Region Archives: Canada

Lawyers for Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) have succeeded in getting a temporary injunction against harvesting and road work in the Sunshine Coast Community Forest’s (SCCF) EW28 cutblock. EW28, often called the Chanterelle Forest, is one of the three cutblocks the Community Forest put out for tender last month. The injunction, issued by BC Supreme Court Justice Lisa Warren on Dec. 22, runs until Jan. 2 when another hearing is to be held in Vancouver. It was unclear how much work logging contractors were planning to undertake between Christmas and New Year’s Day. ELF has long opposed harvesting in that area, and argued in court that the cutting permit was issued “unreasonably and without procedural fairness.” 

Tim Ryan, Bill McGill, Ralph Archibald

The work at the Forest Practices Board is rewarding for so many reasons, the most important of which is the opportunity we have to interact with the people of BC…  The Board works for all of you.  It is accountable for its work, and I think we all share the same commitment to stewardship – to carefully and responsibly manage the public resources entrusted to our care. This is the essence of stewardship. …My appointment as Chair at the Forest Practices Board has come to an end.  I would like to say it has been a thoroughly enriching and rewarding four years.  The Forest Practices Board staff have been a pleasure to work with, and I would like to personally thank everyone I have met and interacted with.  It has been my honour and privilege. …On December 31, 2017, the appointments of Bill McGill, Vice-Chair, and Ralph Archibald, member, expire.

John Buchanan

The federal government is seeking public input for a review of the province’s professional reliance model, which sees private companies hire professionals, such as scientists and engineers, to conduct studies. The provincial government uses the studies to approve or deny major projects that come before officials at the Environmental Assessment Office.  … Christine Gelowitz, a registered professional forester and the Association of BC Forest Professionals CEO said she welcomed the opportunity to strengthen the results-based professional reliance model.  “Effective oversight and monitoring of B.C.’s vast forests and natural resources is important to the people of B.C.,” Gelowitz said.  Squamish conservationist John Buchanan plans to submit years-worth of data for the review. “Right now we have a problem with the assessment procedure in B.C. and that’s clear,” Buchanan said. 

A petition with around 200 signatures of concerned taxpayers so far is asking for a preventative emergency measure forest maintenance program to deal with fir beetle infected trees in the South Canim Lake area. The area was affected by wildfires over the summer. The letter/petition states there are over 200 infected trees in a one-hectare area, according to an assessment by Canim Lake First Nations forester John Kalmokoff.  Irene McKerlich is organizing the petition and lives in south Canim Lake. She says she volunteered to write the letter after a meeting local residents had. “It’s our area, we had a fire two kilometres from us. Yeah, we’re concerned. If you look at the mountains and see all the red trees it’s kinda like, you just need a lightning strike right and poof it goes again.” 

Martha Barwinsky

The city’s forester said while it’s too soon to tell for certain, it’s believed the emerald ash borer beetle has infested a couple of other trees in addition to one positively identified in St. Boniface, and a more detailed search is coming. The city confirmed the highly destructive beetle had made its way into Winnipeg earlier this month. City forester Martha Barwinsky said the city has been working with biologists from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Manitoba Sustainable Development’s Forestry Branch to survey trees from the ground and by vehicle. She said about 30 people took part in the survey, which served as a training exercise for staff.

Fallers heading to work on a cutblock near New Town yesterday morning found the Old Massett flag and dozens of residents at the gate. The night before, newly elected Chief Councillor Duffy Edgars went door to door through the village to gather support from chiefs and elders and rally people for a blockade. …“I think this is a first for Old Massett — it’s in our own backyard,” Edgars said, noting it’s the first time Old Massett council has opposed such a logging plan. …One of the planned cutblocks is east of New Town, Tlaga Gawtlaas, and Old Massett councillors are concerned that logging it will exacerbate the risk of flooding in the neighbourhood, which already had flooded streets last winter. However, BCTS contracted a hydrologist who found that logging the cutblock wouldn’t pose any significant risk.

Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) said it’s taking legal action against the province and the Sunshine Coast Community Forest in an effort to stop the logging of the Wilson Creek area cutblock EW28, also known as the Chanterelle Forest. The group has long opposed harvesting in that area, and plans to argue in court that the cutting permit was issued “unreasonably and without procedural fairness.” …Community Forest officials appeared recently at a Sechelt council committee meeting to outline the various approval steps needed for the EW28 permit as well as permits for two other blocks they recently put out to tender. Those steps included approval from the shíshálh Nation. … ELF contends the Community Forest “has increasingly made decisions regarding the planning and management of specific cutblocks ‘in the dark,’ without public consultation.”

The Forest Practices Board made a submission to the government’s review of the professional reliance model in British Columbia. The submission is based on the Board’s experience in auditing and investigating forest and range practices throughout the province and reviewing the role of professionals in the course of that work. …However, as the Board has previously noted, there are gaps in the regulatory framework that need to be filled in order to ensure that professional reliance is achieving its full potential and that the public has confidence in government resource management decisions. The Board’s recommendations in this submission focus on correcting these deficiencies. These recommendations address the mandate of the Professional Reliance Review concerning “conditions governing the involvement of qualified professionals in government’s resource management decisions.”

