Region Archives: Canada

A BC Liberal MLA is slamming the NDP government over its plans to ban grizzly bear hunting in the province. …On Monday, the New Democrats announced that all grizzly hunting, save for traditional First Nations hunts, would be stopped immediately. …Speaking on CKNW’s The Simi Sara Show, Kamloops-North Thompson MLA Peter Milobar called the decision a cynical political calculation. “[It’s] nothing more than an appeasement due to the Site C decision,” he said. …“If that’s how we’re going to start making wildlife conservation policy in this province, I don’t think we need a minister of environment anymore, we need an online polling company.”

VICTORIA – An audit of Lakeside Pacific Forest Products Limited on Forest Licence A19207 has found Lakeside met the requirements of the Forest and Range Practices Act and the Wildfire Act, according to a Forest Practices Board report released today, Dec. 19, 2017. Lakeside’s operations are on the east and west sides of Harrison Lake, near Chilliwack. “Lakeside operates in an area with significant recreation values and high public use. With that comes high public expectations and they must conduct their operations with care,” said board chair Tim Ryan. “The board is pleased to see that Lakeside is meeting all of its legal obligations for planning, harvesting, road construction and maintenance, reforestation and fire protection.”

Burns Lake Community Forest Ltd. (BLCF) has been granted Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certification with Ecotrust Canada, a national non-profit organization. The FSC Forest Management Certification has the most rigorous forest management standards in the world. It is a voluntary market-based system available to forestry organizations who want to demonstrate responsible forest management by having their planning and practices independently reviewed by third-party auditors. The certification helps protect the people, plant, and animal species that live around, and depend on, the forest. BLCF holds strong principles of developing strong working relations with First Nations partners supported by the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and operates with rigorous environmental standards while examining economic opportunities. These ambitious standards helped the BLCF achieve the certification.

BC Forests Minister Doug Donaldson has confirmed the NDP government has ended the trophy hunting of grizzly bears. The fall grizzly hunting season ended Nov. 30, with new rules taking effect that allow hunters to take bear meat but not the head, paws or hide of bears that are prized as trophies. Donald said Monday the scheduled spring 2018 hunt for grizzly bears is cancelled. Donaldson said all grizzly hunting has ended, except for Indigenous hunting for food, social and ceremonial purposes. …An October 2017 report on the hunt by B.C. Auditor General Carole Bellringer found that hunting is not the biggest threat to bears. The greatest risk to B.C.’s grizzly bear population is not hunting but degradation of habitat from forestry, oil and gas development and human settlement, Bellringer concluded. The audit also found that from 2006 to 2015, there were 389 bears killed as a result of human-bear conflicts.

The spruce beetle, a forest pest that is native to spruce forests and attacks the inner bark of these trees, continues to be a growing concern in B.C. According to the province’s latest areal overview survey, the total infested area in B.C. has nearly doubled this year – from 283,083 hectares in 2016 to 501,873 hectares in 2017. Over 8100 hectares of forests have been damaged by spruce beetle in the Lakes timber supply area (TSA) – a significant increase from 2016, when 1200 hectares had been damaged, and from the 58 hectares damaged in 2014. While the situation has gotten worse in the Lakes TSA, the Morice TSA has remained fairly stable. Over 2900 hectares were affected in 2017 – similar to 2014. The situation is much more severe in the Prince George TSA, where 275,108 hectares were affected in 2017 – almost double than the 142,837 hectares affected in 2016.

George Heyman

The hunting of grizzly bears for trophies and food is banned effective immediately across B.C., the NDP government announced Monday in a major policy shift. “Protecting this iconic species is simply the right thing to do,” Minister of Environment George Heyman told a news conference in Vancouver. …Environmentalists still reeling from the government’s decision last week to proceed with the Site C hydroelectric dam … are understandably ecstatic to see the grizzly hunt end. “I think it’s tremendous news,” said Joe Foy of the Wilderness Committee. “I’m over the moon. It’s a pretty great Christmas present. It’s been a long time coming. People in B.C. do not want the grizzly bear hunt.”  …Doug Donaldson [forests minister] emphasized the government remains committed to upholding B.C.’s hunting tradition despite taking the grizzly bear off the list of species one can hunt.

