Joshua Wright, a 17-year-old activist and filmmaker with highly developed computer skills. Wright had been live-monitoring road construction in the area using advanced digital-mapping software from his home across the Juan de Fuca Strait and across the Canada-U.S. border in Olympia, Wash.

Knight in a camp bus at a blockade (Photograph by Jen Osborne)

That’s a far cry from what might be called the first shot fired in the War in the Woods back in the 1980s. You could situate that event on Nov. 21, 1984, when Tla-o-qui-aht Chief Moses Martin stood on the beach of Meares Island, just off Tofino in Clayoquot Sound, and addressed a group of MacMillan Bloedel officials and loggers who’d arrived to start clearing the forest. Martin told them their provincially issued logging rights counted for nothing against Tla-o-qui-aht law, and that they were welcome to stay for a meal but they’d have to put down their chainsaws first.

The MacMillan Bloedel party withdrew, but not without a fight in the courts. They lost, and so did the provincial government. Sixteen years later, Clayoquot Sound, with its giant trees still standing after 1,000 years, towering as high as 20-storey buildings, was a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Along the way, thousands of protesters had made their way to Vancouver Island to protest old-growth logging. In one protest, at the Kennedy Lake Bridge, 859 people were arrested and eventually convicted on contempt charges for violating an anti-blockade injunction. It’s still considered the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history.

The activists and the Tla-o-qui-aht won most of their demands, and further prohibitions on industrial-scale logging were secured in the nearby Megin River Valley, portions of the Walbran and Carmanah valleys and other remnants of ancient forest on Vancouver Island immediately north of Teal-Jones’ TFL 46. On B.C.’s mainland coast, where much of the readily accessible timber had already been taken out, the Great Bear Rainforest was made off limits to further large-scale logging.

Over the years, there were other compromises between the lumber and conservation interests as the industry went through a series of convulsions, including a pine beetle infestation that carried off much of B.C.’s Interior woodlands. Then came years of forest-protection backsliding during the Liberal party governments of Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark.

When New Democrat John Horgan was elected with a Green-backed minority in 2017, hopes were high that Vancouver Island’s dwindling ancient forests would win some reprieve—TFL 46 falls entirely within Horgan’s home riding of Langford-Juan de Fuca. There was much consultation and study, including a key “Old Growth Strategic Review.” When Horgan beat back the Greens and the Liberals to form a majority in last September’s snap election, he had his eye on the public’s hardening mood: a 2019 opinion poll showed 92 per cent of voters wanted action to protect endangered old-growth forests, partnerships with Indigenous people and a more diversified economy.

Logging truck drivers protesting forest-industry layoffs in 2019 (Darryl Dyck/CP)

Teal-Jones, too, insists the company intends to meet the high standards the public increasingly demands. In a recent statement, Gerrie Kotze, the company’s chief financial officer, declared: “Our work on this tree farm licence will be done in a way consistent with our values of sustainable forest management.” Teal-Jones, he added, “is committed to harvesting with the care and attention to the environment.”

Conservationists heralded the Old Growth report and its recommendations as the makings of a welcome “paradigm shift” in B.C.’s dysfunctional forest policies, putting ecosystem health above all other considerations. While Horgan’s government committed to following the review panel’s recommendations, further consultations would be required. Horgan nonetheless pledged to protect “nearly 353,000 hectares of old-growth forests,” in nine large areas, saying, “that’s just the beginning.”

Then the caveats began to reveal themselves. The nine parcels weren’t being “protected,” exactly. Logging was merely being deferred for two years. As for the “old-growth” in the deferral areas, half the landscapes were either alpine bonsai trees, or not even forest, or second-growth, or old-growth that was already protected. The Ministry of Forests had to clarify that only 196,000 hectares of “old-growth” was involved. In any case, when would the “paradigm shift” laid out in the review actually begin?

Maclean’s reached out to newly appointed B.C. Forests Minister Katrine Conroy’s office for answers. Will the review’s recommendations be implemented within the deferral’s two-year timeline? Conroy’s spokesperson, Tyler Hooper, explained by email that it’s going to take time because the government is committed to “doing this right,” adding that the Old Growth panel’s timeline “related to when work should be under way,” not completed. Besides, he noted, the recommendations came before the COVID-19 crisis: “We’ve started high-priority work in keeping with the report’s recommendations. But it will take engagement with the full involvement of Indigenous leaders, organizations, industry and environmental groups to find consensus on the future of old-growth forests in B.C.”

