Region Archives: Canada West

No bear should burn to death in a slash pile. That’s the message longtime Greeny Lake trapper Paul Blackwell is trying to spread this fall as bears prepare to go into hibernation. He said that as slash piles grow ever larger they’re becoming attractive places for bears to build their dens ahead of winter hibernation. “(They are) so appealing to bears it’s almost like a hotel. You’ve got this great pile of wood that insulates the bear from the snow, so it’s no wonder they like it so much,” Blackwell said. …Rather than burning large slash piles, Blackwell said forestry companies should be required to burn their slash in smaller piles or arrange them in windrows across the cut blocks. He said the Ministry of Forests is aware of these facts but doesn’t seem interested in pushing for legislation that would reduce the size of slash piles or eliminate them altogether.

QUESNEL, BC — The B.C. Forest Appeals Commission says a man who lit a large debris pile on fire that eventually caused a wildfire should pay the provincial government nearly $450,000. In an appeal decision released last week, the commission says Clarke Matthiesen tried to blame an arsonist for the blaze that investigators say started on his property west of Quesnel, B.C., in the province’s interior. The decision says Matthiesen lit the debris fire on a property he owns with his brother in February 2019, thinking snow around the blaze would work as a “fuel break.” …The commission rejected Matthiesen’s claims that his neighbour’s grandson could have lit the fire. …He was ordered to pay a $2,350 fine, $260,369 for fire control costs and $179,344 for destruction of Crown-owned timber resources.

Amalia Schelhorn taught Victoria, B.C., to dance to protect old-growth. This one-time National Ballet of Canada soloist helped bring media attention to the call to end old-growth logging in British Columbia by choreographing and organizing community dance protests. …I know the media likes visual and performing arts and, as a dancer and teacher, I had good networks. I choreographed and taped a dance to Bruce Cockburn’s If a Tree Falls and contacted everyone I could think of. …Three days later, 40 people, young and old, showed up to Dance for the Ancient Forests. We were very successful in attracting media attention because it was a novel and visually compelling protest. Since then, I have created another dance to a rewritten version of Stop In the Name of Love. …Once again, the media has picked up these protests.

The Province is taking more steps to conserve nature for the long-term health and well-being of communities with the release of a draft biodiversity and ecosystem health framework. “Together, we are charting the next steps for conserving B.C.’s rich biodiversity and healthy ecosystems that support us all,” said Nathan Cullen, Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship. B.C. has the greatest diversity of species, ecosystems and habitats of any jurisdiction in Canada. The resilience of the province depends on an integrated and inclusive approach to stewarding B.C.’s water, land and natural resources. The framework is another action the Province is taking as part of ongoing work to improve stewardship of B.C.’s lands, forests and water, to implement the recommendations of the Old Growth Strategic Review and to honour B.C.’s commitments under the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

Two Merritt-based companies are revolutionizing sustainable forest management in British Columbia. …Stuwix Resources Joint Venture (SRJV) and Valley Carriers have announced that they will be working together to make a better use of leftover forest materials, such as forest residuals. …According to the release, the BioHub Pilot Project is centred around Stuwix’s transition from the traditional cut-to-length forestry practice to now full-length tree harvesting, moving toward a full tree utilization and zero-waste approach. “Through the Bush Grinding project, forest residual will be ground instead of being left behind and burned in slash piles, helping to reduce waste and avoid greenhouse gas emissions,” the release reads. “This ground fibre will be transported to a green energy facility in Merritt.” …Gord Pratt, FESBC senior manager, added “Exploring new ways to optimize the delivery and use of forest fibre is long overdue.”

HARRISON MILLS, BC — Recent logging activity in the Chehalis area is seen as a setback for one of the rarest birds in British Columbia. In 40 years, a swath of forest north of Harrison Mills could have qualified as old growth, which would have been viable habitat for the spotted owl. The forest that had been growing since around World War II was approved for logging this year, and it’s being harvested. …Joe Foy with the Wilderness Committee, said that while the harvesting of the Chehalis area trees isn’t necessarily fatal for spotted owl conservation efforts, it would make species recovery less likely. …Foy said the fragmented nature of potential habitat for spotted owls comes down to the federal and provincial governments having different plans to preseve the species.

James Hobart trudges up an old logging road and into the territory of the last wild-born northern spotted owl in Canada. …Chief of the Spô’zêm First Nation, Hobart has put his people’s weight behind saving the owl. …Where once that territory supported upwards of a thousand owls, today, the survival of Canada’s wild-born population has dwindled to a single female, who lives high up in the Spô’zêm watershed in the territory of Hobart’s people. Early failures to reintroduce captive bred owls have revealed duelling visions over what’s causing the bird’s near extinction — and how best to pull it back from the brink. On one side, B.C.’s provincial government says it’s focused on the culling and removal of invasive barred owls, while breeding the endangered species back; on the other, a federal ministry says it makes no sense to release owls into a forest ecosystem when its integrity remains shattered.

