Region Archives: Canada West

In part two of his series, Paul Johnson tours a huge clearcut near Prince George, and hears from an area MLA who is calling for the forest industry to pivot away from the practice amid worries the province is ‘logged out’.

VICTORIA, BC – Ecological corridors are key in curbing biodiversity loss and helping species adapt to climate change. By properly linking protected and conserved areas, natural processes can take place and species can move, interact, and find habitat across vast landscapes and seascapes. The Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada, together with Chief Gordon Planes, T’Sou-ke First Nation, announced a shared commitment to support the Indigenous-led Westcoast Stewardship Corridor and to preserve the biodiversity of Vancouver Island, ensuring its longevity for future generations. The Indigenous-led Westcoast Stewardship Corridor is a collaborative initiative among local First Nations on Vancouver Island that is aimed at restoring healthy relationships with the land, waters, plants, animals, people, and Creator…

The logging season in Burns Lake is off to a delayed start this year, leaving many wondering about the reasons behind the unusual change in schedule. Lakes District News reached out to Steve Zika, CEO of Hampton Lumber, to shed light on the matter. In response, Zika provided insights into the factors influencing the delayed logging season, as well as Hampton Lumber’s business performance and plans for the year. According to Zika, the decision to commence logging later than usual is attributed to two primary factors. First, Hampton Lumber entered the year with higher log inventories than normal. This precautionary measure was taken to safeguard against potential log shortages caused by the decline in timber sales from the British Columbia Timber Sales (BCTS). The scarcity of available BCTS timber sales has prompted the need for strategic planning and careful management of resources.

When 17 members of the Last Stand West Kootenay filed into a Nelson courtroom in July 2022, along with supporters, they expected a judge to hear their case and make a decision. But they were wrong. They left the courtroom an hour later in a legal limbo that still exists to this day. In April of that year they had set up a camp at a logging road at Salisbury Creek near Argenta to protest timber company Cooper Creek Cedar’s commencement of logging of the area known as the Argenta-Johnsons Landing Face. The RCMP arrested them on May 17, 2022, for violating a two-year-old civil court injunction that directed them and “persons unknown” not to block the logging road. In court last summer, the group thought the blockaders would be able to state their case against the logging and RCMP arrest tactics. It was not that simple.

The B.C. government has announced changes to improve transparency around logging operations, but critics have more questions than answers. Due to recent changes to the Forest and Range Practices Act, forestry companies will be required to create a map of proposed logging operations available for public review as of April 1, 2024, according to B.C.’s Ministry of Forests. And the public will be able to offer input on what environmental values should be considered for future logging plans. In addition, the province is developing an online mapping system that companies can choose to use to display their map and get public feedback. The system will be fully launched sometime in 2024. …It’s pretty bold of the province to laud increasing public engagement in forestry but not require logging companies to post the maps online in this day and age so people can access them easily, said Jens Wieting with Sierra Club BC.

In the first part of a three-part series, Global’s Paul Johnson travels to Mackenzie, one of the towns hit hardest by the multi-decade collapse of B.C’s forest industry.

British Columbia’s deputy chief forester has set a new allowable annual cut (AAC) level for Tree Farm Licence (TFL) 44, located in west-central Vancouver Island near the Alberni Inlet and Barkley Sound. The new AAC for this TFL is 642,800 cubic metres, a 19% decrease below the previous AAC. The lowered AAC reflects reductions related to buffers adjacent to parks and objectives for the recovery of marbled murrelet. The new AAC also accounts for harvest reductions associated with the culturally significant Thunder Mountain area and a ministerial mandate to allocate unharvested volume to new forest licences. The new AAC also includes a partition where no more than 484,600 cubic metres may be harvested from the economic land base, the area where it is more easily harvested economically. …The TFL 44 licence is held in partnership between Western Forest Products and the Huu-ay-aht First Nation. 

A new report to the City of Nelson on wildfire danger identifies several sections of nearby forest that present serious threats. They are loaded with dead and downed trees and other dry woody debris – perfect fuel for a wildfire. The hazardous areas include more than 200 hectares in the Giveout Creek drainage just south of Nelson, 27.5 hectares at Grohman Creek, 117 hectares in Blewett, and 2.5 hectares near the Nelson cemetery. Dealing with those hazards is one of 33 recommendations in the new draft wildfire resiliency plan presented to council by John Cathro of Cathro Consulting and Monica Nederend of Bruce Blackwell Associates along with the city’s fire chief Jeff Hebert on June 20. Because these forests are outside the city limits and mostly on Crown land, there is little city council can do on its own. Reducing the danger is the job of the Ministry of Forests.

