Region Archives: Canada West

NANAIMO, BC — Dead or dying trees, also called snags, are sometimes viewed as an eyesore, but a B.C. scientist is warning that if they don’t present a safety hazard, it’s important to leave them be. “There’s systematic elimination of those roost trees and habitat trees because of forestry and safety concerns, residential and agricultural development – we have so few snags in our environment and so many species require them,” said wildlife conservation biologist Christoph Steeger at a presentation this month in Nanaimo. Steeger has spent a career researching wildlife trees, and his work has included a preliminary assessment of the effectiveness of wildlife tree retention. “Because of forestry and other forces there are hardly any left and that’s of grave concern.” His talk was titled ‘the importance of wildlife trees for bats’.

For B.C.’s resource sector, 2024 was a year of openings and closings, beginnings and endings. While one cornerstone industry, forestry, was battered with sawmill closures, it was something of a banner year for mining, and oil and gas. …Here are some highlights and lowlights from 2024: Forestry – The year began with Paper Excellence announcing in January that it would “indefinitely” shut down its paper-producing operation at its Catalyst Crofton mill, but would keep operating the pulp side of the mill, which has close to 400 employees. The same month, West Fraser Timber Co. announced the permanent closure of its sawmill in Fraser Lake. In May, Canfor Corp. announced the permanent closure of its Polar sawmill in Bear Lake, and the suspension of its planned reinvestment in its Houston mill, which it had shuttered in 2023. In September, Canfor announced the closure of its Plateau sawmill in Vanderhoof, and its sawmill in Fort St. John.

The consulting company that recommended the removal of thousands of trees from Stanley Park is sharing its perspective on a project that’s spurred considerable local controversy. The Vancouver Park Board began removing trees from the park after it revealed in November 2023 that up to 160,000 of them had been killed by a hemlock looper moth infestation and had become unsafe. The report that led to the removal was authored by B.A. Blackwell and Associates, which also worked to restore the Stanley Park forest after a damaging windstorm in 2006. “I felt this was an opportunity to provide an education moment because there’s a lot to learn about this issue, it’s complicated,” Bruce Blackwell, the company’s principal, told Global News during a tour of the affected areas of the park on Thursday. Blackwell was emphatic that the only purpose of the tree removal in the park is public safety.

With the winter chill in the air, it seems like a good time to reflect on the role that wood plays in keeping us warm. According to Natural Resources Canada, in 2023, there were 646 bioheat systems in Canada. Wood chips and wood pellets are the most common fuel types.  Quebec is leading the way with 221 systems, the Northwest Territories is a distant second with 96 systems and B.C. is a close third with 81. There are 105 community-owned systems across Canada and 40% are in Indigenous communities. This is a good start, but we have a long way to go to catch up to some of our boreal peers. …FESBC programs are helping to ensure that wood fibre harvested for timber, to reduce wildfire risk or to salvage stands damaged by fire or insects that don’t make their way into sawmills, and which would otherwise be burned to reduce wildfire risk, is instead being used to generate heat and energy. 

Don Coburn

Don Coburn, owner of Skeena Valley Christmas Tree Farm, is scaling down the business after years of supplying the region and province. “[In 2020], I had around 2,000 trees coming in a year and I had customers,” he said. “But then the price of trees went way up four years ago because of a shortage in North America and the world basically, so I began shipping them out to places like Vancouver, Victoria and Squamish.” In 2021, his farm expanded to around 4,200 trees. The following year he had around 3,700, around 2,600 the year after, and this year, he is down to around 1,500. “I was growing too many trees and for a few years, I had too many trees and no customers,” he said, speaking about how, when prices plateaued, he was left with overstocked inventory.  Coburn is unsure how long he will stay in the business. 

Walking through the clear-cuts north of Lund, I’ve noticed they’re not terrible by typical standards … the real problem lies in what comes next: replanting. Replanted areas aren’t forests; they’re fiber-farms—dense monocultures devoid of biodiversity. There are no birds, deer, or diverse plant life, just crowded trees competing for scarce nutrients. If we had to live off these lands, we’d starve. Replanting is a public relations greenwash, creating biological deserts instead of ecosystems. Naturally regenerating forests, by contrast, begins with nitrogen-fixing alders, enriched soils and balanced biodiversity. …Yet British Columbia clings to outdated forestry models focused on short-term profit. …Why not replant one clear-cut while letting others regenerate naturally? We could compare outcomes and learn something valuable. …We could listen to professional foresters and scientists rather than corporate lobbyists. BC could lead the world in forestry innovation, but only if we upgrade our economic belief systems. 

