Region Archives: Canada West

The operator of a pulp mill in northwestern Alberta has been fined $1 million for letting almost 31 million litres of toxic wastewater flow into the Peace River. Environment and Climate Change Canada says the effluent released in April 2021 was “acutely lethal” to fish. Mercer Peace River Pulp Ltd. pleaded guilty last month to a section of the Fisheries Act. The conviction means the company’s name will be added to the Environmental Offenders Registry. The federal government says the pulp mill was shut down for maintenance and waste was directed to a spill pond, where it was to be stored until it could be gradually treated and released into the river. But the investigation found there wasn’t enough room in the pond for that additional effluent.

JASPER, Alberta — We evacuated west in a conga line of cars and trucks to Valemount, B.C., not knowing if our old log cabin on Lake Edith outside of Jasper, Alta., was already in flames. Three weeks later, the wildfire had ripped through the Jasper townsite. The west side of the townsite looked as if the homes had not just been burned but bombed. Out at our cabin though, flying embers had scorched the grass to within five metres of the cabin. The main fire had not reached us. …Over the last decade the lake residents had worked with park wardens in the FireSmart program to create a defensive band. We cleared brush, hauled deadfall, cut branches on live trees up two metres from the ground and lopped the sweet-smelling juniper. Our line had held. I learned from a warden that in FireSmart we were essentially following First Nations fire practices.

The majestic backdrop of Banff, Alberta, provided the setting for the 82nd annual Alberta Forest Products Association (AFPA) Conference from Oct. 9-11. Despite a last-minute venue change due to the Jasper fires, the conference saw strong attendance, bringing together leaders in forestry, government, and Indigenous communities to address the industry’s evolving challenges. The conference opened with AFPA president and CEO Jason Krips leading a tribute to firefighter Morgan Kitchen, who lost his life in the line of duty during the Jasper fires. He led the audience in a moment of silence to honour Alberta’s brave firefighters. …a keynote from Deputy Premier Mike Ellis stressed the need for proper forest management and provincial autonomy in decision-making, using the Jasper fires as an example of the federal overreach he argued has hindered local responses.

Farron Sharp

Farron Sharp sticks a shovel into the ground as her anchor point to draw a four-metre circumference, then counts how many seedlings are still alive in that circle two years after being planted. The survival assessment is part of an eight-year-long reforestation project that is bringing together members of seven First Nation communities with federal funding and other partners to build a forest near Devils Lake in Manitoba’s Interlake region. “A fully grown forest used to be here and then it became a dead forest…. All of this land was completely black in 2021,” said Sharp, a project manager for Blue-Green Planet Project, a tree-planting company that focuses on sustainability. …The plan is to plant 20 million trees after the area was decimated by a pest and ravaged by a wildfire.

VANCOUVER, BC — Almost a year after 8,000 dead trees were removed from a swath of Stanley Park’s forest on the west side of Prospect Point, there are hopeful signs of new life. While taking reporters on a tour of the forest, Vancouver park board senior manager Joe McLeod pointed out the grand fir, western red cedar and spruce seedlings that had been planted. He explained how the city is trying to replant… tree species that are more representative of a West Coast forest than the multitude of hemlock trees that had been decimated during a moth infestation between 2019 and 2023. …The park board is now clearly spelling out its plan that involves removing a fraction of that number, not the total stated in an earlier park board bulletin. The plan, however, still faces opposition by members of the recently formed Stanley Park Preservation Society. The second phase will involve removing 4,000 trees.

Mr. PG

“Paris has the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben chimes each London hour,” sings performer Al Simmons. “The CN Tower may be tall, but Mr. P.G. tops them all,” he continues, introducing the key character in his song Mr. PG, recorded in 1997. The track details how Prince George, B.C., built a giant faux-wood lumberjack to honour the community’s forestry roots and greet incoming tourists. Today, Mr. PG is a registered trademark owned by the city, whose image adorns mugs, socks and T-shirts. He’s been featured on a Canada Post stamp, marched in a Grey Cup parade and even received the endorsement of rock band KISS. But now a proposal to move Mr. PG from his current position, at the intersection of Highways 16 and 97, to a lower-traffic, more pedestrian-friendly location near an incoming downtown plaza, has sparked pushback and a debate over what the mascot and the city itself represent.

The Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation is moving ahead with the second stage of removing looper moth-damaged trees in Stanley Park. During Tuesday night’s Park Board meeting, commissioners approved a plan to fell the trees killed by the hemlock looper. The hemlock looper insect experiences population outbreaks roughly every 15 years, however, the most recent outbreak resulted in significant tree mortality in the park causing an elevated risk to public safety,” the Park Board stated. Phase two is set to begin by the middle of this month, finishing by early 2025. Replanting is set to follow in the spring of next year. …“Our response efforts in Stanley Park have been vital to ensuring the continuing safety and well-being of park users, park infrastructure and wildlife species in the park,” said Bastyovanszky. “Further, it’s an opportunity to build a stronger Stanley Park that can better withstand future insect outbreaks and climate change impacts.”

