Region Archives: Canada West

In this edition, you’ll find:

• Summers in BC are synonymous with wildfires and this year is no different. In fact, 2023 is officially BC’s worst wildfire season on record in terms of hectares burned. And woodlots have not gone unscathed.
• General manager continues woodlot tour. Gord Chipman, FBCWA General Manager, has toured many woodlots and by mid-July achieved his goal of connecting with more than 200 woodlot licensees in 2023.
• Registration is now open for the 2023 Woodlot Conference and AGM on October 26-28, 2023 in Cranbrook, BC! 
• Students get their feet on the ground with Project Forest Management. High school students from Nechako Lakes School District took part in the annual Project Forest Management in May.

The Parksville Museum has recently opened the “Mosaic Pavilion”, a new exhibit celebrating the proud history and bright future of forestry on Vancouver Island. The open-air, interactive displays encourage visitors of all ages to discover the majesty of BC’s forests, and to learn about modern, sustainable forest management practices. “Mosaic is committed to giving back to the communities near our working forests, and with our forestry pavilion being the only one of its kind on Central Vancouver Island, it’s allowing us to fill an important community need,” said Rob Gough, Mosaic Forest Management’s President and CEO. “We’ve enjoyed working with the Parksville Museum to create the Mosaic Pavilion, which is sure to educate, delight and inspire visitors to see forests and forestry in an insightful new way.”

Many municipal governments are forced to issue boil water warnings year after year. In addition, their communities suffer repeated flood events. This is widely known. What is not so well known is why. The BC government, in short, has chosen to protect almost none of the province’s numerous watersheds.  Watersheds are being degraded across British Columbia, while the provincial government has not assumed its obligation to sustainably manage forest and water resources. The situation in many communities is so serious that organizations have formed to advocate for watershed protection.  The Peachland Watershed Protection Alliance is one such group.  …The PWPA laments industrial activities and resource extraction occurring within the watershed, which they note is, “the place where you get your drinking water”.  …Already in 2014, the BC Forest Practices Review Board warned that BC legislation protecting watersheds was inadequate.

Advocates against old-growth logging have been blocking a bridge over the Gordon River with a large wooden statue of a screech owl for the past week.  A camp was set up north of Port Renfrew last Saturday to prevent forestry company Teal Jones from accessing cut blocks 7265 and 7263 on Edinburgh Mountain, organizers said on social media.  Savage Patch, an organization that has claimed responsibility for the latest blockades, said they are unrelated to the Rainforest Flying Squad, one of the primary organizers of the 2021 Fairy Creek blockades.  …In a statement to the Times Colonist Saturday, the Pacheedaht Nation said they are asking for blockaders to leave and to respect the First Nation’s right to manage the land.  “These individuals are trespassing on Pacheedaht First Nations territory despite our repeated request,” the statement said. “They do not speak for us, nor represent our interests.”

Half of the biodiversity in forests is unseen because it lives belowground. These organisms are miniscule in size, but their importance to the ecosystem is enormous. In a single teaspoon of forest soil there are thousands of species and billions of individual organisms. …This new appreciation of the importance of living roots in sustaining life belowground should prompt us to rethink forest management. Harvesting trees severs the critical flow of resources belowground, directly reducing the abundance and diversity of soil life. However, harvesting practices that retain living trees within 15 metres of each other, can maintain soil life throughout the harvested area. Forest harvesting practices that retain a portion of the living trees, such as continuous cover forestry and retention forestry can help keep the soil alive in harvested forests.