The B.C. government has dropped the amount of wood that can be legally cut in a corner of Vancouver Island vital to the recovery of the marbled murrelet — a migratory seabird threatened under the federal Species at Risk Act.  On Monday, the Ministry of Forests said it was ordering a 19 per cent decrease in the annual allowable cut of Tree Farm Licence (TFL) 44, a swath of forest straddling the Alberni Inlet near Barkley Sound. The province said it adjusted the harvest licence as a buffer to help recover the marbled murrelet, a species that nests in coastal old-growth forests.  But Jens Wieting, the senior forest and climate campaigner for Sierra Club BC, said the reality on the ground does not square with a rationale provided by the province.  “There’s no certainty that marbled murrelet habitat will be protected,” said Wieting.

Immediate steps will help expand public engagement in forest planning and protect some of the most rare and unique forest habitats throughout the province.  Regulations are being amended to strengthen forest management, including new requirements for forest licence holders to publish forest operations maps, new legal protection for rare habitats called “ecological communities” and enhanced management for designated recreation sites and trails.  …A key feature of the new regulations is the requirement for forest companies to publish a Forest Operations Map. Companies will soon be required to make available maps of proposed cutblocks and roads for public feedback into how harvesting can account for environmental values while responding to economic opportunity.  The Province has developed a web-based tool that companies will have the option to use to display these maps and invite public feedback. 

Recent information obtained by SkeenaWild Conservation Trust shows that between 2019 and 2020, the B.C. government quietly cancelled 1.35 million acres of public recreation and conservation and land areas in northwestern B.C. The cancelled lands are almost double the size of Metro Vancouver, with many being popular recreational areas such as Klinger Lake, Tyee Mountain, Atlin and the Stewart estuaries.  The cancellations open up these areas to industrial development and logging.  After decades of land use planning between government, diverse community interests and dedicated government habitat biologists, the provincial government had designated these lands in the Skeena region for fish, wildlife, conservation, recreational use and potential protected areas under the Land Act.  But then, without due process, these land protections were cancelled quietly and without due process.

Immediate steps will help expand public engagement in forest planning and protect some of the most rare and unique forest habitats throughout the province. Regulations are being amended to strengthen forest management, including new requirements for forest licence holders to publish forest operations maps, new legal protection for rare habitats called “ecological communities” and enhanced management for designated recreation sites and trails. …We are boosting forest conservation to better support ecosystem health, including rare and critical habitat,” said Bruce Ralston, Minister of Forests. …Companies will soon be required to make available maps of proposed cutblocks and roads for public feedback into how harvesting can account for environmental values while responding to economic opportunity. ..This new category establishes protections for rare habitats that are home to unique plants and support animals at risk.

Cochrane and area residents accustomed to seeing transport trucks loaded with logs coming in to town and piles of Spray Lake Sawmills lumber heading in the other direction may not be aware of what’s involved in the life cycle that sustains the harvest.  And while money doesn’t grow on trees, the 80-year-old company is keenly aware of the central role that growing trees plays in ensuring they may be around for another 80. Environmentalists and trail-users have been voicing concerns about the Cochrane-based company’s plans to log in the popular recreation area around West Bragg Creek, scheduled to start in 2026. That discussion will be taken up publicly again in 2024, when the next open house is held.  Philosophical differences aside, what may not be widely recognized is the fact that, purely from an economic standpoint, responsible environmental stewardship is in Spray Lake Sawmills’ interest.

VANCOUVER ISLAND, BC — The fall out from the protests has been mixed. The provincial government has enacted a series of temporary logging deferrals of key swaths of endangered old-growth forests and publicly crowed about a 42 per cent decrease in old-growth logging. But with all the active cut blocks the protestors tried to save, tens of millions of dollars of public money spent on police enforcement — the question of “was it worth it?” remains front and centre for many activists. “We believed that we would save these places,” Will O’Connell said. …But the cut blocks in the Caycuse were harvested. …However, for the Fairy Creek watershed itself, the province announced a two-year deferment of logging. …Crown prosecutors laid more than 400 charges. …If the protesters feel like they didn’t win — neither does Teal Jones. The long-term impact of the blockades on the logging company has been meaningful, said Conrad Browne, for the Teal Jones Group.