Additional coverage in Global News by Simon Little and Alissa Thibault: Vancouver to remove a fraction of 160K Stanley Park trees it originally estimated

Wildfire danger across the Calgary Forest Area (CFA) remains extreme, as October continues to see unseasonably warm weather. Derrick Forsythe, a provincial information officer with Alberta Wildfire, said the warning is due to extreme dryness in the area exacerbated by the heat. He said the CFA typically stays warmer longer and experiences drier conditions than other parts of Alberta, putting it at risk of fires later into the fall season. …The wildfire danger level being extreme, however, is not typical. Strong winds combined with warm temperatures and a lack of precipitation triggered the danger in the area for the next several days, said Forsythe. These conditions, in combination with seasonal grass curing, create ideal wildfire conditions. …Calgary’s warm October is atypical, according to Shelley, with Environment Canada forecasting temperatures of 25 C into next week… 

Jasper Mayor Richar Irland called for an end to the “finger pointing, blaming and both partial and misinformation” surround the Jasper wildfire and forest management. Telling reporters, the rhetoric is harming his communities recovery.

Additional coverage in Town and Country Today by Peter Shokeir: Jasper mayor condemns ‘divisive rhetoric’ around wildfire

Witness testimony during a parliamentary hearing Wednesday detailed how the Jasper wildfire could have been prevented with better planning. Meetings started in September to examine the reasons why the Jasper wildfire started this summer. …Experts expressed concerns about how the federal government addressed the disaster. Forester Ken Hodges said he penned multiple letters to Parks Canada and the minister of Environment from 2017-18, expressing concern over an inevitable wildfire in the region. He found that they didn’t respond well to his recommendations. “…they had seven years in which to do something and come up with a plan of some sort, I think they could have prevented the loss of Jasper town itself,” he said. …Randy Schroeder, president of the Alberta Fire Chiefs Association said he wants a national fire administration put in place to streamline the co-ordination and communication between municipal, provincial and federal fire agencies. 

B.C.’s two leading political parties say they would reduce or phase out the use of the herbicide glyphosate in forestry if they win the upcoming election. …The BC NDP’s platform …says the party would protect “communities and local watersheds by phasing out the use of the herbicide glyphosate” in B.C. forests. This followed the BC Conservatives’ promise last month to stop the aerial spraying of glyphosate in the forest industry. James Steidle, who is running for the BC Green Party in Prince George-Mackenzie, has been fighting the use of glyphosate for over a decade. In 2011, he started Stop the Spray BC, to raise awareness about glyphosate use. He said B.C.’s two main parties are “playing catch-up.” …A June 2023 briefing note prepared for Minister of Forests Bruce Ralston said that glyphosate use in forestry represents a “small fraction” compared with its use in agriculture, something it attributed to First Nations and public pressure.

CHILCOTIN REGION, BC — A new video features the Chilcotin River and the importance of the river and the salmon it brings is aimed at inspiring First Nations leadership in forestry and conservation. Central Chilcotin Rehabilitation (CCR), a joint venture of Tŝideldel First Nation and Tl’etinqox Government, released The Focus on Water Tuesday, Oct. 8. …CCR has been salvaging and rehabilitating large areas of land in the Cariboo Chilcotin to help the forest regrow, mitigate wildfire risk to communities, and to improve wildlife habitat. …Additionally, instead of burning wood waste left over from harvesting work in slash piles, CCR has utilized this excess residual fibre to help create green energy that supports local industries. 

ConocoPhillips Canada and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) have agreed to a ten year research partnership. NAIT’s centre for boreal research, located at Northern Lakes College in Peace River, is set to host a funding announcement on October 11 for work geared towards forest reclamation efforts. ConocoPhillips Canada and NAIT also plan to expand facilities with funding coming from Alberta’s research capacity program, the Canada foundation for innovation’s college fund, and the NSERC technology access centre program. Peace River’s boreal forest plant and seed technology access centre studies seed collection, treatment, propagation, and deployment. Their team is made up of scientists and technicians in forestry, agrology, and biology. “We provide scientific findings, practical methods, technologies and services to advance the capacity of industry to use native plants to lessen the environmental footprint in the boreal forest”.

The threat of Dutch Elm Disease is something that cities around Saskatchewan have to monitor or they run the risk of the disease running rampant through their elm tree population. While Prince Albert hasn’t dealt with Dutch Elm Disease in the past, one case of the disease was found in a survey of the city’s trees in 2023, meaning the disease is here and it’s something to be monitored even if there were no trees found with the disease this year. Tim Yeaman, parks manager with the City of Prince Albert, said the city has been working with a third party organization, Living Tree Environmental, since 2021 to conduct two surveys per year on the trees in the city. The summer surveys include trees on public, private or residential land. …the City is doing maintenance on the elm trees now that the ban on pruning is out of season.