A forest advocacy group says it has discovered an unprotected old-growth forest that is home to a near-record sized Sitka spruce tree on Vancouver Island. The Ancient Forest Alliance says the 3.3-metre wide tree was found on lands owned by TimberWest Corporation, near the town of Port Renfrew, also known as Canada’s tall tree capital. According to the Big Tree Registry, the tree is the tenth widest Sitka spruce in Canada. Now the group, which lobbies to keep old-growth forests from being logged, is petitioning B.C.’s New Democrat government to buy the land from TimberWest.  …TimberWest and B.C.’s Ministry of Forests have been contacted with a request for information about potential plans for the area.

VICTORIA – In a move to better align harvest practices with the intent of the chief forester’s allowable annual cut decisions, changes are being made to how timber partitions are enforced throughout British Columbia. When making allowable annual cut (AAC) decisions, the chief forester can specify portions of the harvest attributable to different timber types, geographic areas or types of terrain. Harvest limits to reflect partitions within individual licence agreements can then be set by ministerial order if voluntary compliance with the partition is not achieved. “The chief forester makes use of partitions to protect the sustainability of B.C. timber supply, and we need the necessary tools to fairly enforce those partitions and track how they are working in the field,” said Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development Doug Donaldson.

Sechelt Mayor Bruce Milne took the unusual step of appearing as a delegate in front of his council’s committee of the whole Dec. 6 to shed some light on how council is dealing with the latest controversy over the Community Forest (SCCF). … As SCCF’s sole shareholder, through Sechelt Community Projects Inc., Sechelt council has been under pressure to call off the planned harvesting. The group Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) has argued that EW28 should be preserved because it has high recreational and ecological value and falls partially within the area marked out in the Roberts Creek Official Community Plan for potential inclusion if the province ever decides to expand Mt. Elphinstone Provincial Park. … “There was no uptake of that notion at the ministerial level… It’s considered by the ministry as part of the working forest and a delay would not really have the affect we have in mind.”

Researchers at the University of British Columbia are using drones to investigate how much damage the 2017 wildfire season wreaked on B.C.’s forests. By flying the unmanned machines over B.C.’s Interior, graduate students and a professor in forestry can not only see the size of the area burned but can also use the drones’ high-resolution images to create 3D models of the forests. “We can observe the effect and severity of the fire on each individual tree and use all this information to really understand the general patterns in which fires occur,” Nicholas Coops, the Canada research chair in remote sensing and a UBC professor, said in a release. Previously, forests were surveyed using aerial imagery and satellite imagery. Those images have a rather coarse resolution, and the ones taken by drones are much higher quality. The new technology enables researchers to see forest details down to the centimetre.

A B.C.-based forest advocacy group has recently found an ancient grove, home to one of the biggest Sitka spruce trees in the country, on Vancouver Island. …The forest … is located on lands owned by TimberWest Forest Corp. …According to a statement sent to The Globe and Mail, TimberWest said it has protected the Sitka spruce tree and the surrounding stand for many years, and it isn’t planning to change its operation. “We are committed to the responsible stewardship of our working forest, and actively solicit the input of interested stakeholders to strike the appropriate balance between ecological, social and economic interests. There are no plans to deviate from the conservation status of this grove in our inventory management,” TimberWest’s spokeswoman Monica Bailey said in an e-mail.

Two B.C. cabinet ministers have more to say about the controversial hunting of grizzly bears in the province. On Monday morning, Natural Resources Minister Doug Donaldson and Environment Minister George Heyman will make an announcement from Vancouver regarding grizzlies. On Dec. 8 Donaldson said a consultation process was completed to help craft regulations around the future of the grizzly bear hunt in the province. …Under the new rules, it’s illegal to hunt grizzlies for sport, when an animal is killed for its parts — the head, paws or hide — and not its meat. …About 250 grizzlies are killed annually by hunters in B.C., a number Donaldson said is “sustainable” for the population estimated at 15,000 bears, but he said public opinion on the practice has turned.

