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The Canadian Press: Poor data hinders B.C. old-growth logging deferrals, advocates say

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October 22, 2023
By Brenna Owens
The Canadian Press
Published in The Globe and Mail – Read the original article.

Irreplaceable ancient forests that should meet criteria for interim protection are being left open to logging in British Columbia due to outdated and inaccurate government data, advocates and an ecologist who advised the province say.

“The deferral process was intended to stop the bleed,” said Karen Price, an ecologist who served on the provincially appointed panel that identified 2.6 million hectares of high-priority old growth and recommended it be set aside from logging.

“It was intended to be a quick and dirty stopgap so First Nations and everyone could get together and do sensible planning, and it has not worked that way.”

In November 2021, B.C. announced a process to temporarily defer harvesting in those priority forests, provided First Nations agreed with the proposal in their territories, allowing time for longer-term planning.

It followed an earlier pledge by the province to implement the recommendations from an old-growth strategic review, which urged B.C. to act within six months to defer harvesting in ecosystems at high risk of irreversible biodiversity loss.

The Forests Ministry did not provide the latest deferral numbers. Staff are working on an update that’s expected in the coming weeks, a spokesperson said.

In a statement last July, the ministry said deferrals had been implemented across 1.2 million hectares identified by the panel, while an estimated 11,578 hectares of proposed deferrals were logged between November 2021 and December 2022.

But Price said old growth remains unidentified and open to logging due to “problematic” data that underestimates its age, especially for ancient forests.

The advisory panel worked with provincial data, specifically the vegetation resources inventory, based mostly on aerial images, Price explained.

AFA’s Ian Thomas beside a 10 foot wide cedar stump cut in an area missed for logging deferral on northern Vancouver Island, BC.

But the expert panel had access to on-the-ground data from nearly 7,000 sites throughout B.C. and used it to confirm the remote data.

The panel found the accuracy of projected age of trees in the database dropped “considerably” for stands older than 200 years, Price said.

The discrepancy increases with age, so “ancient forests are severely under-represented in the inventory data,” the panel said in a supplementary report.

That means B.C.’s deferral process is missing areas that should meet the criteria for high-priority old growth at risk of permanent loss, Price said.

A statement from the Forests Ministry this month said a total of 2.33 million hectares of old-growth forests have been “deferred or protected,” a figure that includes areas identified by First Nations in addition to the advisory panel.

B.C. is improving data collection on forests, it said. That includes the use of light detection and ranging technology, known as LiDAR, to help governments, First Nations and resource-based companies make better decisions, the ministry said.

TJ Watt, a photographer and co-founder of the Ancient Rainforest Alliance, said he recently visited a cut block on northern Vancouver Island, where he saw a three-metre-wide stump in a stand classified by the province as being 212 years old.

“Walking into the forest, one could tell this is a highly productive ancient forest filled with giant cedar trees,” Watt said of the area in Quatsino First Nation territory.

Many trees in the grove were likely at least 500 years old, he said.

An incredible trio of ancient cedars at risk on northern Vancouver Island, BC.

B.C. hasn’t publicly stated which nations have agreed to the proposed deferrals, but Watt said the area wasn’t captured by the deferral mapping in the first place.

Details contained in B.C. government mapping show the “interpretation date” for the area’s vegetation data was January 2000, nearly 24 years ago, he said.

Watt said he isn’t aware of any process for the public to flag potentially misclassified old-growth for deferral consideration.

The old-growth advisory panel used three categories to identify areas of high priority for potential deferral: ancient, remnant, and big-treed.

B.C. classifies ancient forests as 250 years and older in ecosystems that experience more frequent natural disturbances, such as wildfire, and 400 years and older in moist or high-elevation areas where such events are rare, Price said.

It’s in those less-frequently disturbed areas, often found along the coast, where the issue of ancient forests missing from B.C.’s data is “widespread,” she said.

“There’s a lot that would be classified as ancient, and in some of these regions there’s very little,” Price said, referring mostly to coastal areas.