PRINCE GEORGE — Pete Stoner’s small sawmill operation received a lot of attention over the years, and rightly so. There’s a plaque on the wall celebrating two million board feet of production. “It’s three million board feet now,” a pretty wild achievement with a one- or two-person sawmill. Nevertheless, it’s been easy for government policy makers to ignore operations like Pete and Maggie’s. In their nearly three decades of sawmilling Pete and Maggie put out as much production as the big Polar supermill at Bear Lake, now closed, would put out in less than three shifts. …However, the BC Liberals changed all that. …Before the government did the majors a solid and squeezed the little guys off the land, there were around 30 small sawmills between Quesnel and Prince George turning out value-added wood products, much of it based on birch and aspen.

For decades, much of Sealaska’s revenue has been tied to the extraction of resources from its significant landholdings, including the patch of old-growth forest where the canoe was found. The scout who discovered the site was far from the waterline, high up in the kind of steep terrain considered ideal for helicopter logging, when he noticed an unusual number of stumps for a site where cutting had not yet begun. Then he noticed that many of the fallen logs next to those stumps were missing sections of their trunks up to 10 meters long. Only after finding a single canoe that had been carved but not hauled away did he realize where the missing sections had gone.

Halalt First Nation in the Cowichan Valley has launched a class-action lawsuit against private forest giant Mosaic Forest Management and three levels of government for damages related to flooding on the band’s reserve on the lower Chemainus River. The B.C. Supreme Court action names several “forestry defendants,” and the Municipality of North Cowichan for logging that contributed to downstream flooding. …The suit alleges the forestry defendants “conducted their forestry operations in a careless and reckless manner” by overharvesting and failing to manage and clear harmful logging debris. It also says logging caused increased surface runoff, sedimentation and riverbank erosion in the Chemainus River watershed. …The suit also names the federal and provincial governments, Island Corridor Foundation and Managed Forest Council, which is an independent provincial agency. All three levels of government also declined to comment on the legal action. …Halalt Chief James Thomas declined to comment at this time.

The Mackenzie Region of Alberta has been named the Forest Capital of Canada for the second year in a row. The FCC designation has been a tradition across the country every year since 1979 and is awarded by the Canadian Institute of Forestry. The award aims to celebrate communities or regions for their connection to the forest, and Alberta Minister of Forestry and Parks Todd Loewen says his riding, Grande Prairie-Mackenzie, continues to embrace the natural beauty in its own backyard. “Congratulations to the Mackenzie Region for being recognized as the Forest Capital of Canada for the second consecutive year,” he says. “This title reflects the region’s connection to our natural environment and its commitment to forestry education and responsible stewardship.”

Dead or dying trees, also called snags, are sometimes viewed as an eyesore, but a B.C. scientist is warning that if they don’t present a safety hazard, it’s important to leave them be… Among B.C. bats, 14 of 15 species roost in trees, 11 roost in dead trees and eight of them roost exclusively in dead trees… Other species, like chickadees and nuthatches, require trees that were dead for even longer, so their beak can penetrate the ‘spongy’ wood… A solution was the wildlife danger tree assessor’s course, developed as a partnership between the B.C. government and the University of Northern B.C., which teaches professionals to identify the differences between a safe snag and a dangerous one. These factors include the tree’s root system and the direction the tree may fall.

A benchland overlooking B.C.’s Chilcotin River is an ideal location to recreate an historic forest landscape from the region’s past. It was an ecosystem of grasslands interspersed with groups of trees and it reflected how much of the region once appeared. A group of First Nations forest companies are working to re-establish the diversity of yesterday’s landscape while making the forest better equipped to survive the more devastating wildfires predicted, as global warming conditions intensify. …The forest fire season of 2017 won’t soon be forgotten in the Cariboo-Chilcotin. …The decision was taken to replant the burned area near the Chilcotin River in 2021. But the elements hadn’t finished creating their havoc. “That was the heat dome year,” reminds Daniel Persson, forestry superintendent with Central Chilcotin Rehabilitation Ltd (CCR) based in Williams Lake. The heat dome wiped out about 95 per cent of the newly planted seedlings, continues Persson.