The British Columbia government has shot and killed 80 barred owls since 2007 as part of a program that is intended to help prevent the extinction of the Northern spotted owl in Canada. The country’s population of spotted owls has continued its catastrophic decline. As of last fall, there was one spotted owl remaining in the wild… However, the province maintains that the lethal removal of barred owls, a natural competitor of spotted owls, is still required. It pins its hopes on a captive breeding program … Wildlife management officials in B.C. have declared the barred owl an invasive species… But some conservationists call the strategy a misdirection – they say the government is scapegoating another species, when the real problem is logging in the old growth forests… Joe Foy of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee said the barred owl [is] a convenient fall guy for decades of logging. [A Globe and Mail subscription is required to read the full story]

The days of fighting wildfires are long and exhausting, so when crews return to camp, the last thing they want to do is search out a place to sleep or find something to eat. Behind the firefighters battling what is B.C.’s most destructive wildfire season is an army of more than 1,400 contracted support staff, doing everything from first aid to sandwich making. Among them is Susanne Callihoo, who manages the Takla incident camp in north−central B.C. for the contract service agency Horizon North. Her job, she explained, is to ensure the camp runs smoothly, that fire crews have all their essential needs met and are as “comfortable” as possible when they finish a shift on the fire lines. “They’re away from home … so we want to keep them well fed and housed,” she said.

Last year, Vancouver-based nonprofit organization Stand.earth put out an investigative report called Tall Talk estimating the risk that old-growth forests are facing across the province. The investigation relied on satellite imagery to conclude that the provincial government has not followed through on its promise to stop (or “defer”) the destruction of at-risk forests. The woman behind the screen in that investigation was Robertson. Robertson has been a senior investigative researcher with Stand.earth since 2020. …“My first experience working in environmentalism was when as a teenager I participated in the blockades to protect Clayoquot Sound, led by [Stand.earth’s international program director] Tzeporah [Berman],” Dasilva said in a release. “I vowed then and there that I would continue fighting for our forests.”

John Rustad

VANDERHOOF BC — Nechako Lakes MLA John Rustad is blaming the B.C. government for its failure to get forestry permits approved as the reason for the province’s latest sawmill curtailment. On Wednesday, citing “a continuing lack of uncertainty around economical log supply,” the Sinclar Group announced it will permanently reduce its sawmill and planer production from two shifts to one at Nechako Lumber in Vanderhoof. Rustad, the leader of the Conservative Party of B.C., says forestry operations in Prince George, Houston, Chetwynd and Merritt are among many other B.C. communities suffering from uncertainty caused by government inaction. “This NDP government’s inability to get forestry permits done is killing well-paid jobs, all across BC,” said Rustad. …The shift elimination will affect 60 workers in Vanderhoof and will also impact twice as many workers in the woods as well as tertiary jobs in the region.

In 2003, BC got a taste of catastrophic, uncontrollable wildfires and the pall of choking smoke lasting months. …The provincial government commissioned former Manitoba premier Gary Filmon to investigate and produce the Firestorm 2003 Provincial Review. …Since the Filmon report started gathering dust in government storage, that one-season damage figure has been eclipsed repeatedly. In the current fire season, we have seen five times more hectares burned compared to 2003 and it isn’t even August. After the Filmon report was delivered, wildfire, floods, climate change and drought have steadily worsened, but action has been consistently placed on the back burner. If 2003 was a wake-up call, British Columbia’s leaders have been hitting the snooze button like some perverse game of Whack-a-Mole. …If the provincial government hits the snooze button again, the opportunity to save what we have will be lost forever.

A bird touches a power line and explodes in a ball of feathers and flame. Its carcass falls to the ground, setting the dried-out brush ablaze. Another “human-caused” fire has begun. Every year, hundreds of wildfires in British Columbia are declared to be “human-caused.” Such statements regularly prompt declarations that if only people behaved themselves, wildfires wouldn’t be quite so disrupting. Others increasingly use the statistic to conspiratorially blame wildfires on “arsonists.” But as our unfortunate bird demonstrates, many fires blamed on humans aren’t actually related to reckless behaviour. Instead, humans play a much more complex and varied influence on wildfire ignitions than many realize. And that has a bearing on how—and when—we seek to prevent such blazes.

