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VICTORIA – The Forest Practices Board will examine the activities of A&A Trading Ltd. (A&A) and Terminal Forest Products Ltd. (Terminal) on forest licence A19229, in the Sunshine Coast Natural Resource District, during the week of July 9, 2018. Auditors will examine whether harvesting, roads, silviculture, fire protection and associated planning, carried out by A&A and Terminal between July 1, 2016, and July 13, 2018, met the requirements of the Forest and Range Practices Act and the Wildfire Act. The audit area is located near Sechelt and Powell River, in the Sunshine Coast Timber Supply Area (TSA). Forest licence A19229 has an allowable annual cut of 125,966 cubic metres per year, and is located on rugged and remote terrain, accessible only by helicopter and boat. The TSA is home to several species at risk, including the marbled murrelet and the northern goshawk.

Provincial forest officials have started work on deciding how much wood can be cut in the Lakes Timber Supply Area (TSA), a crucial determination for local mills, other resource users and for the economic base of the Lakes District. The last annual allowable cut (AAC) was set in 2011 at 2 million cubic metres a year but adjusted downward to approximately 1.6 million cubic metres in 2016 when the Lake Babine Nation was granted tenure and the Chinook Community Forest was created. AACs are set approximately every 10 years but can be varied depending upon local conditions and circumstances. Forest officials examine the total forest base, deducting areas and locations for example to safeguard wildlife populations, to account for old growth forests and to protect areas for their visual attributes.

The B.C. practice of requiring natural resource firms to hire their own consultants for environmental impact studies needs more oversight, a new report argues. The independent review, written by Forest Practices Board general counsel Mark Haddock, calls on the province to create a new provincial office that would oversee all of the professional organizations that regulate the experts who do that assessment work. That’s just of one of 121 recommendations in Haddock’s report, which has prompted backlash from industry groups, but is being praised by longtime critics of the system known as professional reliance. Professional reliance depends on people like foresters, biologists and engineers who are paid directly by industry to ensure that projects meet all requirements set out by the government. That work used to be the responsibility of civil servants, but it was outsourced by the B.C. Liberals early last decade as part of a core review of government services.

Two hundred and twenty three international scientists have just signed a letter saying it’s vitally important for the B.C. government to protect the last remaining bits of temperate rainforest on Vancouver Island RIGHT NOW. Good luck with that. That is, we’ve been hearing the same arguments for years, and nothing ever changes except the size of the Island’s old-growth forests, which environmentalists say are shrinking at the rate of two football fields an hour, 24 hours a day. … The government responds that it isn’t sitting on its hands. A statement issued by Forests Minister Doug Donaldson talks of spending $16 million over three years to modernize the land-use process and says “work is well under way on a more robust old-growth forests strategy.” …Nor will this reality: B.C.’s year-old NDP government, up to its ears in everything from housing affordability to money laundering, doesn’t have much room on an already-long to-do list.

The City of Campbell River will officially ask the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development for a moratorium on logging activities within the Snowden Demonstration Forest. BC Timber Sales was set to begin field layout this summer for harvesting five blocks of timber with an expected yield of 20,000 cubic metres. …in a report received by council from the city’s long range planning and sustainability manager Amber Zirnhelt, it was recommended that the city write to minister Doug Donaldson requesting a minimum two-year moratorium on all logging activities so that planning can be completed “to help shape Snowden’s future prior to harvesting occurring that will take 60-80 years for regrowth.” “Without a long term management plan for Snowden its future is uncertain, and the overall impacts of future harvesting are unclear,” Zirnhelt’s report states.

When a dam holding back a massive amount of highly toxic water gave way at the Mount Polley mine in August 2014, it triggered more than one of the worst environmental disasters in Canadian history. It exposed the dark underside of the B.C. government’s policy of drumming large numbers of public servants out of the business of protecting our environment and turning much of that work over, instead, to the private sector. …When things function properly, those decisions are effectively scrutinized by professional associations and by registered professionals working for the government, both there to protect the public interest. …The Watts case highlights another disturbing aspect of the “professional reliance” model, and that’s the degree to which senior public servants and professional associations may squelch the views of an outside expert or professional if those views cast doubt on how other professionals conduct themselves.

MANAMA, Bahrain — A stretch of boreal forest along the Manitoba-Ontario boundary has won international recognition for its pristine environment and connection with Indigenous culture. Pimachiowin Aki — an Ojibwa phrase that means ‘the land that gives life’ — has been deemed a world heritage site by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO. The relatively untouched boreal forest is 29,000 square kilometres –more than half the size of Nova Scotia — and is home to four First Nations that continue to practise traditional land use. … The UNESCO designation is intended to ensure areas such as Pimachiowin Aki are protected from future development and to help boost tourism. The Manitoba government has spent more than $15 million over the last 13 years to support the UNESCO bid, while Ontario has put up about $1 million.