Wildfires have laid siege to British Columbia in 2023. Residents outside the province’s Lower Mainland region have endured a prolonged and surreal environment of fear and uncertainty, filled with toxic smoke and flurries of evacuation alerts and orders. …Land lost to wildfires in 2017, 2018 and 2021 set records—but the terrible trio’s toll was eclipsed by July in 2023, the beginning of what is traditionally the start of the worst two forest fire months of the season. …The warming climate’s interconnected impacts on the forest industry are the focus of a new report by the B.C. Forest Practices Board. The report says there’s an urgent need for a different and coordinated approach to forest fire management on B.C.’s Crown land. It points out fire can be a friend and not always the wildfire foe. Fire, when used judiciously, can help sustain a productive and healthy B.C. forest landscape as it did historically.
The report noted the policies that were applied in B.C. during the 20th century resulted in densely forested areas and an increase in the amounts and distribution of forest fuels. …“There is an urgent need to shift forest and fire management, policies, objectives and policies toward co-existing with fire on the landscape,” says the report. “Restoring landscape resilience is required and the first step toward that is to introduce landscape fire management into the land management framework in B.C.” The report continues: “Bold and immediate action is required by the provincial government to align policies and programs across all levels of government with a vision of landscape resilience and human co-existence with fire.” …The document’s recommendations are pertinent and timely. Suggestions for working practically with nature can help restore a badly damaged landscape diversity in B.C. That in turn will indicate paths forward for the forest industry to continue its renewal and vigour.
The Truck Loggers Association is pleased to announce that registration has opened for their 2024 Convention + Trade Show. This years theme is Solutions From Our Forests. Climate change, wildfire mitigation, First Nations reconciliation, innovation, competitiveness, carbon sequestration, certainty, diversification, and strong communities are top of mind for everyone in the forest industry and beyond. Government has tasked the forest industry with providing solutions to tackle these and other important topics for a brighter forestry future. In response, this year’s convention, themed “Solutions From Our Forests” will bring the forest sector together to demonstrate its resiliency and continued ability to lead the way in providing solutions to these concerns as well. Our forests are part of the solution for BC’s strong economy and its communities. Today and for generations to come.
The longer I do this work, the more I’m convinced its green public image is undeserved. I began tree planting seven years ago when I was 24. …Five seasons later, I can say with some confidence that I know what it is I’m doing out there, on the block. Like the loggers employed by Conifex or Canfor, like the labourers working on the Site C dam or Teck Coal miners, I, too, am making a living off the exploitation of the land. Speaking about our complicity in resource extraction, a planter friend once remarked to me: “If I had to choose, I’d rather be planting trees than cutting them down.” I’m not sure there is much good in differentiating these acts; the way I see it, planting and logging are two sides of the same coin.
UBC Forestry is introducing exciting changes to its undergraduate programs by introducing a new ‘Bachelor’s of Science in Natural Resources’ starting in fall 2024. Five of the Faculty of Forestry’s current degree programs are being unified into one degree, with students choosing from six majors, each providing a well-rounded education in unique fields of Natural Resource studies. Students will all take a common first year, with some course selection freedom to obtain prerequisites for potential majors, and then have the opportunity to select a major in second year in bioeconomy sciences and technology, conservation, forest management, forest operations, forest sciences, or wood products. Two new first year courses will introduce students to some of the most wicked environmental problems facing humanity such as climate change, catastrophic fires and floods, resource over-exploitation, food insecurity and poverty, and will show how these sorts of challenges, are interdisciplinary needing innovative ecological, social and entrepreneurial solutions.
In the October edition, you’ll find:
The BC government is proposing major changes to the way the province’s forests are managed. Forests Minister Bruce Ralston said B.C.’s rules and practices need to be updated in the face of climate change and the growing frequency and severity of extreme weather events. Proposed amendments to B.C.’s Forest Act, Forest and Range Practices Act and Wildfire Act will change how road-building and logging permits are issued, while giving prescribed burns a “legal standing.” …The province is pledging to work more closely with First Nations to increase the use of the technique Indigenous communities have used for centuries, tool to reduce wildfire risk. …Other proposed changes to the act include stiffening penalties for individuals and organizations that break forest regulation rules, as well as giving decision-makers discretion when giving out cutting and road-building permits.