A closer review undertaken by forest ecologists Karen Price and Rachel Holt with professional forester Dave Daust, authors of the report “B.C.’s Old-Growth Forest: A Last Stand for Biodiversity,” reckon that only 3,800 hectares of Horgan’s deferred 350,000 hectares contain forests of the type that the Old Growth panel classified as in need of immediate action. So about one per cent, in other words, was forest of the ancient, tall-tree kind that most people imagine when they hear the term “old-growth.”

***

You have to squint at all these numbers to notice the point that the activists are trying to make when they say the bad old days in British Columbia are back. It’s complicated, and that’s where Ancient Forest Alliance photographer TJ Watt comes into the picture. He’s one of the main reasons that a handful of activists who first met at Lizard Lake near the Teal-Jones Granite Main logging road last August have acquired so many friends and well-wishers.

The 36-year-old Watt has been cutting through the cacophony of data with photographs. After a childhood in rural Metchosin, just outside Victoria, and summers in Port Renfrew, where his parents ran a marina, Watt has emerged as a key figure in the campaign to save the few groves of ancient forest that remain on Vancouver Island’s southwest coast. He’d found himself enchanted by the forest early on, and by his early 20s he’d developed a fascination with photography.

Watt’s leadership in the Ancient Forest Alliance grew out of a random event, in his early 20s, when he came upon the Western Canada Wilderness Committee’s storefront office on Johnson Street in Victoria. He walked in and hit it off right away with WCWC’s veteran campaigner, Ken Wu, who put him to work taking photographs of a forestry protest rally in town. Ten years ago, after Watt and Wu struck out on their own and founded the Ancient Forest Alliance, Watt found himself drawn deeper into Vancouver Island’s distant groves of cedar, fir, hemlock and spruce.

“The more remote landscapes were a blank spot on the map to me,” Watt says. “You spend three or four hours on a logging road, and then you arrive in this wonderland, with cascading waterfalls and emerald green pools and rivers, and these ancient forests, with trees that are nearly five metres across. I was just blown away how these forests were not protected.”

Watt’s early photographs of the still-standing trees in the unprotected portions of the Walbran Valley, and his 2018 portraits of the just-felled giants in the entirely unprotected Nahmint Valley near Port Alberni, caused a sensation. The photographs were partly a catalyst for the Horgan government’s old-growth review.

But it was last November that his disturbing “before and after” pictures of Teal-Jones logging operations in the Caycuse Valley drew international attention. “That was an explosion,” he says. “People from around the world get it, when they see the striking contrast in a tree that’s lived for 800 or 1,000 years, and the next day, it’s gone.”

His methodology is straightforward. He finds a big tree, picks an angle, sets up his tripod, shoots his photographs, and keeps careful notes—measuring the distance from the camera to the tree with a range finder; taking reference photographs of his set-up; noting the camera lens he’s used; noting the focal length; and recording the GPS coordinates so he can accurately retrace his steps through the logging slash to the “before” location, to take an “after” photograph.

Watt posted his first Caycuse “before and after” photographs on his Instagram account on Nov. 24, and they’ve since shown up in the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper, Outside magazine and countless social media posts. The scenes he depicted have been seen by millions of people.

“Humans are visual creatures, and photography allows you to understand an issue in an instant,” Watt says. “People see that it’s a permanent loss. Old-growth forests do not come back. We get one chance, and one chance only, to save these trees.”

Wu in the Avatar Grove forest (Photograph by Jen Osborne)

Because of the mischief they’ve been making in and around TFL 46, you’d think TJ Watt, Ken Wu and the Ancient Forest Alliance would be considered villains in a town like Port Renfrew. They’re not. They’re more likely to be considered heroes.

In the forests above the town, Wu and Watt have drawn widespread public attention to several patches of old-growth—like Avatar Grove and Eden Grove—and to individual trees with names like Big Lonely Doug, the San Juan Spruce and the Red Creek Fir. Avatar Grove, named after James Cameron’s blockbuster 2009 science fiction movie, is now classified as a forest ministry recreation site, and it’s become world-famous. Every year, tens of thousands of people visit the strange and mossy stand of giants, while Port Renfrew has taken to billing itself as the “Tall Tree Capital of Canada.” What the forest industry took away, the tourist industry is giving back.