In response to a request for comment, the Forests Ministry said the panel worked with higher-level mapping and “acknowledged that the modelling would need to be verified and that some areas may turn out not to be what they had thought.”

Eddie Petryshen, a conservation specialist with Wildsight, an environmental charity based in southeastern B.C., said he has also seen firsthand the discrepancy between the province’s data and the true ages and types of forests he has visited.

In one example from last July, he said the data for two approved cut blocks north of Revelstoke, B.C., showed the area had trees that were about 245 years old, missing the threshold for the ancient classification in the Interior by five years.

“I went in there and, you know, it was beautiful old-growth inland temperate rainforest with trees that are in the one- to two-metre diameter range, the largest cedars. I would expect those trees to be 300 to 500 years old,” Petryshen said.

It takes longer for cedars to grow to that width in the globally unique inland temperate rainforest than it does on B.C.’s coast, he noted.

“These are ancient trees.”

Petryshen said the forests in those cut blocks should have been captured by B.C.’s deferral process, especially as provincial mapping shows they overlap with a deferral area where the cedar-leading forest was classified as being 265 years old.

A man in a blue jacket walks along a logging road that forks between scattered patches of old growth redcedars and Sitka spruce and adjacent cutblocks.

AFA’s Ian Thomas walks along a logging road between scattered patches of old growth and adjacent cutblocks.

He said the B.C. government is allowing old-growth ecosystems to be logged without fully understanding what it is that’s being lost forever.

“We’ve been making really heavy-handed decisions that are based on prioritizing timber for a long time without really good data,” he said.

In looking at the forests B.C. defined as ancient, Price said the panel also found some areas aligned with management boundaries rather than ecological ones, suggesting the criteria hadn’t been equally applied by those doing the analysis.

“There’d be a district line and on one side there would be this forest that was all marked as ancient, and on the other side it wasn’t,” she said.

“The data actually demonstrated that some people were more interested or capable of defining ancient forest than others.”

The cut blocks north of Revelstoke represent the kind of situation that Petryshen said should be addressed through B.C.’s field verification process.

The advisory panel had recommended “precautionary interpretation” of provincial data and local validation before any potential logging of high-priority forests.

But Price said they were concerned from the start that field verification would result in more forests being removed from the deferrals than old growth.

“There’s nobody who’s trying to add to the deferrals, but there’s a whole bunch of people who have an economic incentive to take the deferrals out,” she said.

A provincial guidance document says field verification can be used to both add and remove areas from the deferral mapping in forests where logging is planned.

When an area is removed from the deferrals through field verification, the guidance says another area with the same type of old forest must replace it.

“In most, but not all cases, they seek replacements of equivalent forest,” the ministry statement said of the forest operators carrying out the assessments.

It said field verification has resulted in the identification of 262 hectares as “eligible to be removed” while 103 hectares have been deemed suitable replacements.

“The majority of the 159 hectares … that were removed but not replaced were areas that were burnt to such a significant degree that they no longer qualified as priority at-risk old-growth so (they) did not need replacing,” the statement said.

 

Ancient Forests Under Threat After Being Missed for Logging Deferral Due to Government Data Errors

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For Immediate Release
October 23, 2023

“You can only subtract; you can’t add”: BC government currently only allows for incorrectly identified at-risk old-growth forests to be subtracted from rather than added to logging deferral areas. This constitutes a significant conservation loophole that must be closed while the BC government progresses with major policy progress.

Conservationists with the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) are highlighting the urgent need for the BC government to proactively identify what are likely thousands of hectares of at-risk old-growth forests that were missed during the deferral process due to forest inventory errors. These areas were thus left open for logging, and the AFA is calling on the BC government to ensure the addition of these forests for deferral where identified by scientists, citizens, and industry. New photos and drone footage taken by the AFA photographer and campaigner TJ Watt have once again revealed the ongoing destruction of rare, “big-tree” old-growth forests on northern Vancouver Island in Quatsino territory.