Tensions between the Council of the Haida Nation and the province of British Columbia have escalated, with the Haida telling forestry companies they will not be allowed to log timber sold to them by the province. Letters have been sent to two companies who recently purchased logging rights on Haida Gwaii, saying that because the Haida Nation did not approve the purchases, they will not be recognized. The letters are the latest in a series of actions the nation has taken to express its displeasure with the province’s management of forestry assets on the archipelago off B.C.’s West Coast. Haida Nation president kil tlaats ‘gaa (Peter Lantin) has warned frustration among the Haida “has built up to a place where it’s going to build up.”

B.C. environmentalists want Ottawa to take measures to protect mountain caribou, which they consider to be in imminent danger of extinction. The University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre and the Valhalla Wilderness Society have presented a petition to federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna claiming that all 10 of B.C.’s most southerly mountain caribou populations are at risk.  They’re seeking federal cabinet approval of an emergency order under the Species at Risk Act that would put in place strategies to conserve the populations. …The petition says that a provincial strategy to recover the caribou has failed because the government has refused to curb most logging of the caribous’ old-growth forest habitat and has also neglected to implement snowmobile bans recommended by its own team of biologists.

Tyler Berry won what appears to be the Northwest Guide Outfitters last award for best grizzly bear Dec. 2. “It took us 50 hours on horseback, 10 days of grueling hunting, it didn’t come easy,” said Berry of the journey to get the bear. “I’ve been in the bush for 13 years, since I was 17. I’m 30 now and that was my first grizzly guided hunt that I’ve done and it could be the last.” The Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development said while the ban on trophy hunting is in effect, the regulations are currently being finalized. Under the ban it is illegal for a hunter to keep a grizzly’s head, paws or hide after a kill.

Saskatchewan has approved another $300,000 toward the continued implementation of a strategy to try and stop the spread of a beetle that has devastated forests further west. That brings the amount of cash available from Saskatchewan to fight the mountain pine beetle in northern Alberta this fiscal year to $800,000 total. The mountain pine beetle affected forests in British Columbia with particularly bad outbreaks in the ’80s and ’90s, and has spread into Alberta. It’s native to Canada but is spreading beyond its historic geographic range and into the boreal forest. There are about 34,000,000 hectares of boreal forest in Saskatchewan, with 11.7 million of those hectares falling in the commercial forest zone. Forestry is the second largest industry in northern Saskatchewan, accounting for nearly $1 billion in forest product sales in 2016.

For Stewart Fraser, guiding has been his lifeblood for the past 20 years. He knows his territory in the Nazko area like the back of his hand and the guide area has been his livelihood and provided for his family. When the Plateau wildfire raged through his territory this summer, destroying his ranch and everything he worked so hard to establish, Stewart says he was devastated. “This fire was started by Mother Nature, but went rogue through human mismanagement.” It’s a four-part story for this land-based businessman, who has watched the evidence pile up over the years and has viewed the results firsthand. …The game changed dramatically in 2012 when the Province introduced professional reliance, which replaced the existing FPC and put monitoring in the hands of the large licencees.

It’s not surprising that forest companies cancelled their appearance at Monday’s Port Alberni city council meeting. The vitriol and threats spewing from a few members of the public angry that these companies are blocking access to the backcountry is enough to make anyone hesitate facing a crowd. The negativity and vigilantism is also making it difficult for those backcountry enthusiasts who are trying to come to an agreement with the companies. How can any progress be made when people are threatening on social media to destroy private property, no matter how empty these boasts may be? …The logging companies owe backcountry users in the Alberni Valley a conversation about access. Residents owe the companies some civility to allow that meeting to happen. Both sides need to think about solutions.