The Province is making changes to enable safer, more effective stewardship of the landscape, including forests, and the revitalization of cultural and prescribed fire and new compliance and enforcement measures. …If passed, amendments to the Forest and Range Practices Act, the Forest Act, and the Wildfire Act will help address public and First Nations’ interests in how forests are managed, giving government new tools to manage Crown land timber harvesting. …Changes to the FRPA will provide new tools to the Ministry of Forests’ compliance and enforcement team to better enforce natural resource laws in the province. The changes will strengthen the protection of First Nations values and interests and allow for a greater range of contravention penalties, ensuring there are appropriate consequences for non-compliance. …Amendments to the Wildfire Act will give prescribed fire legal standing in B.C.’s forest management tool kit … and allow for advancement in prescribed burns as a wildfire-mitigation practice.
Halfway River First Nation has filed a B.C. Supreme Court petition to protect their treaty rights, following a provincial licence renewal for a forest tenure range located ten kilometres west of their reserve. The tenure is held by Crystal Springs Ranch Ltd., and covers an area within the boundaries of Treaty 8 and Halfway River’s traditional territory. The Halfway River watershed is nearly 80 percent covered by range tenures, noted the October 20 petition. The province disregarded Halfway River’s treaty rights by renewing the Crystal Springs licence “without incorporating reasonable mitigation measures identified by Halfway River”, the petition says. Due to a large number of tenures in their territory, band members have been forced to travel further away from the community to hunt, the petition says, with fencing erected around tenures keeping them out of traditional hunting grounds.
Jonathan Seinen has been honoured by the province at the 2023 Federation of British Columbia Woodlot Associations AGM that is taking place in Cranbrook. The Houston man will be returning home with a $10,000 grant as the recipient of a Minister’s Award for Innovation and Excellence in Woodlot Management. …Bruce Ralston, BC Minister of Forests said in a 
Conservationists and the B.C. government are at odds over the strength of provincial old-growth protection measures, with the Ancient Forest Alliance pointing out what it calls a “significant conservation loophole” this month. The group claims thousands of hectares of at-risk, old-growth forest were likely missed during B.C.’s 2021 logging deferral process, which allows incorrectly identified forest to be substracted from established deferral areas, but not added to them. “The misclassification of some forests as being younger than they are (is) causing them to fall through the cracks,” said TJ Watt, a campaigner with the Ancient Forest Alliance. “In this case, a forest on northern Vancouver Island was missed for logging deferral due to B.C. government data errors, and trees upwards of 10 feet or three metres wide are being cut down.”
To help strengthen resilience against climate-related hazards, the Province is providing funding to the Fraser-Fort George Regional District and the Peace River Regional District for a pair of community projects. “British Columbians are concerned about the increasing effects of climate change and the emergencies we’re already experiencing – like drought, flooding, extreme heat and wildfires,” said Bowinn Ma, Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness. “By funding local, on-the-ground projects, our government is helping First Nations and local governments protect their communities and keep people safer from future emergencies.” The Regional District of Fraser-Fort George will receive $1,049,875 for a regional project to identify and assess flood and landslide risk and hazards across all four municipalities, seven electoral areas and two First Nations in the region. Communities will strengthen long-term efforts to reduce the risk of disasters by understanding the existing vulnerabilities and developing a framework for future decision-making.
As the BC Wildfire Service shifts to winter operations, the McDougall Creek wildfire is still smouldering above West Kelowna. …Fires the magnitude of the McDougall Creek fire sometimes end up being referred to as “zombie fires” — a fire that overwinters deep in the ground and pops back up in the spring. …The BC Wildfire Service said on social media it is now winding down operations for the season. …The 2023 wildfire season has gone down as the most expensive and most destructive wildfire year on record. A total of 2236 fires burned 2,849,397 hectares of B.C. forest this season. The Insurance Bureau of Canada estimated that the fires in the Okanagan and Shuswap alone caused $720 million in insured damage.