In the Summer of 2023, Ancient Forest Alliance members TJ Watt and Ian Thomas documented road construction, giant stumps from recently felled trees, and ancient forests flagged for imminent logging in a remote area of Quatsino Sound where Western Forest Products (WFP) has approval to cut 36.5 hectares (roughly 68 football fields) worth of endangered old-growth forest. This threatened area, located on Crown/public lands within Tree Farm Licence 6, is just a few kilometers away from where the pair captured shocking images and videos of old-growth logging in 2022, sparking outrage and garnering international media coverage.

A fresh cedar stump measuring over 10 feet wide.

The inability to add misidentified at-risk old-growth stands to priority logging deferral areas constitutes one of the major gaps in the BC government’s old-growth policy as it moves forward to overhaul the conservation and management of these iconic forests.

Under relentless pressure from the Ancient Forest Alliance and Endangered Ecosystems Alliance, the BC government has made a number of commitments toward expanding the protection of old growth in BC, including protecting 30% of land area by 2030, developing a conservation financing mechanism to support Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas, and creating a BC Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework that potentially could include the office of a Chief Ecologist who develops science-based protection targets for all ecosystems with Traditional Ecological Knowledge committees — major commitments that we commend.

However, critical policy and funding gaps still remain, including the government only allowing the subtraction and not the addition of incorrectly identified at-risk old-growth stands (like the recently cut stands in Quatsino territory highlighted here) to deferral areas, and other key issues.

“It was a shock but sadly not a surprise to see more logging underway just across from where we’d documented the destruction of hundreds of giant trees only a year before,” stated AFA photographer and campaigner, TJ Watt. “We arrived to find roads being blasted into a highly productive ancient forest filled with massive cedar trees, the stump of one measuring more than 10 feet (3 meters) across. A simple on-the-ground assessment would have likely determined that this is an old-growth forest that meets the criteria for priority logging deferral, however, there is currently no government policy in place to ensure this happens despite repeated requests to the ministry from our organization. If the BC government cares about truly protecting these forests wherever they occur on the landscape, they must address this gap immediately.”

Home to scores of giant trees, many of which are likely 500+ years old, this particular grove — and surely hundreds of others — was not recommended for logging deferral by the government’s independent old-growth science panel, the Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) due to the forest being incorrectly labelled as 212 years old in the province’s forest inventory database (38 years younger than the province’s 250-year-old threshold for being considered old growth on the coast and to be included in deferral mapping).

A giant redcedar tree under threat of logging by Western Forest Products.

“When it comes to verifying forests for logging deferral, the BC government is currently playing a game of old-growth subtraction in favour of the timber industry, facilitating more old-growth logging rather than less,” stated Watt. “Instead, it should be working hard to identify at-risk old-growth forests that have been missed for deferral, such as this one, so they have a chance at being left standing and protected. To help identify these at-risk stands, forest engineers should be legally bound to field-verify planned logging cutblocks against the TAP deferral criteria and report any discrepancies to the BC government so adjustments can be made. Citizens and scientists should also be able to submit the locations of key old-growth stands they’ve identified. Government data gaps, such as simple age misclassifications, are leading to the loss of irreplaceable ancient forests vital to support endangered species, First Nations cultures, the climate, clean water, wild salmon, and tourism.”

To date, about 1.2 million hectares, or 46%, of the 2.6 million hectares of recommended priority deferral areas have been agreed upon by First Nations (whose consent and support are necessary for any new deferrals or protected areas). This leaves more than half of the forests identified as most at-risk forests open to logging, not including areas such as this one that were missed entirely. To close this gap, conservationists argue that the BC government must become advocates for protecting the most endangered old-growth forests and ensure that conservation funding for First Nations links the deferral and protection of these stands to sustainable economic alternatives to old-growth logging.

“Ultimately, the final decision around whether a forest gets deferred or not lies in the hands of First Nations, which is why immediate funding is needed from the province in the short-term to help nations offset any potential lost revenues from forgoing logging in the high-value, big-tree stands they’re being asked to defer,” explained Watt. “After more than a century of colonial exploitation, the province has an opportunity and obligation to ensure the much-anticipated conservation financing streams include long-term economic funding for Indigenous-owned sustainable businesses, such as tourism, sustainable seafood, clean energy, non-timber forest products, value-added second-growth forestry, etc., linked to new protected areas, as alternatives to an economic dependency on old-growth timber revenues and jobs.”