A wild experiment is under way in British Columbia, Canada: the government is rewriting its laws to share power with Indigenous nations… Decades in the making, this transition entered history in 2019, when BC became the first jurisdiction to sign the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into law. This means the regional government would share decision-making power over land management matters with First Nations, potentially affecting leasing and licences for forestry, mining and construction. …“We’re building a plane while flying it,” says Terry Teegee, chief of the BC Assembly of First Nations and chair of BC’s UNDRIP implementation committee. “It’s unique to anywhere in the world.” “It’s path-breaking,” agrees Sheryl Lightfoot, an Anishinaabe scholar and member of the UN expert mechanism on the rights of Indigenous peoples. “What we see in BC is such a deliberate, intentional approach to implement the Declaration,” Lightfoot says.

Parliamentary hearings focused on this summer’s devastating wildfire in Jasper National Park continued on Monday where more discussions were had about what could potentially be done better the next time disaster strikes. Alberta Public Safety and Emergency Services Minister Mike Ellis told the hearing committee that he believes provincial authorities should have been better integrated into the unified command structure tasked with dealing with the emergency. “The fact is that Jasper is surrounded by a national park where the fire originated,” he said. “The challenge was that the Parks (Canada) superintendent has oversight for all emergency management decisions for both the park and municipality. This places the province in a position where we can certainly influence but not decide.” …Ellis noted that Alberta has approved a disaster recovery program with a budget of about $149 million but that only a portion of those costs will be eligible for reimbursement…

VANCOUVER — The second phase of a planned massive tree removal in Stanley Park is on the agenda at the park board Monday night. About 160,000 trees have been classified as dead or dying as a result of a hemlock looper moth outbreak and will be cut down. The number works out to about one-third of all trees in the beloved green space. Crews cut down about 7,000 trees earlier this year, drawing criticism from some residents. 25% of Stanely Park’s area was targeted in the first phase of the project and 11% will be targeted in the next phase – with plans to begin in mid-October. Michael Caditz believes the science does not support the plans to remove the trees. …Brennan Bastyovanszky, the park board chair, says the trees are being removed as a safety precaution. Since the removal started, there have been 25,000 new seedlings planted.

Since the 2017 wildfires, the Alex Fraser Research Forest (AFRF) has been moving away from logging and finding new ways to substitute its revenue. The research forest’s manager Stephanie Ewen says some ideas are coming to fruition. …These businesses aren’t just about money but are innovative projects seeking to develop peoples’ connection with nature and their ability to contribute to local industry. Wild & Immersive (W&I) is a business aiming to bring people, especially children, closer to nature. It was first started at UBC’s research forest in Maple Ridge, and in 2021 expanded to Williams Lake. …The latest business project, the Combined Heat and Power Academy (CHP) was created to enable people from remote locations to help their communities transition from diesel-based power to biomass power. …Finally, the AFRF is working on the Cariboo Wood Innovation Training Hub (CWITH) …initially proposed in 2018, with funding from the Fraser Basin Council. 

With forest harvest levels dropping across B.C. a move to stem the downward spiral has begun. Called Forestry Works for B.C., the new grassroots initiative is expected to raise awareness about the critical role forestry plays in the well-being of rural and urban communities. Harvest levels have dropped by 42 per cent since 2018 and half of B.C.’s mills have been lost in the last two decades. The Forestry Works for B.C. campaign includes representation of 1,000 forest-based organizations and companies, including many small and medium sized and intergenerational family-owned businesses across British Columbia. “We believe that a better and brighter future in this province needs a strong forest sector,” Ken Kalesnikoff, president and chief executive officer of Kalesnikoff mass timber products and lumber company, said in a letter to the Regional District of Central Kootenay board of directors. …He explained that when access to the AAC is unreliable, harvest levels drop and government revenues for critical services decline.

Colin James and Don Ellingham, frustrated landowners who live along the Chemainus River, spoke to North Cowichan’s council on how flooding issues are being handled at its meeting on Sept. 4. They have lost many acres of land to the river as repeated floods have caused erosion and swept the land away, and they expect to lose more unless something is done… Studies… concluded there is a need for better management of the watershed and work in the river to reduce the damage caused by flooding. …But the landowners, and stakeholders in the river, know that logging operations upstream on private forestry lands have contributed significantly to the problems with logs and sediments in the watershed that are jamming up waterways and eating away at the riverbanks, and until something is done about that, all the work that has been and is being done on the river is pretty fruitless.