An enchanting forest called Wildwood, south of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, has tall old-growth Douglas-firs soaring into the sky, the rat-a-tatting of pileated woodpeckers echoing through the trees and emerald-green moss blanketing the ground. Surprisingly, this magnificent 31-hectare patch of old-growth forest has been commercially logged since 1945 and stands in stark contrast to the patchwork clear cuts of modern industrial forestry. At Wildwood, nature rules, while also yielding a harvest for humans to reap. …Merv Wilkinson logged this land, not by clear-cuts and monoculture plantations, but instead by selective logging. For more than seven decades, the old-growth beauty has been preserved, the habitat maintained for black-tailed deer, squirrels, bats, pileated woodpeckers and more. His logging was revolutionary not only in method, but also in philosophy. Although Merv’s methods are ignored by the provincial logging industry, his wisdom was recognized by others. 

VERNON, BC — The long process of restoring trails lost to the Bush Creek East wildfire will begin with wildfire impact assessments. Assessments for two of those trails… are being initiated by the Shuswap Trail Alliance (STA) with Forsite Consultants. “Forsite will be creating a process for us, as well as doing the initial assessments,” said Jen Bellhouse. …“There will be slope stability assessments required because soil becomes hydrophobic after a fire so it’s a longer process for that,” said Bellhouse, noting the process will involve reassessing slope stability after year of snow melt and precipitation, to see how slopes impacted by the fire are holding up – recognizing there may be slides. …Bellhouse said BC Parks is going through a similar process for its trails impacted by the wildfire.

Satellite surveillance shows 31,800 hectares of old-growth trees — 50 per cent more than the government reported — have been logged in the three and a half years since the province promised a “paradigm change” in B.C. forestry practices. That’s according to a recent report from the environmental group Stand.earth, which used a satellite watchdog platform to track old-growth logging since April 2020. That month marked the release of the Old Growth Strategic Review, a landmark report that signalled government might put an end to cutting the rarest old-growth stands. The satellite tracking system, known as Forest Eye, was built with the help of the satellite firm Planet Labs. It systematically tracks forest cover change across the province since the B.C. government promised to halt logging in big treed old-growth forests nearly three years ago. The group said it manually verifies all the alerts the system flags to ensure forest cover loss occurred due to logging activity.

Additional coverage: Stand.earth press release

An old-growth forest on Haida Gwaii, a popular swimming hole in southern British Columbia and a lush hillside along a world-renowned canoe circuit are among the parcels of land the Province has acquired to expand B.C.’s parks and protected areas. The Province has acquired 109 hectares of land to be added to five provincial parks, enhancing protection of the province’s biodiversity. The newly acquired land is valued at $1.9 million and includes: Naikoon Park (Haida Gwaii), Wells Gray Park (near Clearwater), Gladstone Park (near Grand Forks), Bowron Lake Park (near Quesnel), and Mount Pope Park (near Fort St. James). Through the acquisition of private land and partnerships with conservation groups, individual donors, the BC Parks Foundation and supporters, the Province regularly adds land to the parks and protected areas system. …The Province is consulting with First Nations’ governments prior to making decisions about legally establishing the lands as parks and protected areas.

The Province of B.C. is making moves to protect old-growth forests across B.C. including in the South Cariboo.  Last week B.C. launched a new $300-million Conservation Financing Mechanism to help protect B.C.’s rarest and oldest trees while benefitting communities.  …These tools will include the creation of new forest landscape plans that will focus on biodiversity and the long-term health of forest ecosystems. …Joyce Wagenaar, West Fraser’s communication director, said the company is working to figure out how they’ll facilitate the new forest landscape planning initiative, which they are still learning more about.  …“West Fraser’s sustainable forest management practices reflect managing for a range of environmental, social and economic values and government guidelines,” Wagenaar said. “We manage the forest resource with collaborative input from Indigenous Nations and local communities.”

The Williams Lake Community Forest’s (WLCF) has more money to award community groups and schools this year thanks to an award.  WLCF was awarded the Robin Hood Memorial Award for excellence in community forestry by the Ministry of Forests in June of 2023. The award came with $10,000, which granting coordinator Mary Thurow said will go right back into the community towards this year’s grants.  Since 2019, the WLCF has been awarding grants to projects aimed at enhancing economic development, recreation and recreational structures, culture and the arts projects as they relate to forests and forest values, capital improvements, education and outreach projects for all age groups, and other projects particularly related to forest resource values. In 2023, WLCF awarded 15 projects a total of $65,000 in grant funds and expects to award $75,000 for 2024 projects.

