Category Archives: Forestry

An international team of scientists has published a new peer-reviewed study on the importance of protecting primary forests in B.C.’s interior wetbelt (IWB) bioregion for the climate.  Scientists from the University of Northern BC, Griffith University in Australia, the Conservation Biology Institute in Oregon, Wild Heritage in Oregon and Conservation North were part of the study. …According to Dr. Dominick DellaSala, “The region contains under-appreciated carbon stocks. In their natural state, these forests constitute an irreplaceable natural climate solution, but we’re turning them into lumber and threatening to turn them into pellets.” …“For the very first time, we have a comprehensive assessment of how important BC’s interior rainforests are to the global climate and how much has been lost to logging. In the case of climate change, the forest is worth far more standing then cut down for wood products.”

Ben Parfitt

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says in a new report that logging companies in B.C. are quickly cutting down available trees, and that supply is dwindling. In the report, resource policy analyst Ben Parfitt writes that the amount of wood expected to be harvested in the coming years is half the amount logged 15 years ago. At the time, the province was dealing with the catastrophic pine beetle infestation… harvesting dead trees before they rotted away. …Parfitt reports that while pine trees harvested has now dramatically declined, harvest of other species including spruce, fir, hemlock and cedar has increased to replace them. “We are running out of trees in British Columbia,” he said. “The industry has logged too much, too quickly, with the government’s blessing.” …Follow-up questions from CBC News, which included Parfitt’s concern that the supply of trees to harvest in the province is dwindling, weren’t answered.

Additional Coverage in Policynote, by Ben Parfitt: The last of the green gold: With the best trees gone and revenues plummeting, what’s next?

Village of Burns Lake council approved a motion during an April 5 meeting to submit a resolution to the North Central Local Government Association and Union of B.C. Municipalities to lobby the province to maintain the current tabular rate stumpage structure for community forests. This comes after the Burns Lake Community Forest sent an information package to council from the B.C. Community Forest Association containing reasons not to change the current structure. The package stated that tabular rates account for the added costs and objectives involved in the management of community forests and provide simplified administration and flexibility that enables innovative forest management that is responsive to community needs and priorities. …”The proposed policy change undermines the ability of community forests to achieve the very objectives and benefits that the government, communities, and First Nations partners seek and value,” said Burns Lake Community Forest General Manager Frank Varga.

Contractors who responded to Sunshine Coast Community Forest’s (SCCF) call for tenders for logging of cutblock EW 24 will be waiting until further input is received from the shíshálh Nation to hear if the work will proceed. “In EW24, as with all areas we operate in, we go through a multi-step review process with the shíshálh Nation. This includes an archaeological assessment conducted by the shíshálh Nation’s archaeologist,” SCCF administrator Sara Zieleman said. “This assessment … is subject to final review and acceptance by the shíshálh Nation’s technical team, and hiwus and council. EW24 was still in the midst of this process when an area was identified which required further archaeological review.” …Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) expressed concerns that the location may be of archaeological significance. …ELF has also stated opposition to logging of EW 24 as the cutblock is located within the Sunshine Coast Regional District’s (SCRD) Chapman Creek community watershed. 

Doug Kerley

By the end of the Easter long weekend Creekside Wood Supply’s sawmill will have fallen silent. Mill owner Doug Kerley said there simply isn’t enough wood to keep his employees working and the business viable. Kerley attributes the shortage to a variety of things but maintains that the government’s policy around opening areas to timber harvest is the main culprit. The areas where Kerley can log are now slim pickings after years of harvesting, he told the News. He said he needs trees he can cut a six-by-six piece of lumber out of, or it isn’t worth staying in operation. He says the supply of those trees has dwindled and his efforts to lobby for new harvest areas have not been successful. …Kerley will shut down his mill but doesn’t plan to sell the equipment immediately, leaving time for a restart if more timber can be found.

QUESNEL, BC –Effective immediately, Albert Nussbaum, BC’s acting deputy chief forester, has set a new allowable annual cut level for Tree Farm Licence 53 in the central Interior near Quesnel. The new AAC for the TFL is 240,000 cubic metres. This is an increase of approximately 9.6% which was set in 2010. The new AAC reflects objectives for all forest resource values and input provided by the Lheidli T’enneh Nation. …TFL 53 is held by Dunkley Lumber Ltd. and covers an area of 87,839 hectares. The TFL was heavily affected by the mountain pine beetle epidemic that peaked in the mid 2000s, and the licensee implemented a successful salvage program. …The deputy chief forester’s AAC determination is an independent, professional judgement, based on information ranging from technical forestry reports, First Nations and public input, and the government’s social and economic goals.