That’s another huge difference from the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, the whole point of forest policy on Vancouver Island’s west coast was to convert old-growth forests, with their wolves, Roosevelt elk, black-tailed deer, black bears and cougars, into monocultural tree plantations. In those pseudo-forests, as the celebrated B.C. environmentalist Vicky Husband used to put it, “a deer would have to pack a lunch.”

***

The Teal-Jones Group isn’t simply the villain of the piece, either. The company is one of the loudest industry voices behind a broad-based move spearheaded by environmentalists to push back on the pace and scale of raw log exports from B.C.’s coastal forests.

Dozens of sawmills have closed over the past 20 years, and B.C. forests ministry records show that from 1998 onward raw log exports to China, the United States and elsewhere grew from about one per cent of the coastal cut to 30 per cent by 2018, reaching a recent average of four million cubic metres annually.

To put that in perspective: because a standard logging truck can hold around 40 cubic metres of timber, the volume of unprocessed logs from coastal forests shipped out of B.C. has been adding up to the equivalent of 100,000 fully loaded logging trucks in a bumper-to-bumper convoy stretching roughly from Vancouver to Winnipeg, every year.

Another big change from the days of the War in the Woods: First Nations are increasingly becoming major players in the forest industry.

Watt’s photos of old-growth logging (like his drone image of Caycuse, above) exploded on social media (TJ Watt)

The Fairy Creek watershed, along with almost all of TFL 46, falls within the traditional territory of the Pacheedaht Nation, a community of about 300 Nuu-chah-nulth people. While the Pacheedaht forestry initiatives include a set-aside for 400 years’ worth of cedar sufficient for their traditional ocean-going canoes, the Nation now also manages or co-manages an annual cut of about 140,000 cubic metres and runs its own small sawmill. It takes a percentage of the stumpage fees from every tree cut down in its traditional territory and co-owns a portion of Tree Farm Licence 25 in the Jordan River watershed. The Pacheedaht have declined to take an official position in the Fairy Creek controversy.

Ken Wu, the veteran forest activist, has since moved on to establish the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance, which works mainly at the federal level. Wu, who now works out of Montreal, tells me a major change from the 1980s and 1990s is that, while logging-road blockades are a necessary “catalyst” to action, the harder and more lasting work involves building broader alliances with “non-traditional” partners in the resource industries.

The Trudeau government has committed Canada to achieve 30 per cent protection of marine and terrestrial ecosystems by 2030. Wu says that’s not near enough. The Endangered Ecosystems Alliance is aiming for 50 per cent. As for holding the line to protect the last stands of Canada’s West Coast temperate rainforest, Wu says the key is offering Indigenous communities a viable alternative to the trap between a rock and hard place—between old-growth logging and poverty.

“The point is, there’s hardly any of the high-productivity old-growth left,” Wu says, “and we have to protect everything that remains. B.C. is one of the very last jurisdictions on earth that still condones and supports the large-scale logging of 500- and 1,000-year-old trees. It doesn’t grow back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.”

This article appears in print in the May 2021 issue of Maclean’s magazine with the headline, “Falling fast.” Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.

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Logging change: old-growth harvesting has deep roots on Vancouver Island, but how long can it last?

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Capital Daily
January 31, 2021

Logging-dependent communities are facing an existential threat from what conservationists and First Nations say is an overdue change to forestry practices.

If there’s a stand of ancient trees anywhere on Vancouver Island, chances are TJ Watt has seen and photographed it. Watt is cofounder of Ancient Forest Alliance, which has taken him to every corner of the Island in search of big trees. 

In 2018, Watt was scouring satellite imagery on his laptop when he stumbled across an application to cut down old growth in the upper Caycuse River watershed, in the mountains above Lake Cowichan and Nitinat Lake. He hopped into his trusty van, headed north, and navigated a maze of bumpy logging roads that led him to a breathtaking grove of western red cedar giants that he thought would be a candidate for conservation. 