Old-growth fragmentation. The forest in the background of this image is now on the ground.

Conservationists underscore the urgency of securing logging deferrals by pointing to the staggering loss of productive old-growth forests in BC. The San Josef Landscape Unit on Vancouver Island (where this recently documented logging is taking place) has been hit extremely hard by industrial logging in recent decades, with less than 25% of its productive, “big-tree” old-growth forests remaining. Conservation biologists agree that when ecosystems fall below 30% of their original extent, they become at high risk of irreversible biodiversity loss.

“The BC government, under the leadership of Premier David Eby, has set the stage to vastly expand the protection of old-growth forests, for which he should be thanked. After decades of mismanagement, we may finally be on the verge of real transformation,” noted Watt. “However, it’s still possible that the BC government’s promised “paradigm shift” could fall short of its full potential as certain old-school timber bureaucrats and politicians within the Ministry of Forests try to constrain change in favour of the destructive status quo. Eby needs to pick up the pace and close the gaps as the yardstick of success will ultimately be measured by the survival of the endangered forests themselves. As we’ve seen here on northern Vancouver Island, any loopholes left open will allow for further destruction of many of the biggest and best stands that remain, never to be seen again.”

An incredible trio of ancient cedars in an at-risk old-growth forest on northern Vancouver Island, BC.

Background information:

In November 2021, the BC government agreed to, in consultation with First Nations, implement temporary logging deferrals in 2.6 million hectares of the most at-risk old-growth forests (big-tree, ancient, remnant) in BC to prevent irreversible biodiversity loss while long-term land use plans are developed. These priority deferral areas were identified and mapped by the BC government’s independent old-growth science panel, the Technical Advisory Panel (TAP).

The TAP specifically mentioned the issue of inventory errors in its report (see pages 9, 10, & 13), making clear recommendations to the BC government that on-the-ground assessments should be used to identify and defer big-tree old-growth forests that were missed in its preliminary analysis. Thus far, the BC government has only used field verification to remove deferral areas that don’t meet the TAP criteria (which are then supposed to be replaced with those that do, when possible) in order to facilitate logging — a blatant and outrageous bias toward the old-growth logging industry.

Progress is being made toward the protection of old-growth forests, however, major policy and funding gaps still remain, including funding for First Nations sustainable economic development linked to new protected areas, developing protection targets for all ecosystems that include forest productivity distinctions, maintaining strong protected areas standards, and allowing for the addition of unmapped old-growth stands into deferral consideration that meet the Technical Advisory Panel’s criteria for at-risk old-growth.

Major funding for old-growth protection is expected to arrive in the near future as well, including the province’s conservation financing mechanism and the BC Nature Fund (a potential $1.2 billion in federal-provincial funding) and BC Old-Growth Fund ($164 of federal-provincial funding) currently under development and negotiation (between the federal, provincial, and First Nations governments). So far the BC government has indicated they will fund the needs of First Nations regarding community capacity (eg. land-use planning), stewardship jobs, data collection, monitoring, and enforcement regarding old-growth protection, but has not said yet whether the funding will support Indigenous sustainable businesses that are necessary to provide the long-term revenues to permanently supplant income from old-growth logging — the fundamental barrier for many First Nations protecting old-growth forests.

Conservation financing is an approach that was successfully used on BC’s Central and North Coasts, where $120 million was committed by the provincial and federal governments and conservation groups to support First Nations business development and economic alternatives to old-growth logging. The result was a globally significant conservation achievement, with 80% of what is now known as the Great Bear Rainforest being reserved from logging.

Old-growth forests support endangered species, First Nations cultures, the climate, clean water, wild salmon, and tourism. Under BC’s current system of forestry, second-growth tree plantations are typically re-logged every 50–60 years, never to become old-growth again.

A man in a blue jacket stands beside a fallen western redcedar.