In the wake of the worst wildfire season on record in Canada, it isn’t as simple as just planting more trees, climate scientists say. What we’ve been planting and how we’ve been managing our forestry stock have urgent lessons for us to heed.  …Robert Gray, a wildfire ecologist agrees that we’ve set ourselves up for wildfire disaster. Over the last century, Canada has allowed timber companies to log, or clear-cut, forests and replant monoculture plantations of coniferous softwoods, including lodgepole pine and spruce. These coniferous trees are considered highly flammable: they thrive in wildfires, relying on the heat from the flames to open their cones and release seeds to reproduce. …Werner Kurz with the Canadian Forest Service agrees that one of the best things we can do to balance carbon emissions – while mitigating the risk of extreme wildfire – in Canada is to strive to reduce fuels – dead trees that feed fires – from forests. 

Merritt, B.C. – In a long-standing alliance, a First Nations-owned and operated fibre management company, Stuwix Resources Joint Venture (SRJV) and Valley Carriers, a visionary multi-generational trucking and specialty transportation company, are working together to make better use of leftover forest materials, i.e., forest residuals. With support from the Forest Enhancement Society of BC (FESBC) funding for a Bush Grind Project, the partners aim to turn these residual materials into valuable biomass products. The BioHub Pilot Project is centred around the transition from traditional cut-to-length forestry practice to full-length tree harvesting, moving toward a full tree utilization and zero-waste approach. This is an enormous step in sustainable forestry practices with significant impacts on forestry residue management. …The Bush Grind Project is part of a Biohub Pilot Project, with an overarching vision to eradicate the age-old practice of underutilizing, piling, and burning forestry residuals…

ALBERTA — If you curve around the front mountains of the Don Getty Wildland Provincial Park in Alberta on Highway 541 and carry on into the valley that houses the popular Highwood Pass, you find yourself in an unprotected swath of land that stretches into the southern reach of Kananaskis Country. On either side of the valley, protected land climbs up the side of the low mountains in this part of the eastern slopes — a rolling carpet of green dotted with splashes of yellow in the late fall chill. The valley bottom itself is green too, but not for long. It is not protected from logging and 1,100 hectares, an area the size of over 2,000 football fields, will soon begin to be cleared by Spray Lake Sawmills. Two giant cutblocks are planned to start this winter and more to come on the other side of the highway.

Crews in Whitehorse are in the process of building a very different kind of firebreak — one made out of trees. The Yukon Government is calling it “natural infrastructure.” Most cities build firebreaks on a temporary, seasonal basis, and focus on removing potential fuel sources – like trees and shrubs – rather than planting more. But this project involves clearing a corridor of flammable tree species, like conifers, and replacing them with a band of fire-retardant, deciduous species like Aspen. The ambitious design incorporates contemporary wildfire research as well as Indigenous traditional knowledge. “This is the country’s first-ever permanent firebreak,” said Yukon minister Richard Mostyn. “This is an example of the territory leading the nation.” 

Just off the press, “Trees Against the Wind: The Birth of Prairie Shelterbelts” is a treasure for those interested in trees. Author William Schroeder has done an excellent job of documenting the life and times of those involved in tree planting, from the settlement of the Canadian West in the early 1900s until the shut-down of the Prairie Shelterbelt Program in 2012. Schroeder, a scientist with expertise in tree genetics, retired in 2016 from his position with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Agroforestry Development Centre in Indian Head. During his 35-year tenure, he was a world leader in breeding woody plants and pioneered sea buckthorn research. His work at Indian Head, Saskatchewan awakened his interest in the history of tree planting. He subsequently spent many hours at Indian Head, Regina and Ottawa documenting the stories he had heard.

Mushrooms large and small, tasty and toxic, are popping up across British Columbia this year in what experts say is a bumper season for fungi. B.C. forest ecologist and mycologist Andy MacKinnon said he’s been out picking edible fungi this year with fellow mushroom expert Paul Kroeger on Cortes Island, between Vancouver Island and the mainland. …Mary Berbee, a professor at the UBC department of botany, said last year the exceptional drought stressed fungi. This September’s rains led to a more usual flush of mushrooms, she said. …While mushrooms grow wild year-round, Luther said it’s more common to see them in the fall with rain arriving and trees moving sugar into their roots, giving the fungi an infusion of food. But there’s also a bonanza of poisonous mushrooms to be careful of. …There are over 3,400 known mushroom species in B.C. 