He returned twice: once to document the forest as it was, and a second time to witness what remained after it was logged. 

Fallers, working for Surrey-based Teal Jones Group, left a clearcut where a 33-hectare stand of ancient forest once stood. Watt’s stark before-and-after images triggered a storm of media and public interest that was surprising, even for a conservation photographer accustomed to shooting big trees and stumps with impact in mind. Some of the tree stumps measured four meters in diameter. Watt says he stopped counting rings on one of them at 800 when he got to its hollow core, leading him to estimate some of the specimens to be at least 1,000 years old. He was alarmed, but not surprised.

“I think it’s criminal that this is happening. To put it into perspective, it would be the year 3020 before we would ever see trees or a forest like that again in the same place,” Watt says, adding that he doesn’t oppose logging—he believes it’s time to make the shift into harvesting mostly second growth. “They will never have the chance to become old-growth forests again.”

The Caycuse logging controversy underscores an uncomfortable truth: that the province’s oldest, most biodiverse, and increasingly rare forests are also some of the most commercially valuable to the logging industry. It’s a political hot potato for the NDP government, which traditionally courts two often-conflicting constituencies. On the one hand, labour, resource communities, and powerful lobbies, like the Truck Loggers Association, which represents more than 500 companies and contractors, will fight hard to protect jobs and land access. On the other hand, conservation groups like the Ancient Forest Alliance, scientists, and an environmentally conscious public are crying foul as industry continues to cut down thousand-year-old trees.

The tension has resulted in plenty of discussion. In April 2020, independent scientists Rachel Holt, Karen Price, and Dave Daust published B.C.’s Old Growth: A Last Stand for Biodiversity, in which they dissected the BC government’s accounting of the province’s old-growth resources. The results were alarming. After parsing out old forests containing small trees (typically found on high-elevation, boggy, or nutrient-poor sites), the researchers found that just 3% of the 13.2 million hectares of old growth habitat in BC is suitable for growing massive trees like those felled in the Caycuse. 

Of the small percentage of land area in which the biggest, strongest old trees can possibly grow, 97% has already been logged. What’s worse is that BC’s main protection tool, Old Growth Management Areas (OGMAs), are often too small to have any sustained biodiversity value and are poorly regulated. 

Sonia Furstenau, leader of the Green Party of British Columbia and Cowichan Valley MLA, likens the continued logging of rare old growth in BC to an African nation deciding to permit the hunting of white rhinos. 

“Our government would be outraged,” Furstenau says. “We should be just as outraged by what’s happening to our old growth forests. The NDP is moving the needle in the wrong direction.” 

Valuable resources; invaluable ecosystems

Watt had a life-changing moment 15 years ago when he stood at the base of a giant western red cedar in the upper Walbran Valley, which had been the focus of anti-logging protests. Sun rays pierced the canopy and landed in luminescent pools on the sword ferns and mossy forest around him. The experience inspired him to pick up a camera and dedicate himself to conservation of these long-lived temperate rainforests that are engines of biodiversity. 

Three-quarters of all mammal species and two-thirds of amphibians found in BC live in coastal rainforests. For botanists, the coastal-like forests found in the interior are a frontier of discovery. Darwyn Coxson, a University of Northern British Columbia biologist, has been studying old cedar-hemlock forests in the Robson Valley along with Trevor Goward and Curtis Bjork, scientists affiliated with UBC’s Beatty Biodiversity Museum. Over the past six years, the researchers have catalogued more than 2,400 plant species, including dozens previously unknown to science. 

“It shows just how little we know about this ecosystem,” says Coxson.

BC’s temperate rainforests are also powerful allies in the fight against climate change as they are able to sequester more carbon than any other forest type in the world. 

As precious as they may be to science and the climate, they’re also extremely valuable as timber. Old-growth forests (by some definitions, those that are 250 years or older on the coast and 140 years in the interior) have traditionally anchored BC’s forest sector, which contributed $13 billion to the provincial GDP in 2016. 

The supple, rot-resistant wood of old growth western red cedar, the iconic BC rainforest species and the official provincial tree, is a highly sought-after commodity. The rarer it becomes, the more valuable it is to loggers. In the summer of 2019, western red cedar was fetching roughly $360 per cubic metre on the international market, more than twice the amount being paid for Douglas fir, the next most valuable BC wood export. 