Old-growth cedars harvested because of database errors, says environmental group

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Thursday, May 11, 2023
My Comox Valley Now
By: Grant Warkentin

An environmental group is urging the province to protect more old growth forests, after documenting a recent clear cut on northern Vancouver Island.

On May 10 the Ancient Forest Alliance published photos and drone footage of 25 hectares of forest in Quatsino Sound, which was logged in 2022. Members of the group visited the site last year, finding fallen western red cedars up to 10 feet wide.

Photographer TJ Watt says groves of big trees are extremely rare after 100 years of logging. He says the grove was cut down because of errors in the provincial forestry database, incorrectly identifying the age of the trees.

The group is calling on government to fix the errors by sending people to visually inspect forests, making sure they are correctly identified.

They also say the government needs to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to protect old forests.

“At least $120 million in ‘solution space’ funding is needed immediately to help facilitate logging deferrals by ensuring that First Nations communities aren’t forced to choose between setting aside at-risk old growth and generating revenue for their communities,” says Watt in an Ancient Forest Alliance press release. “In the longer term, at least $300 million in conservation financing is needed from the province and another $300 million more from the feds, as well as hundreds of millions more from private donors, to support First Nations’ sustainable economic development, stewardship jobs, and creation of new Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs) linked to protecting the most at-risk old-growth forests and ecosystems.”

The BC government has committed to protect 30 per cent of BC’s land area by 2030, and develop a conservation financing mechanism to support Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas by the end of June, with protection for the most biodiverse areas.

The environmental group’s work was supported by a grant from the Trebek Initiative.

Read the original article here.

A man in a red jacket lays on a monumental western redcedar among hundreds of other fallen old-growth trees in a clearcut on northern Vancouver Island.

TJ Watt lays on a giant western redcedar after it’s been felled in Quatsino Territory

A man in a blue jacket stands inside the base of a logged western redcedar in the middle of a massive clearcut on northern Vancouver Island.

The Guardian: Images of felled ancient tree a ‘gut-punch’, old-growth experts say

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May 11, 2023
The Guardian
By Leyland Cecco

Shocking photos of chopped-down tree in western Canada highlights flaws in plan to protect forest from loggers, activists say

Stark images of an ancient tree cut down in western Canada expose flaws in the government’s plan to protect old-growth forests, activists have said, arguing that vulnerable ecosystems have been put at risk as logging companies race to harvest timber.

As part of an effort to catalogue possible old growth forests, photographer TJ Watt and Ian Thomas of the environmental advocacy group Ancient Forest Alliance travelled to a grove of western red cedars on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island. But then they arrived to the forest in Quatsino Sound, they found hundreds of trees that has recently been logged.

“It’s absolutely gut-wrenching to see a tree lying on the ground, and to think that it had lived for more than 500 years and then it can be gone in the blink of an eye, never to be seen again,” said Watt, who photographed the forest as part of a grant from the Trebek Initiative, a partnership between the National Geographic Society and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society named after the late Jeopardy host.

A man in a blue jacket stands beside a fallen western redcedar.

AFA researcher Ian Thomas stands beside a massive fallen western redcedar

Watt’s images have been used previously to highlight the dramatic change to landscapes after an old-growth forest is cleared.

In November 2021, amid mounting public frustration over the destruction of old-growth trees, the British Columbia government deferred logging in 2.6 million hectares within the most at-risk forests. The BC government has also pledged to protect 30% of the province’s land area by 2030, part of broader efforts within Canada to meet biodiversity preservation goals.

Since outlining its planned deferrals, however, less than half of the proposed areas have been agreed upon by the province and First Nations communities, whose consent is required. A number of First Nations are actively involved in the logging industry and would see a drop in revenues if logging in their territory was halted. Groups such as the Ancient Forest Alliance say more funding is needed to help offset lost forestry revenues among First Nations.

A man in a red jacket stands beside the base of a fallen western redcedar among a giant clearcut of hundreds other old-growth trees.

AFA photographer TJ Watt stands beside a fallen western redcedar, thought to be 500+ years old.