In the summer of 2021–, founder and CEO of Ecoflix,– David Casselman, asked me to travel on behalf of Ecoflix to Fairy Creek, British Columbia on Vancouver Island.  British Columbia on Vancouver Island. The plan was to document  the battle to save Old Growth trees in British Columbia, but also to bring in a broader  perspective of global ancient forest destruction in the Amazon and elsewhere. The Last Stand film’s content is divided between the protest at Fairy Creek, and the  impact of industry and government on Amazonian rainforests and Asian jungles. Everyone involved in this struggle understands that we need wood in our societies for a  lot of purposes. …Even the most fervent  protestors we spoke do agreed that this is a battle not against logging, but for the  Ancient Trees. …The Last Stand can be streamed from 22nd April on Ecoflix.com.

VERNON, BC — A book showing the experiences of people impacted by the White Rock Lake wildfire is being released to support two great causes. Virginia Dansereau was a volunteer with Emergency Support Services in Vernon during the fire when she started writing down stories and quotes from people who came in seeking help. She met two other volunteers, Sue Urquhart and Heather Clay [and] together they decided to publish a book; ‘Smoke and Ash: Reflections on the 2021 Vernon B.C. Area Fires’ about the massive wildfire containing photos, paintings, short stories, experiences and poems. …Despite the impact the fire had on people’s properties and both mental and physical health, there is a message of resilience. …The book launch is April 23.

If a major forest company can do it, so can the Municipality of North Cowichan.  That’s the take away message from the announcement that Mosaic Forest Management — B.C.’s biggest holder of private forest lands — is deferring logging on 40,000 hectares to pursue the sale of carbon credits.  The logging deferral covers an area eight times larger than the 5,000-hectare municipal forest reserve and will be in effect for at least 25 years.  The initiative offers a potential new path for North Cowichan, which is in the midst of two consultations — one with the public, the other with First Nations — on the future of the municipal forest reserve, also known as the Six Mountains.  …The UBC Partnership Group — UBC forestry, 3Green Tree Consulting, and Coastal Douglas-Fir Conservation Partnership — will be presenting forest management options soon for the public’s consideration.

To industry, certain plants — salal, huckleberry, red alder, and more — may be seen as pests impeding the growth of cash crops. But for Indigenous Peoples, they are traditional foods and medicines that have been relied upon for millennia.  In a recent proposal, B.C. Timber Sales, a government agency that manages about 20 per cent of the timber allowed to be cut each year, outlined a five-year pest management planfor its Chinook business area. It covers lands stretching from Squamish to Hope. …The plan outlines various options for dealing with so-called pest species, from manually cutting the brush back to spraying glyphosate-based herbicides. …The Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw said it had “expressed concerns about the potential risks to the nation’s inherent rights. The nation agreed to the pest management plan on the condition that BC Timber Sales must have written consent from Squamish Nation before any herbicides can be sprayed.

The B.C. government is allocating $10 million of federal funding to help create jobs and diversify the economies of communities in the Mackenzie and Peace regions.The Intergovernmental Partnership Agreement for the Conservation of the Central Group of the Southern Mountain Caribou (Partnership Agreement) was signed in February 2020 and includes commitments to help caribou populations recover and protect more than 700,000 hectares of important caribou habitat in northeastern B.C. …As part of the Partnership Agreement process, the federal government provided $10 million to the B.C. government to help create jobs and alleviate potential impacts in the Peace Region, especially within 100 kilometres of the communities of Mackenzie, Chetwynd and Tumbler Ridge. The fund will grow these local economies while showcasing the province’s natural treasures.

Re: “B.C. defers cutting big swaths of old‑growth,” April 2. Les Leyne reports that the Council of ­Forest Industries says that old-growth deferrals will result in the closure of “a dozen sawmills at a cost of up to 18,000 jobs.” If COFI is worried about mill ­closures, they should be pressing the NDP government to halt raw log exports and send these logs to B.C. mills. In 2019, 5.1 million cubic metres of raw logs were exported. COFI should also be pressing the government to stop exporting cants. …I have contacted the ministry to find out how many cants are exported each year, and … as one wrote: “We don’t collect data on cants.” From my perspective, this is one way to hide these logs as timber and not the raw logs that they are.

During routine inspections of culverts and bridges in Tree Farm Licence 46 on Vancouver Island recently, our crews found several culverts had been blocked with plywood, rebar rods, rocks, wood, and an old tire. It appears this was done by the same blockaders who posted brags about clogging the culverts last fall. We’d cleared these culverts out and regularly inspected them over the winter, so they were vandalised sometime in the last month. …Properly engineering forestry roads and the related bridges and culverts to ensure water flows well across them is a critical aspect of how Teal Jones acts responsibly on the land. Improperly placed or plugged culverts and bridges can lead to washouts and landslides that damage the environment, destroy fish habitat, and put the lives of the public and forestry workers at risk. Vandalism and deliberate blocking of culverts and damage to bridges is a crime. …We have reported the incident to provincial authorities, who are investigating.