During the 2017 provincial election campaign, John Horgan’s NDP made a vague promise to use the ecosystem-based management being applied in the Great Bear Rainforest as a model for sustainable management of old-growth forests provincewide. But the public was growing impatient. Controversial logging in the Nahmint Valley, 30 kilometres southwest of Port Alberni, and uncertainty over the future of interior rainforest like the spectacular Incomappleux Valley near Glacier National Park (where biologists have discovered dozens of new lichen species) added fuel to the ongoing debate.

In July 2019, the provincial government commissioned an Old Growth Strategic Review, led by two veteran professional foresters: Al Gorley, former chair of the Forest Practices Board, and Garry Merkel, a member of northwestern BC’s Tahltan Nation and a natural resources specialist. Merkel is a candid, independent thinker. He’s been around long enough to see more than one government report come and go but hasn’t given in to cynicism. 

However, it’s not the first time a ruling NDP party has tackled old growth logging practices. In 1992, Mike Harcourt’s government unveiled the Old Growth Strategy, but the report gathered dust while critical aspects of it were “either discarded or partly implemented,” Merkel told Capital Daily over the phone from his home office in Kimberley. Had this report been fully implemented more than 20 years ago, Merkel believes BC’s old-growth forests would be in a much more stable position. So it was with a sense of urgency that he and Gorley hit the road late in 2019, touring the province for two months and meeting with loggers, First Nations, conservationists, and community members. 

Old-growth forests are made up of a mix of tree ages, which gives variety to the landscape and more habitat. Photo: TJ  Watt / Ancient Forest Alliance

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Last April, they submitted their report, A New Future for Old Forests. It pulls no punches. Not only does it call for the suspension of logging in BC’s most at-risk old forests, it’s also an indictment of entrenched land-management practices that treat forests like industrial tree farms. 

“We are recommending a paradigm shift, from a timber-focused regime that views ecological health as a constraint, to an ecological focus with timber as one of the many benefits,” Merkel says. “Everybody knows that the current system is not working—one that is a trade-off between biodiversity and timber values.”

Merkel and Gorley made 14 recommendations to be enacted by 2023. Topping the list is immediate engagement with First Nations across BC on a government-to-government basis and the provision of much-needed resources to support the forestry industry’s transition. Also among the recommendations are a call for more government transparency, establishing clearly defined biodiversity targets, and also helping timber-based communities adapt to forest management changes.

Merkel concedes that it will mean reductions in timber harvesting in some areas of the province.

As a first step last September, BC announced two-year logging deferrals on 350,000 hectares of old growth scattered across the province, including forests in the McKelvie Valley near Tahsis, Clayoquot Sound, and the Incomappleux. In addition, the province committed to increased protection for and expansion of the province’s big tree registry to as many as 1,500 specimens, each surrounded by a 1-hectare conservation buffer. It’s likely too early to judge the province’s response to the report, but Merkel is optimistic.

“I wouldn’t have agreed to do this review if I didn’t believe the government was sincere,”he says.

Katrine Conroy, MLA for Kootenay West and the newly minted minister of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations, says she is committed to implementing all 14 recommendations, but admits the three-year timeline is ambitious. For example, the province has yet to roll out a plan for government-to-government talks with First Nations about forestry transition and funding, something she says will likely require going to the Treasury Board with cap in hand at a time when public finances are being stretched by the pandemic. Shifting to biodiversity-based forest management provincewide will first require unpacking forest policy—and that, too, will take time and debate.

“This is not just about old-growth trees; it’s also about the ecosystems around them. We need to take a much more holistic approach and think of forestry in terms of high value rather than high volume,” Minister Conroy told Capital Daily in an exclusive interview. “We’re just getting started but we want to build a more sustainable and competitive industry.”  

‘We don’t even know how much old growth is left’

Over the past half-century, the Nitnat-based Ditidaht First Nation has witnessed the liquidation of valley-bottom and mountainside ancient forests within its territory, which extends from the rugged coastline between Pacheena Point and Bonilla Point, inland to Cowichan Lake. While the eleventh hour for BC’s rarest old-growth trees approaches, timber-based communities and First Nations like the Ditidaht are stuck in the middle. 