…Across the country, provincial firefighting services rely on a mixture of local recruits, municipal firefighters, aid from overseas and the Canadian Armed Forces. We need a national response, and probably a national forest firefighting service. Unfortunately, things aren’t going to get better. Climate change means that temperatures will keep rising, and even when we get a damp year or two, the dry years will be drier, and more prone to fire. Plus, in a country as big as Canada, we are likely to see at least one region suffering a bad forest fire season every year, and in some years – like this one – it’ll be awful coast to coast. …The natural instinct in politics is to pass the buck, and firefighting has long been provincial jurisdiction. But fires don’t respect borders, including provincial borders. As they get worse, we’ll need to reconsider how we fight them.

With another wildfire, flooding and drought season upon us – one that is forecasted to be the same if not worse than last year for British Columbia and already causing a state of emergency in other parts of the country – it is abundantly clear that the province’s forests are in desperate need of nurturing and communities are gasping for change. A recent Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest Thompson Nicola Regional District library speaking tour was a profound reminder of what so many community members are eager to hear more about – how to protect their communities from further climate change and forest loss devastation. Instead of wanting to hear more about the home-grown award-winning book and writing process, TNRD residents from libraries throughout the region repeatedly asked questions about what they can do to ensure their communities can remain healthy and intact for generations to come. 

Ed Johnson, Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Calgary, said this year is turning out to be unusual for spruce trees across Calgary and he reckons he hasn’t seen such a large number of cones in 40 years. …Producing cones is a “survival strategy” that plants use to protect themselves from seed predators. “Most years there’s very little seeds being produced and the seed predators can’t harvest a lot of it,” Johnson said. “But randomly they produce large numbers of seeds … which satiates the predators and so consequently more seeds survive.”  …Gerard Fournier, arborist, added that the hot and dry weather in 2021 “stressed the trees out” and led to a massive number of cones last year. “You could sort of imagine it as if the trees think that their lives are in danger and they got to put a lot of energy into reproduction,” he said.

VICTORIA – The Forest Practices Board will examine the activities of the BC Timber Sales (BCTS) program and timber-sale licence holders in the Boundary Timber Supply Area (TSA) portion of the Kootenay Business Area. The Boundary TSA covers approximately 659,000 hectares and is administered by the Selkirk Natural Resource District. It includes the communities of Grand Forks, Christina Lake, Greenwood, Midway, Rock Creek, Bridesville and Beaverdell. First Nations territories overlapping the Boundary TSA include the Okanagan Nation Alliance, Lower Similkameen Indian Band, Penticton Indian Band, Adams Lake Indian Band, Okanagan Indian Band, Osoyoos Indian Band, Shuswap Indian Band, Splats’in, and Westbank First Nation. The TSA has numerous lakes, streams and diverse forests that support a variety of fish and wildlife species.  

Houston, B.C. – A project to reduce wildfire risk, establish a defensible fuel-free zone, and modify the amount of forest fuels has been successfully completed south of the District of Houston through Forest Enhancement Society of BC funding. The project took a large-scale effort of the District, BC Wildfire Service (BCWS), Houston’s Fire Chief, the Ministry of Forests, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, and several other stakeholders working together. Pro-Tech Forest Resources Ltd. lead the project.  The goals were to reduce wildfire risks in areas identified in the 2018 Houston Community Wildfire Protection Plan and establish a defensible fuel-free zone for future fire personnel. The project in total covered a 9.7 km long, 1,202.1 hectares interface zone along the southwest boundary of the district. Despite delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the project was completed successfully, including planting 330,000 trees in July 2022.

Just days after thousands of residents of Alberta’s Yellowhead County were allowed to return home following their second evacuation in only a few weeks due to forest fires, it’s now flooding that’s forcing some county residents to flee. An evacuation order was issued late Monday afternoon for residents in Lower Robb, about 250 kilometres west of Edmonton, due to heavy rainfall, although other areas of Robb are not affected by the order. Earlier in the afternoon, the county declared a state of local emergency due to overland flooding, and Chief Administrative Officer Luc Mercier told an online video update there are numerous roads in the county that are inundated with water. He warned people not to drive over roads covered with water because they could actually be washed out.