Critics of the province’s deferral plans also say there are problems in the original recommendations, including an admission from the technical advisory panel that a number of forests are likely been incorrectly classified. In the case of the cutblock found by Watt and Thomas, held by Western Forest Products and logged in late 2022, it was classified as 210 years, younger than the province’s 250-year-old threshold for being considered old-growth. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“It just underscores the fact that the logging industry is racing to cut the biggest and best trees while they still can,” said Watt. “Tree-planting does not replicate a complex old-growth forest ecosystem. Knowing this forest could potentially have been left standing, had it been identified properly by the province, is also another punch to the gut.”

A man in a red jacket lies down on the fallen western redcedar, providing scale for the sheer size of the monumental tree.

AFA photographer TJ Watt provides some scale by lying down on the trunk of an old-growth western redcedar tree recently cut by Western Forest Products in Quatsino Sound.

Currently, there are no mechanisms in place for the public or industry to flag forests with trees older than those the province has identified.

“The province admitted the data was going to be somewhat imperfect. We’ve said that citizens and scientists should be able to identify and point out areas missed for deferral. Logging companies should be required when they’re doing their planning and surveys to compare it to that criteria,” said Watt.

Timber companies are not obliged to cut down all trees within an approved cutblock. In 2011, logger Dennis Cronin famously stumbled upon a towering Douglas fir, likely more than 1,000 years old, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The rest of the forest was logged, but Big Lonely Doug was spared.

“Progress is being made, but clearly there are still loopholes. We need to make sure that the province is following through on all of their commitments to protect these endangered ecosystems, and not letting anything slip through the cracks,” said Watt.

“There’s no argument that can be made, when you see these trees that are centuries old, that they should be cut down.”

See the original article here.

A man in a red jacket stands beside the base of a fallen western redcedar among a giant clearcut of hundreds other old-growth trees.

Ancient Forest Alliance renews call for provincial funds to defer old-growth logging

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May 11, 2023
CHEK News
By Dean Stoltz

See drone footage of the massive clearcut and subsequent destruction and an interview with AFA campaigner and photographer TJ Watt here.

The Ancient Forest Alliance is renewing its call on the BC government to commit hundreds of millions of dollars to protect old-growth forests.

The latest call for funding comes after conservationists with the group found a clear cut of ancient forest in Quatsino Sound.

They say they were exploring northwest Vancouver Island late last summer when they stumbled across a cut block that left them speechless.

“Yeah, some of the trees that we saw when we were out there had been standing earlier that day. It’s a gut-wrenching feeling to see a tree that’s lived for 500 or maybe even 1000 years can just be gone in a blink of an eye,” said TJ Watt, an AFA photographer and campaigner.

Watt says the logged area was equivalent to about 50 football fields and that hundreds of old-growth red cedars had been cut down, some up to three metres wide.

An aerial image of a patchwork of clearcuts in Quatsino Territory.

An aerial image of a patchwork of clearcuts after the old-growth forests there had been logged in Quatsino Territory.

“Old-growth forests are a non-renewable resource under BC’s current system of forestry,” he added.

“You may replant trees, but they’re re-logged every 50 to 60 years, never to become old growth again, so we have one chance and one chance only to protect these endangered ecosystems.”

The AFA has been calling for at least $300 million from the province that could be added to hundreds of millions of dollars of available federal money in the forthcoming Canada Nature Agreement. Watt says roughly $800 million to $1 billion is needed to defer old-growth logging.

“The province has committed to creating a conservation financing fund by the end of June but so far has not publicly committed any of their own money towards it. They said they’re going to rely on private and philanthropic donations,” Watts said.

The money would be used for conservation financing and go toward economically sustainable alternatives for communities and First Nations.

“It’s up to the province to use its vast resources to help with reconciliation and to provide economic alternatives for these communities,” he said.

Watt added that the BC’s Independent Science Panel recommended big tree forests like this be saved but that it was missed because it was “misclassified as being younger than it really was.”

The full release can be found here.

The Ministry of Forests did not respond to CHEK News’ request for comment before our deadline.

See the original article here.