In areas that faced wildfire this spring, fields of purple flowers bloomed amidst the scorched trees. It plays an important role in the forest reclamation cycle, and is a plant with many uses. Simon Landhäusser is a professor at the University of Alberta who researches forest land reclamation. He said that the plant may be considered a weed in other places… but it is native to Alberta and is not overly competitive with other species. …Fireweed can serve as a high-quality food source for many animals including pollinators, deer and rabbits, Landhäusser said.” …The plant also fully dies back in the winter and decomposes quickly, Landhäusser explained. This means fireweed is not contributing to a build up of a dry thatch layer — unlike many grasses — which serves as fuel for the next wildfire.

Loss of forest cover is associated with more frequent extreme flooding, as well as more frequent floods of any size, according to new UBC research. While it’s widely thought that loss of forest cover is strongly linked to increased flooding, most studies have suggested that the impact is limited. But the study argues otherwise. “When only 21 per cent of trees in the watershed were harvested, using clearcut logging, the average flood size increased by 38 per cent in the Deadman River and a staggering 84 per cent in Joe Ross Creek,” says first author Robbie Johnson. …Senior author and UBC forestry professor Dr. Younes Alila explains that clearcut logging affects the way snow melts. “Reduced forest cover leads to more snow on the ground and more solar radiation reaching the snowpack. With much less forest cover to catch and shade the snow, more of it melts faster, causing larger floods.”

Ally Briscoe has an impressive resume at just 22-years-old. This past June, the logger sports athlete placed second at the World STIHL TIMBERSPORTS International Women Cup 2023 in Rotterdam, breaking the world record in the single buck, along with setting national records for both underhand chop and stock saw. Briscoe was the youngest person to finish in the top 10. She says that this was her first time flying overseas to compete, but not her first time competing out of the country, as she has competed in southern Washington. “Competing overseas was super exciting and tons of fun,” she said. …Briscoe was born in Campbell River, but resides in Port McNeill. …On Aug. 13, Briscoe will be defending her Canadian Champion title in Chilliwack, after being crowned the Canadian women’s champion in 2022, winning the title in national competition held in PEI.

The public can now use an online interactive tool to check if logging has happened in any B.C. old-growth forest.  Angeline Robertson, project lead for STAND.earth’s new site Forest Eye, says the tool allows the public to see exactly where timber companies have logged in areas the provincial government has designated as old growth.  She said Forest Eye was borne out of frustration.  “What we were struggling with was trying to get information from the government, asking for maps, asking for updated figures, and getting a lot of shaping of those numbers, (telling us that) everything was just fine, that lots of things are being protected.”  …Since then the public and the media have not been able to get basic information about areas that were deferred, including the location, size and status of deferral areas.

Dallas Smith

There are new measures to better protect bear and fish habitat in the globe’s largest remaining coastal temperate rainforest, thanks to First Nations’ increasing role in stewarding the Great Bear Rainforest (GBR). The new protections resulted from the latest five-year review of an agreement between the B.C. Ministry of Forests and two First Nations alliances — Coastal First Nations and Nanwakolas Council — which represent 11 of the 26 Nations with territory in the rainforest. …The original land use agreement signed in 2007 …The latest review, which started in 2021, resulted in a new land use order that goes further in strengthening First Nations’ oversight of logging operations and ensuring a role in forest planning, as well as better protections for biodiversity and Indigenous forest values, Dallas Smith, Nanwakolas board president said. …Eighteen regional monitoring and Indigenous Guardian programs now operate across seven million hectares of land and sea in the GBR ecosystem and First Nations territories. [Full story access may require a subscription to the National Observer]

The extensive project of the past four years to create a fire fuel break along the Buck Flats Road southwest of Houston is a vital tool when it comes to protecting the community, says a senior official with Forest Enhancement Society of B.C. that provided $1 million to finance the work. …“We were very supportive of this project, recognizing the risk of a wildfire coming from the south towards Houston,” said FESBC’s Gord Pratt of the work. …For Pratt and others closely connected with the project, memories go back to 1983 when the Swiss fire burned through 18,000 hectares and six residences along the Buck Flats Road. …The fire fuel break has two components with the first being a fuel-free strip of 150 metres wide on average stretching down 9.7 kilometres of the Buck Flats Road and then a swath of specifically chosen species.