One of the old growth review panel’s key recommendations hones in on a critical problem for First Nations provincewide: a lack of capacity and technical know-how to stay on top of industrial activity within their territories.

“Am I concerned? Yes. We don’t even know how much old growth is left on our territory,” said Paul Sieber, the Ditidaht’s natural resource manager. “Industry keeps the information pretty close and it makes it hard for us to respond in a meaningful way to logging plans.”

Sieber’s desk is piled high with reports and documents. He’s perpetually stretched and hasn’t yet found time to peruse Merkel’s and Gorley’s old-growth report. In the early 1990s, heavy logging by a previous tenure holder in the Klanawa River valley, which drains out to the west coast through Pacific Rim National Park, led to landslides, erosion, and damage to a river that once teemed with steelhead and salmon. It angered Sieber then, and it still angers him now. He fears that the recent cutting of old-growth forest in the upper Caycuse River watershed will further damage what is already a heavily logged watershed.
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Second-growth forests do not support nearly the same amount of biodiversity as old-growth stands. Photo: Sergej Krivenko / Capital Daily

This is a complex time in the relationship between forestry companies and First Nations, who have for too long been bystanders as companies profited from old-growth logging in their territories. They’re late to the party. Many nations, like the Ditidaht have only recently entered into revenue sharing agreements and partnerships with forest corporations. Teal Jones Group and Western Forest Products (WFP) each hold an area-based tenure on Crown land known as a tree farm licence, or TFL, that requires them to pay stumpage fees to the Crown for the right to log within Ditidaht territory. The Ditidaht, through their forestry arm Ditidaht Forestry Ltd, are now logging in partnership with TimberWest, and negotiating with Teal Jones and WFP for long-term timber access and revenue sharing agreements.

The problem, according to Garry Merkel, is that many nations now find themselves in the untenable position of harvesting at-risk old growth to support their businesses.

“We need to find solutions that don’t involve forcing First Nations to shut down or fight to harvest areas they may not agree with,” he says.

A raw deal for small communities

Twenty-five years ago, a small-town tour of Vancouver Island would have been much different than it is today. Timber mills were pumping out lumber in places as remote as Youbou and Tahsis, while high-paying union jobs supported thriving communities and small businesses sprang up around these anchor industries. 

TimberWest closed its Youbou operation in 2001, the same year that the mill in Tahsis was mothballed. It was a sign of things to come. In 2003, the then-Liberal government scrapped a Forest Act provision called appurtenance requiring companies with Crown forest tenures to operate mills in communities located within the geographical area of a given tenure. It only added to the decline in manufacturing capacity. 

Last May, Langley-based San Group began production at a new $70-million plant in Port Alberni, the first major investment in coastal sawmilling in 15 years. But this is a lonely bright spot: since 1997, roughly 100 mills have shut across BC. Over the past decade, the forest sector has lost more than 22,000 jobs, mostly in lumber and pulp and paper manufacturing. 

Campbell River symbolizes the changing economic reality of many Island communities. Between 2008 and 2010, TimberWest shut its sawmill and sawdust, pulp, and containerboard operations, then Catalyst Paper closed its Elk Falls mill. They laid off 700 workers between them and left behind vacant industrial lots on the waterfront north of the city. 

Companies are required by law to process BC logs domestically. However, there’s a loophole: if they are unable to secure a fair price after advertising in the domestic market, logs can be sold to foreign mills.

A 2018 study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives showed the relationship between   mill closures and rising raw log exports. Between 2013 and 2016, forest companies shipped 26 million cubic metres of raw logs, and old growth accounted for roughly half of the exports. 

The three largest exporters of raw logs are big players on Vancouver Island: Western Forest Products, Island Timberlands, and TimberWest. In 2016, TimberWest, which owns 327,000 hectares of timberland on Vancouver Island, sent more than 2 million cubic metres of raw logs out of the province. 

But in Port McNeill, logging still matters. The town’s motto, “Tree Farming Country,” speaks volumes. The “world’s largest burl,” an estimated 30-tonne knot that was cut from a Sitka spruce in 2005, is proudly displayed on the Port McNeill waterfront. When loggers are working, business is booming. That’s why the eight-month bitter labour dispute between Western Forest Products and the United Steelworkers Union that began in July 2019 hit the northern Vancouver Island community hard.