TimberWest intends to harvest a second-growth forest, located in the upper parts of Muir Creek west of Sooke, but the company is willing to discuss its plans with a local environmental group. Monica Bailey, spokesperson for TimberWest, said the forest company recently built a service road off Anderson Road near Muir Creek, to join a reactived TimberWest logging road. This new road and surveyed land had the Muir Creek Preservation Group concerned, fearing that the trees along Muir Creek were going to be logged….However, Bailey said the company does not plan on logging the area of trees that MCPG is concerned with, and the new road was only built because an area of land that intersected with TimberWest’s main line was sold by a third-party.

The recent protest meeting about the future of the Somass sawmill was a huge waste of time and did not prove anything, mainly because of ignoring the facts and reality on the subject. Canada is No. 1 in the world in exporting lumber, but over the years, competition has set in. In order of importance next to Canada being No. 1, the United States, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Russia, Brazil, Austria, and Chile, have come on board in the exercise of lumber exports. With all of these countries now in the field of exporting lumber, facts and reality set in on the future of the Somass Mill. If the mill is to re-open, and to stay open, the No. 1 important factor is that the hourly rates of pay for the various jobs in the mill have to be lowered.

Tim Ryan

In a new report released on Dec. 4, the Forest Practices Board is recommending the provincial government make a number of improvements to the Forest and Range Practices Act (FRPA). These improvements all have been recommended in previous board reports, but government has never implemented the recommendations, according to the report. “The board believes these changes are necessary to improve stewardship of B.C.’s forest and range resources and to maintain public confidence in their management,” says board chair Tim Ryan.“We urge government to move quickly to address these priorities.”

Following FPInnovations and Laval University’s industrial NSERC Chair recommendations, Alberta Transportation recently changed its Winter Weight Premium (WWP) policy allowing an estimated average of 8 days of WWP extension. In Alberta, one of five Canadian provinces to allow premium weights for log hauling and equipment transport (heavy hauling) during the winter, the onset of the WWP season traditionally started when local frost depths reach 1.0 m. Thanks to the recent policy change, it will now start at a frost depth of 0.750 m and end at a thaw depth of 25 cm. This change will also result in more than $2.0 million in savings for the forest sector annually alone.

Shannon Phillips

Alberta on Tuesday released another draft of its overdue and federally mandated plan to protect threatened woodland caribou in the province. The 212-page document includes a timeline for public engagement, as well as proposed strategies to restore herds and habitat. The provincial government has committed to spending more than $85 million over five years to protect the species. There are 15 caribou herds in Alberta. All but four of the herds are dwindling in numbers, according to research from the province. …”We will go back and forth several times with the federal government,” Alberta Environment Minister Shannon Phillips told CBC News Tuesday. “It is up to them, at the end of the day, to determine adequacy because the whole reason we have to file these plans is to fulfil obligations around the Species at Risk Act.”

EDMONTON — Alberta’s draft plan to help threatened woodland caribou recover in 15 different ranges prompted immediate criticism from environmental groups. The plan is in response to a federal deadline under the Species at Risk Act that passed in October. …“Today’s release of incomplete range plans for woodland caribou is Alberta’s second missed deadline to meet a legal requirement to protect caribou habitat,” said Simon Dyer, regional director for Alberta at the Pembina Institute. He said the province has had five years to finalize specific plans, yet the document doesn’t demonstrate how caribou habitat will be protected. “Given Alberta’s deficient plan, we call on the federal government to step in and recommend protection of critical habitat for caribou in Alberta,” said Dyer.

About 70 people marched to Haida Gwaii’s provincial forestry office on Saturday, days after the Council of the Haida Nation issued no-logging orders in a dispute with BC Timber Sales. On the sidelines are two Port Clements logging companies who rely on BCTS for work. But the future of BCTS on Haida Gwaii is itself an open question. Early last week, the Council of the Haida Nation wrote the two companies — O’Brien & Fuerst Logging and Infinity West — telling them not to log timber sales that BCTS recently sold them near Lawn Hill and Nadu Road. In May and July, the CHN rejected plans for those sales, making them among the first from BCTS to go “non-consensus” at the Solutions Table. The main problem, said the CHN, is that both are easy-access, high-value cedar stands that were expected to be part of a future Haida Gwaii Community Forest.

Haida Gwaii’s long-awaited community forest just grew a big step closer.  On Saturday, 20 days after an all-islands push for it, B.C.’s forestry ministry issued a new map for a potential community forest and a formal invitation to apply for one. “In 21 years of pursuing this on Haida Gwaii, this is the first tangible invitation to apply,” said Janine North, executive director of the Misty Isles Economic Development Society (MIEDS), speaking to Queen Charlotte council on Monday night. “We’ll see where it goes from here.” On paper, the proposed community forest includes five areas that should support a total cut of 80,000 m³ a year. But the only allowable cut listed in the ministry’s offer to apply is less than that: 55,000 m³.