The future of the old-growth forest of Enterprise Creek is still uncertain. Although no official deferral has been announced for the area, Interfor Corporation has agreed to bring a team — which includes Last Stand West Kootenay, the Autonomous Sinixt and the Valhalla Wilderness Society — on a walk through the area before commencing logging… Although that sentiment also applies to Russel Creek and Koch Creek, both of which contain old growth forest deferral zones, it is worrisome that logging of the old-growth areas is still a consideration, said Valhalla Wilderness Society director, Craig Pettitt. …On March 29 the ad hoc group met with Interfor and Tara DeCourcy, district manager for the Selkirk Region with the Ministry of Forests, to discuss the situation. This was the second meeting with Interfor since the Enterprise Creek blockade, where people, led by Autonomous Sinixt matriarch Marilyn James, prevented loggers from cutting old growth forest in Enterprise Creek.

The province’s forests and the forestry industry have a role to play in climate change, says one of the region’s industry professionals.  Stuart Card, chief forester with Castlegar’s Interfor, said climate change is front and centre in today’s society but a sustainable forest management practice could lower greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and contribute to the climate adaptation as well.  “Forest management, active forest management, it’s going to assist with the fight against climate change, it’s going to help us minimize and mitigate catastrophic fire years,” he told city council recently.  …Coun. Jesse Woodward had asked Card, and other members of the Council of Forest Industries (COFI) representatives who appeared before council, about the battle for perpetual growth in forestry, with the need to re-wild the landscape so it could store carbon.  …A healthy forest means a stronger weapon against climate change, said Card.

EDMONTON – The Alberta government has released recovery plans for two herds of threatened caribou in the province’s north that it says will bring the amount of usable habitat on their ranges up to the level required by a deal signed with Ottawa.  “(These) plans make good on our commitment to take action on caribou recovery while maintaining local industry and jobs and building strong communities,” said a statement from Environment and Parks Minister Jason Nixon.  … But one observer who’s been closely involved with drafting the plans said the final documents delay most of the hard work for at least a decade and lack specifics on how habitat will be maintained and restored.   “If we’re not doing much in the next five to 10 years, that just kicks some of the hard decisions down the road,” said Carolyn Campbell of the Alberta Wilderness Association.

With wildfire season on the horizon, months of controlled burning have come to an end on Westbank First Nation land.  … Between November 2021 and April 2022, nine parcels of land were combed through by forestry crews, who removed dead and hazardous trees, ladder fuels, and brush vegetation. This work aims to slow any possible wildfires that may move through the area in the future.  “With the increase in wildfire intensity we have seen over the past few years, this mitigation work has come at an optimal time,” WFN Chief Christopher Derickson said in a press release.  …“In most of the treatment units our primary focus was to maintain the health and the fire resiliency of the forest by removing diseased trees, surface and ladder fuels, as well as the lower branches of the remaining trees,” said Dave Gill, Ntityix’s general manager of forestry.

Chief Robert Denni

The Huu-ay-aht First Nation is charting its own path toward the conservation of old-growth forests across a swath of western Vancouver Island as the province works through a process to defer logging in 26,000 square kilometres of critical old-growth habitat.  The Huu-ay-aht outlined their position this week in a commissioned assessment of old-growth forests in Tree Farm License 44, the long-term forest tenure around Port Alberni that the First Nation holds an interest in. And it isn’t out of sync with the province’s mapping of old-growth areas it hopes to temporarily take off the table.  Huu-ay-aht Chief Robert Dennis, however, said his people intend to use that assessment in future management decisions, including those that involve the harvest of old-growth trees, which he wants the province and other interest groups to recognize. 

City of Powell River councillors have taken issue with a potential provincial initiative to harmonize stumpage rates, which could affect Powell River Community Forest’s revenues.  At the April 5 committee of the whole meeting, council reviewed correspondence from Chris Laing, who manages the community forest’s logging operations, asking for support in a request from the BC Community Forest Association.  City chief administrative officer Russell Brewer said the ask is that council consider submitting a resolution to Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM).  “If the committee wished to do so, they could send it to council to forward onto UBCM,” added Brewer.  . …Mayor Dave Formosa said “If [the provincial government] changes the stumpage rate to the community forest, it’s going to take a big chunk of that money out. We need to get behind this resolution to UBCM. We should also probably send a letter from the city saying we do not support the change.”