LETHBRIDGE, AB – The wildfire season in Alberta has come to an end. Unusually hot, dry and windy conditions in the spring resulted in an active wildfire season, with as many as 11 fires breaking out simultaneously due to lightning early in the season. The Government of Alberta reported that 48 communities were impacted by wildfires this year, and over 38,000 Albertans were evacuated from their homes. …A total of 1,094 wildfires burned 2,214,957 hectares of land during the 2023 wildfire season in Alberta. Compared with the five-year average (2018-2022) of 1,110 wildfires burning more than 190,000 hectares, the 2023 season was 10 times more severe in terms of area burnt. …Officials said that planning has already started for the 2024 wildfire season. This includes enhancing current and identifying new technologies or techniques that can be used effectively in Alberta.

Additional coverage in Global News, by Emily Mertz: Alberta wildfire season ’10 times more severe’ than recent averages, province says

Catherine McClarty still has nightmares about her arrest two years ago during an anti-logging protest on Vancouver Island and her experience with a controversial RCMP unit that’s been accused of improper use of force, neglect of duty and more. …McClarty filed a neglect of duty complaint against C-IRG about her treatment during her arrest. Two years later, she’s still waiting for a response. …An analysis by The Fifth Estate found that McClarty is not alone. The RCMP had reviewed less than half of the complaints it received from Fairy Creek as of September 2023, according to data provided by the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP (CRCC). Of the complaints it has reviewed from Fairy Creek, The Fifth Estate analysis shows the RCMP has rejected 86 per cent of the allegations against it. …McClarty locked herself to a metal gate on a logging road using a bike lock around her neck…

The provincial government (Oct. 30) tabled legislation as part of a broader push to modernize forest management. Changes call for more flexibility in the issuance of permits for logging and road building. …Other changes call for tougher penalties and new tools to enforce existing regulations and law. …Younes Alila, forestry professor at the University of British Columbia, called these changes a “step in the right direction” toward managing forests in B.C. while questioning the practice of clear-cutting and warning of a piece-meal approach. While Alila welcomed the introduction of cultural and prescribed burning, he said it may not be that effective at all in the face of current practices. Re-planting clear-cut areas with mono-cultures, pine in particular in the Interior, creates highly flammable conditions, he said. …Michael Armstrong, with the Council of Forest Industries, said they are reviewing the changes, but welcomed changes around cultural and prescribed burning…

The City of Yellowknife said it intends to develop a long-term plan for the multi-million dollar firebreaks that were hastily built this summer — but those discussions are still in the early stages now. “We’re still kind of reeling from recovery,” explained Chris Greencorn, the city’s manager of public works and the city’s operations chief during the wildfire emergency. “We don’t have a solid long-term plan yet, we’re still putting our hands around it.” …The long-term plan, he said, will be about balance: allowing for some kind of natural revegetation, but also making sure the breaks can be used to protect the city from fire again. There might also be ways to repurpose them for recreational use, like cross country skiing or hiking trails, said Greencorn.

A dedicated group of people work in Alberta’s forests, armed with laptops and other equipment as they carefully assess the ecosystem to ensure that flora and fauna will flourish. If this sounds like ecology in action, it is. The group in question is forest professionals, and Alberta Forest Products Association (AFPA) explains that forestry in the 21st century is geared toward resource sustainability and regeneration. Aspen Dudzic, director of communications at AFPA, says, “Forest professionals have always been committed to regenerating forests. Sustainability is the foundation of forest management planning in Alberta. “People enter this profession because they love the forest; they spend their lives recreating in it and they take that passion, and they turn it into a profession. They are managing the forest not just for today, but for future generations so that their children and grandchildren will always have healthy forests to enjoy.” 

SASKATCHEWAN — Ness Creek, known for its camping and festival grounds near Big River, Saskatchewan, will be met with a jarring sight come summer. Clear-cutting activities are underway across the road from the festival grounds. This development has raised concerns among local… advocates [who] have pleaded with the government to exclude Ness Creek from the Forest Management Agreement, but their pleas have fallen on deaf ears. They believe that the forest should be managed using more selective and sustainable approaches. Saskatchewan ministry of environment says the harvesting plans are designed to be sustainable by emulating large, frequent natural disturbances, such as wildfire, to which plant and animal species are well adapted. …Sakâw Askiy Management Inc., the company responsible for the Forest Management Agreement stated that only 40% of the land would be available for timber harvesting after considering parks, protected areas, caribou habitat, water bodies, wetlands, and more.