VALEMOUNT – A forestry audit of the Valemount Community Forest Company Ltd. (VCF) reveals that bridge construction and maintenance continue to be a pervasive issue in B.C. forestry. The Forest Practices Board audited all activities carried out by the VCF between July 1, 2021, and July 28, 2023. While the licensee complied with most requirements, the report identifies five significant non compliances, two of which are related to bridge construction and maintenance. Auditors had no safety concerns with the bridges installed during the audit period. However, the licensee did not have any of the legally required documents outlining how it would ensure these bridges were safe and structurally sound for industrial use. “We continue to see licensees fall short of practice requirements for their bridges,” said Keith Atkinson, chair of the board. “This can put the safety of truck drivers and other industrial road users at risk.” …The report also identifies two significant non-compliances related to wildfire protection. 

Additional coverage in Business in Vancouver by Nelson Bennett: Loggers warned to take more care with fire prevention

British Columbia’s government expects to plant nearly 60 million fewer trees next year — a 23 per cent drop from this year’s planting season at a time the province has seen a major spike in wildfire activity. The projections come from presentation slides obtained by Glacier Media and shown to industry in September, less than 10 days before the B.C.’s provincial election campaign kicked off. During the campaign, the BC NDP promised to plant 300 million trees annually across the province to “help increase forest resilience.” That promise came off the back of two of the most destructive wildfire seasons in B.C.’s history. In 2023 alone, more than 6,000 fires torched 15 million hectares of land, an area larger than England, according to Natural Resources Canada. But according to the province’s own projections, the government expects the number of trees planted to sink to 233 million in 2025, down from 291 million in 2024 and far short of its election promise.

For decades, forestry companies in B.C. have used chemical herbicides like glyphosate to kill off plants that might compete with trees destined for timber. Trembling aspen, named for its almost heart-shaped leaves that seem to quiver in the wind, is often on the hit list. But after years of destructive wildfires that have wiped out whole neighbourhoods and sometimes whole towns, more and more people are questioning the wisdom of killing off this tree. Because when wildfires sweep across the landscape, aspen can help calm the flames… “Anytime we apply herbicides, we are changing potential fire behaviour,” wildland fire ecologist Robert Gray explains… in areas where aspen and other deciduous trees are killed, a natural fire break is lost too.

British Columbia’s planting program will drop abruptly next year to approximately 237-million seedlings… Recognizing the risks this poses to the province’s forests and the ecosystem resilience contracting sector that grows and plants trees, BC has committed to rebuild the annual program to at least 300-million seedlings. Given the decline is driven primarily by B.C.’s shrinking annual harvest, making up for the downfall could represent doubling the Ministry of Forest’s Forest Investment Program. …it will require significant talent and funds for our government to not just sow, grow and plant these additional seedlings, but to survey, find, and prescribe the appropriate sites. Meeting this restoration objective will require concerted public and private collaboration …and involvement of the whole reforestation service supply chain. …In its upcoming meeting with Forests Minister Ravi Parmar the WFCA will urge him to make meeting our government’s goal of planting 300-million seedlings annually an operational priority.

Bruce Blackwell

I grew up in Vancouver and … feel a deep connection … Stanley Park, and have advocated professionally for sound management and stewardship of urban forests within communities throughout the province. Since 2019, Stanley Park’s forested area has been increasingly affected by a western hemlock looper outbreak, which has impacted up to 160,000 trees. In 2022, the Vancouver Park Board commissioned an assessment to understand the risk to public safety, and long-term wildfire risk, posed by the looper-impacted trees. My company, B.A. Blackwell & Associates Ltd., was selected through a competitive process to conduct this impact assessment. …Our team includes some of the most experienced professionals in forestry, arboriculture, ecology, and biology. Together, we’ve developed a plan grounded in the best available science, informed by years of experience working in Stanley Park and throughout the province. Based on our experience and expertise, we believe the path we’re on is the best one for the long-term health and resilience of this beloved green space.

In the December newsletter, the AFPA highlights include:

• New team members: Alyxandra Chorney joins as full time Policy Analyst Nicole Galambos is new Director of Forest Policy
• The Love Alberta Forests campaign – visit the 2024 year in review 
• Alberta joins forestry trade mission to Japan to expand market opportunities 
• Recent article: It’s Time to Fix Canada’s Species at Risk Act
• Forestry Talks Podcast – watch the latest episodes
• WorkWild educational events deliver forestry education to students in Alberta