Region Archives: Canada West

With no logging planned for North Cowichan’s municipal forest reserve until the forestry review is completed, staff is anticipating the municipality will have to turn to general taxation to help cover the reserve’s expenses for the first time since the review process began in 2019. At a committee of the whole meeting on Nov. 28 to discuss the upcoming budget for 2024, forester Shaun Mason… said all that’s left in North Cowichan’s forest reserve fund as of the end of 2023 is $230,490, which leaves a $112,000 deficit in the department for 2024. The fund has been covering the lost revenue since the municipality decided to suspend logging in the reserve in 2020 until the review is complete. Mason said the forest department’s main focus for 2024 is on the forest-review process and continuing with general maintenance and management in the forest reserve. 

Ross Muirhead

Another ad by Sunshine Coast Community Forest (SCCF) appeared in the Nov. 24 Coast Reporter paper this time about its 2023-2028 logging plan. The plan was first revealed at a Nov. 20 meeting and SCCF is now asking community members for feedback by December 20 – 30 days and counting. Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) attended that meeting there was a lack of detail on each block and certainly not enough for the average person to provide reasonable feedback besides “not opposed” or “opposed.” This is a ridiculously short timeframe for feedback and ELF recommends it be extended to April 1, 2024 to provide us time to get the public out to each forest and look at what could be lost. …These are two areas where no logging should be taking place in the first place due to the sensitivity and importance of drinking watersheds. In terms of protecting biodiversity, each watershed area is well represented by the mountain hemlock and alpine ecosystems.

Last week a letter writer proposed that ELF could get the public out to each planned forest cut, and deliver meaningful feedback by the 1st of April (Reexamine logging plans by Ross Muirhead).  Thirty thousand untrained Coast residents are imagined by Elphinstone Logging Focus to perform this inspection under the guidance of ELF and with ELF’s explicit  purpose to “look at what could be lost.”  I’d hazard this could take several years, if ELF has the personnel to manage it. But we already have fully trained professional foresters who can right now tell you what will be lost, and more importantly what will be gained by the work that our Community Forest has done and continues to do. [END]

KAMLOOPS, BC — A new research institute that Thompson Rivers University says would position it as an “international leader” in wildfire science and education has been given final approval. The university said the Institute of Wildfire Science, Adaptation and Resiliency aims to conduct research aimed at preventing, mitigating, responding to and recovering from wildfires. TRU’s board of governors gave approval for the establishment of the institute during its meeting last week. …The initial research team will be headed up by Mike Flannigan, a BC Research Chair, professor and renowned wildfire expert., Jill Harvey, a Canada Research Chair in fire ecology, and Lauchlan Fraser, an NSERC industrial research chair in ecosystem reclamation. Flannigan said during the university’s senate meeting in October that a new building has already been opened and is housing the researchers, grad students and postdoctoral researchers. Funding for the institute has been secured for three-years.

Two projects on the North Island will remove forest fire fuel from the woods and put it to better use. The Forest Enhancement Society of BC is getting $50 million from the province to remove windfalls and logging leftovers from forests. The wood will go to mills that can use it, and removing it from the forest will help prevent future wildfires. Provincial forests minister Bruce Ralston says there are two North Island projects worth nearly a million dollars near Port McNeill. He says they will also help North Island forestry businesses and create some new jobs. “One of the big challenges in the sector right now is the hunt for fibre, marketable fibre, in order to accomplish the work that forestry companies want to do,” he said. …Both projects will be done by the Atli Chip LP company owned by the ‘Namgis First Nation.

The 2023 wildfire season has been long and challenging. Between April 1 and October 31, 2,245 wildfires burned more than 2.84 million hectares of forest and land resulting in the most destructive wildfire season in British Columbia’s recorded history. “We started really early, snow melted three to four weeks early, we were experiencing very aggressive fire behaviour in early May and that has persisted right into the month of October,” Neal McLoughlin, Superintendent, BCWS Predictive Services. It has also been emotionally challenging with devastating impacts to multiple communities and the tragic loss of six members of the wildland firefighting community. This video acknowledges the conditions and impacts of the 2023 wildfire season. It also honours personnel and partners while paying tribute to the fallen wildland firefighters. Read our 2023 season summary to learn more about wildfire response around the province this year: https://ow.ly/aBEV50QgyRP

The Community Forest is once again paying dividends for the City of Port Alberni. The Alberni Valley Community Forest Corporation presented the city with a dividend cheque of $300,000 on November 27. The cheque represents the operating year of 2022, said chairman Jim Sears. “We are in good financial position at this time, with a healthy retained earnings position, and we are expecting that we will complete our 2023 operations by the end of this year,” he said. Sears added that the corporation is holding back “a fairly hefty retained earning” for some future bridge building. …“Our community forest does a fantastic job of balancing community needs with the potential to give back, in terms of revenue,” said Mayor Sharie Minions. “It’s a great model to show companies how land bases can be managed.”