“I’d say 80% of Port McNeill’s economy is either directly or indirectly tied to the forest sector,” Mayor Gaby Wickstrom says. 

Port McNeill is one of a dozen members of Forest Friendly Communities, an industry-promoting organization formed in 2016. Wickstrom recalls the strike as one of the darkest periods since she moved to the area 25 years ago to drive a forest industry tour bus. Port McNeill was plunged into a mini recession that impacted everyone, from stylists at Bangles Hair Studio to servers at Tia’s Cafe.

“We had people accessing the food banks who never had to before.”

She worries about the speed of change if the province follows through with the old-growth review panel’s recommendations to transition out of old-growth logging. In a Vancouver Sun op-ed, she argued for “a decision that fairly balances the interests of conservation and the economy.”

That balance, she argues, can’t leave communities like hers behind.

“If there’s going to be a moratorium on old-growth logging, we’re going to need help with the transition,” Wickstrom says. “We want to make sure our community has a voice.”

The members of Forest Friendly Communities definitely have the Truck Loggers Association (TLA) in their corner. Bob Brash, a forester and TLA’s executive director, calls old-growth logging an “emotionally charged” issue.

“Our industry has proven to be adaptable but we need certainty around the working forest land base. We’re still waiting for the government to conduct a socio-economic analysis on the impact of a moratorium on old-growth logging, ” Brash says, noting that 50 million hectares of BC forests have been certified since 2002 by third-party sustainability auditors like the Forest Stewardship Council. “Government has to get this right and it has to be based on science, not emotion.” 

Garry Merkel agrees—and the science is clear, he says. High-productivity old-growth forests in BC are under threat. Hard, but necessary, discussions about the future of forestry lie ahead.

At her Cowichan Valley constituency office, Sonia Furtseneau sifts through the daily deluge of emails. Old-growth logging completely dominates the correspondence. Furstenau believes “talk and log” is no longer an option. Neither is waiting for industry to make the shift. 

Forest companies will do whatever they can to be efficient and extract the most value from the forest, she says. Government has the blueprint—Merkel and Gorley’s report—and their 14 recommendations that she believes could be “a game-changer.”

“We don’t have time for more discussion and studies. The NDP government needs to come to the table with resources for First Nations and logging-based communities and help them make that economic transition into activities like renewable energy and value-added wood products manufacturing,” Furstenau says.

The clock is ticking, and it’s already too late for some forests like the trees that once stood in the upper Caycuse watershed captured in Watt’s stark photos. 

Corrections: This story was corrected on Fed. 1, 2020 at 11:30 am. It originally referred to the Ditidaht First Nation as “Port Alberni-based”. The First Nation is based in Nitnat. Further, it referred to a stand of trees in the Caycuse River watershed as a 70-hectare stand. It was a 33-hectare stand.

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The future of BC’s ancient forests hangs in the balance of decisions made today

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While the NDP government deliberates on the future of BC’s endangered old-growth forests, logging of ancient trees continues at a shocking pace across the island. Teal-Jones is one of the worst offenders, with dozens of old-growth cutblocks spread out across the Walbran, Caycuse, and Gordon River Valleys. They’ve also begun road construction adjacent to the unprotected headwaters of Fairy Creek (about 4km up from the lake) northeast of Port Renfrew and while there are no current cutblock applications at this time, it’s very likely part of their future plans. Teal Jones also plans to log the second-growth forest along the Gordon River, across from Avatar Grove, which will further mar the scenery from the bridge next to the world-famous tourist site.

The same story is playing out across hundreds of other valleys across Vancouver Island as well, often beyond the scrutiny of the public eye. Time is running out for these old-growth ‘hotspots’ of high conservation and recreation value. The BC NDP must enact strong and immediate measures to protect these highly endangered ancient forest ecosystems before the logging industry erases them forever.

TAKE ACTION! ⬇️

TWEET: @DonaldsonDoug @JJHorgan @GeorgeHeyman
EMAIL: Doug Donaldson at FLNR.Minister@gov.bc.ca
CALL: Doug Donaldson’s office at 250-387-6240
SEND-A-MESSAGE: www.AncientForestAlliance.org/send-a-message