BRITISH COLUMBIA — Putting cutblocks next to wildlife protection areas may not be the best thing for the animals, but it does help timber companies cut more big trees, and has been B.C. government policy for decades. …It’s a practice known as co-location. …And while it’s legal — even encouraged — by the province to maximize timber harvests, ecologists and forestry experts call it “double counting” and a relic of a bygone era, used by logging companies to cut some of the province’s biggest trees where wildlife needs them most. …B.C. is not short on trees. But big, coastal old growth is, today, exceptionally rare. …But old-growth logging still continues, as does the decades-old practice of co-location. …In 2021, the Forest Practices Board spelled out the motivation… “co-location means that an area reserved from harvest can serve more than one purpose, and this reduces the amount of habitat that is actually reserved from harvest.” 

The wildfires may be out – but they still pose a threat to those venturing into the backcountry. The BC Forest Safety Council warns that summer wildfires and ongoing drought conditions are creating potentially dangerous situations. Many parts of the province are experiencing severe drought and impacts from a catastrophic fire season. In particular, the northeast part of the province remains under Level 5 drought conditions. The region experienced several very large wildfires, including the 619,000-hectare Donnie Creek fire. During the winter, some wildfires will continue to smoulder and burn under the snow, which will create new and hidden hazards, some of which may not be obvious, the safety council says.

VANCOUVER, BC — For the time being, the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation is refusing to release the expert report behind the operation to cut down almost a quarter of the trees in Stanley Park. At the end of November, the Vancouver Park Board announced scheduled closures of the Lions Gate Bridge, Stanley Park Causeway, and other roads and trails over the next two months while it removes 160,000 trees due to pest infestation and wildfire fears. …“The primary focus is to prioritize the removal of trees affected by the hemlock looper moth infestation in heavily visited areas of Stanley Park, in alignment with preparations for winter storms, wildfires and bird nesting season,” said Park Board spokeswoman Eva Cook. Cook said B.A. Blackwell & Associates is the forestry consultant working with the board, but she refused to say how much the contract is worth. 

Alice Palmer

Members of the UN Global Biodiversity Framework have agreed to protect 30% of their land and ocean area by 2030. BC has announced how it plans to protect 30%. On November 3, the governments of Canada and BC, together with several Indigenous organizations, signed the Tripartite Framework on Nature Conservation. … Although industry groups have been relatively quiet about the agreement, several environmental groups published press releases coinciding with the government announcement. For the most part, the groups celebrated the announcement. However, some suggested the new agreement does not go far enough. In BC, only about 5% of the land is privately owned. However, much of the province is subject to unsettled Indigenous land claims. Because BC has committed to adopting the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the province will need to consult with First Nations prior to creating new protected and conserved areas. 

FREE WEBINAR | Monday, December 11 | 7:00 PM PST — The Forest History Association of British Columbia Speaker Series is pleased to present our next speaker: Dr. Ira Sutherland. Sutherland is a post-doctoral researcher at Simon Fraser University. He recently obtained his RPF and finished his PhD in the UBC Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences studying historical social-ecological changes in BC forests. Forests and society are changing, but by how much? How well is forest management keeping pace? And what does this tell us about the overall sustainability of forest landscapes in BC? This talk presents insights from Sutherland’s recently published PhD dissertation, which reconstructs social-ecological changes in BC over the past century. Join us for this free webinar. Register today. 

The president of the Cranbrook Community Forest Society opposes Schedule 7 of the City of Cranbrook’s draft official community plan which outlines hypothetical roads through the community amenity. The City has released its draft Official Community Plan which outlines a blueprint for the community to help guide its growth and future through 2042. Society president Joseph Cross has concerns with two potential roads identified which could go through the forest, he says these roads would create safety issues, hinder access and devalue the area. …Cross says the Schedule 7 map with the proposed roads is near the end of the draft plan document, prompting speculation about a lack of transparency. The society is asking city council to remove the Schedule 7 map from its draft plan, and concedes that the document contains many other elements which encourage responsible growth and development.

VICTORIA – The Forest Practices Board has released a report on the measurement and allocation of forage on rangelands in British Columbia. The report identifies several opportunities to improve the management of public rangelands. These include setting specific targets for conserving forage for wildlife and using a more robust system to measure and inventory the amount of available forage on rangelands. “The board found that government has developed good guidelines for measuring forage, but they aren’t consistently used,” said Gerry Grant, board member of B.C.’s Forest Practices Board. The board also found government lacks a current inventory of forage in some districts with high range usage.

The Forest Practices Board has published its 2022-23 annual report. Introduced by Board Chair Keith Atkinson, the report summarizes Board accomplishments over the past year and previews of work in progress.

Highlights include:

• Completion of 11 audits; 9 with issues, including 12 significant non-compliances
• Completion of 7 complaint investigations and 51 concerns either closed or resolved.
• Review of 35 Forest and Range Practices Act and Wildfire Actdeterminations
• Completion of 1 special project, including 4 recommendations to government.

You can access the 2022-23 report and past versions of Board annual reports on our website. 

Fort Nelson, B.C. – To safeguard their community from the escalating threat of wildfires, British Columbia’s largest community forest is undertaking wildfire risk reduction work with support from Forest Enhancement Society of BC funding. …The Fort Nelson Community Forest (FNCF) was formed when the largest community forest license in the province was awarded to the Fort Nelson First Nation (FNFN) and Northern Rockies Regional Municipality (NRRM) partnership. …According to Matt Pilszek, RFT, Forestry and Construction Manager with Geoterra, the fuel mitigation project will focus on protecting and enhancing the Boreal caribou ungulate winter range. The fuel mitigation treatment will reduce the accumulation of flammable vegetation and deadwood, which helps reduce the risk of large, destructive wildfires detrimental to wildlife habitat. Preserving the winter range from being impacted by wildfires ensures that caribou and other ungulates have access to the habitat they need during the critical winter months.

Three years after the Old Growth Strategic Review, the province has made three big recent announcements. …The three announcements — the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework, the Tripartite Framework Agreement on Nature Conservation and the conservation financing mechanism — each cited another shift B.C. has committed to: First Nations would co-develop the laws and policies to come. This was the first recommendation of the Old Growth Strategic Review, aimed at unrooting the long erasure of Indigenous nations’ jurisdiction and rights over their land. This “paradigm shift” will be put to the test as the announcements give way to their promised councils, negotiations and eventual decisions. Robert Phillips, the political executive for the First Nations Summit, is encouraged by the intentions so far, but wary of the time-worn grooves of inaction. …For decades, B.C.’s forest industry has been ruled by the steady beat of the allowable cut determination. 

Adam Olsen

BC Green Party MLA Adam Olsen is calling on B.C.’s minister of public safety to form a special policing unit dedicated to investigating the suspicious deaths and disappearances of First Nations people in the province. Olsen, who is from the Tsartlip First Nation and represents Saanich North and the Islands, said he’d like to see B.C. investing as much in protecting First Nations people as it does in policing opposition to resource development — opposition that is frequently Indigenous-led and generally occurs in remote areas. …In 2017, the RCMP formed the Community-Industry Response Group, or C-IRG, to enforce protest-related injunctions granted to industry. Over the past six years, the force has spent more than $60 million on the unit. Most of that went to break up demonstrations against pipelines and old-growth logging. …C-IRG also spent over $19 million breaking up protests against old-growth logging on Vancouver Island. 

Frank Varga

Frank Varga, the General Manager of Burns Lake Community Forest, attended a delegation of B.C. Forest Practitioners led by the UBC Faculty of Forestry team in Finland. Varga was the only representative from Burns Lake among the 31 delegates. The other representatives were from the Office of the Chief Forester, four educational and research institutions, the Federation of B.C. Woodlot Association, Six Forestry Consultants, B.C. Timber Sales, the Pulp and Paper Coalition, the Council of Forest Industry, private landowners, and community forests in B.C. The trip lasted for 10 days and the purpose was to understand Finnish history and the development of their forest industry that adds value to their climate change mitigation and adaptation to biodiversity actions.

ALBERTA — Pulp mill waste destined for the landfill could instead be useful as an organic fertilizer that can help reduce the environmental impact of using conventional fertilizers while improving soil and tree growth, University of Alberta research shows. A two-year study conducted on a hybrid poplar tree plantation in northern Alberta showed that compared with using conventional fertilizers alone, adding biosolids — wood and other fibres left over from pulp and paper production — reduced harmful greenhouse gas emissions from the soil. Combining biosolids and conventional fertilizer also improved soil fertility, the study showed. The findings provide new insight into what effect biosolids could have if they were redirected for use on tree plantations that feed the forest industry, says Scott Chang, the study’s lead author and a professor in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences.