Keith Baldrey
A B.C. Court of Appeal ruling may have a major impact on an activity that has become a constant presence on our political landscape: environmental protests against natural resource operations. In a unanimous, sharply-worded ruling, the high court skewered a lower court judge’s recent decision not to extend the court injunction that barred protests against a logging operation. …Given the protesters’ steadfast refusal to obey the law, it is far from clear whether the higher court ruling will have any actual impact on the protests and acts of civil disobedience (which the court noted pose significant safety challenges) at the protest site. However, the court of appeal is B.C.’s highest court, and so the language and analysis contained in this judgment will serve as a roadmap for judges weighing protests and requests for and against court injunctions. That is good news for natural resource companies and bad news for environmental protests.
B.C.’s forest watchdog has identified four key areas where the management of forestry practices can negatively affect water and outlines potential opportunities for the province to improve regulations. A report by the Forest Practices Board says that at least a third of the public complaints it has received since 1995 have involved the potential for forestry and range practices to affect water … It says that while the board usually found forest licensees were in compliance with provincial laws, gaps in legal requirements mean that forestry activities, including harvesting and the construction of forest service roads, can contribute to the risk of landslides, flooding and other water-related problems downstream. … The report outlines how the province could improve forest management by making water a core value in forest planning, creating a legal requirement to manage cumulative effects in watersheds and renewing watershed restoration efforts to reduce the impacts of historical logging.
Old-growth logging protesters locked themselves together in an effort to get their message across on the highway in Nanaimo this morning. Extinction Rebellion members and supporters blocked … traffic for about 20 minutes before Nanaimo RCMP arrived and directed protesters to the roadside. Three protesters remained and were arrested, including two – Howard Breen and Vic Brice – who had bike-locked themselves together at the knees. Extinction Rebellion’s protest Thursday was part of a Save Old Growth campaign that has disrupted traffic on numerous occasions this month in Nanaimo, Victoria and elsewhere. … Breen, who super-glued himself to logs in Nanaimo harbour last year, said in the release that the planet is “on life support” and criticized B.C.’s forestry practices.
Effective immediately, Shane Berg, British Columbia’s deputy chief forester, has set a new allowable annual cut (AAC) level for the Okanagan Timber Supply Area (TSA). The new AAC for the Okanagan TSA is 2,462,800 cubic metres. It is a decrease of approximately 20% from the previous AAC of 3,078,405 cubic metres, which included an increase to allow salvage of stands affected by the mountain pine beetle, and 7% below the AAC set in 2006, prior to the mountain pine beetle epidemic. Numerous comments were received from First Nations, licensees and residents of the TSA, regarding this determination. The new AAC accounts for Indigenous Peoples forestry principles, limits on harvesting in community watersheds, wildlife habitat and a national park reserve area.
VICTORIA – British Columbia’s proposed Watershed Security Strategy provides an opportunity to improve forest practices and reduce the impacts to water, according to a new report. The report looks back at 28 audit and investigation reports published by the board in the past 15 years that involved forestry and water concerns, and identifies four main issues with current forest practices. The report also identifies four opportunities for improvement:
A protester superglued their hand to the surface of Highway 1 during a protest against old-growth logging in West Vancouver, B.C. A group gathered on the stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway leading to the ferry terminal in West Vancouver Wednesday morning, including the activist who used glue to make their point. Most held yellow and black signs with the message, “Save Old Growth.” One person was taken into police custody before the demonstration was broken up and the highway reopened. Co-ordinator Ian Weber told CTV News that the goal of these protests is to permanently end all old-growth logging in the province. “We’re just ordinary people who are terrified about our future. We want a habitable planet and we’ve seen, this past year, so many tragedies,” he said. …Weber said, “We’ll end with a big bang on (Jan. 31)” then, after some time off, the group will “come back at you with even more” in March.
WASHINGTON — A series of forest fires burned 3 million acres in Idaho, Montana and Washington over two days in 1910, prompting a new firefighting era. After those fires… it became federal practice to stop the use of human-set fires to cull excess fuel. In 1935, the Forest Service set policy to extinguish all wildland fires the morning after detection. By 1944, the federal government had debuted Smokey Bear, whose catchphrase — “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires!” — underscored a suppression focus. Cecilia Clavet, senior policy adviser at the Nature Conservancy, said, “some of those wildfires are healthy for the ecosystem and create more wildfire-adapted landscapes.” More than a century later, the U.S. Forest Service is trying to pivot from that long-held practice and instead use smaller fires as a tool to limit catastrophic blazes fed by decades of fuel buildup. The shift comes as more Americans live in fire paths and climate change is accelerating fire and drought.
Planned logging of a more than century-old forest near the Nooksack River’s Middle Fork has been paused, according an email the state Department of Natural Resources sent to community members who had contacted the agency regarding the sale. The “Upper Rutsatz” timber sale will not move ahead at this time as the DNR reevaluates its policies regarding older forests, wrote Angus Brodie, the agency’s deputy supervisor for state uplands. The forest near Deming is on state trust lands, managed by the DNR to bring in revenue for public schools, state universities, construction on the Olympia capitol campus and prisons. The timber sale was scheduled for auction in April 2022, according to an environmental review prepared by the DNR. The DNR’s decision follows an outpouring of public concern about the planned logging and a 2021 directive from Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz to pause timber sales containing forests that originated before 1900.
The U.S. Forest Service plans a dramatic increase in forest thinning and prescribed burns across the West. … The agency aims to treat forests at up to four times the current rate. “I think the Forest Service plan is ambitious and it’s a much-needed step forward,” said Ryan Tompkins, a forest and natural resource advisor for the University of California’s Cooperative Extension. … “Since the late 20th century, there’s been less land management and far more spent on fighting big blazes … and we need to flip that investment.” He points to all the resources – more than $600 million – used to fight Northern California’s Dixie Fire … “Imagine the work we could do if we had that type of workforce… thinning and burning these forests to make them more resistant to fire and more resilient to larger disturbances like drought and climate change,”
The 10-year wildfire strategy recently announced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Forest Service represents a broad consensus that more fuels management is needed to combat large fires … across the West. … Though framed as a “paradigm shift,” it’s true many of the ideas and tactics in the strategy are not new. For example, its emphasis on coordinating cross-boundary treatments with state agencies, private landowners and other partners was a key part of the previous administration’s wildfire strategy. Previous administrations, and members of Congress from both parties, have long called for a doubling or tripling of acres for fuel treatments. … For years, the Forest Service has been hamstrung by spiraling wildfire suppression costs and the lack of funding and personnel needed … The infrastructure bill gives the Forest Service much needed budgetary relief, so the time is now for the agency to start making a difference on the ground.
Monday, more than 175,000 comments from throughout Alaska and across the country were submitted to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Forest Service calling for the restoration of Roadless Rule protections on the Tongass National Forest. … The Roadless Rule is one of our nation’s premier conservation accomplishments, protecting almost 60 million acres of treasured national forests and intact watersheds. Preserving roadless areas is critical for hunting and fishing. In Southeast Alaska, these activities support cultural traditions and a subsistence lifestyle for many Indigenous communities, and protecting them means protecting resources and a way of life for future generations. 
The carbon stock in managed boreal forest landscapes is increasing, while it is relatively unchanged in less intensively utilized forests where carbon losses due to forest fires have instead been significant during 1990-2017, according to a new report by the International Boreal Forest Research Association (IBFRA). Large-scale studies of how the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide (CO2) varies in time and space indicate that the northern forests are a CO2 sink. …The report, for the first time ever, presents a comparison of the development of forests’ carbon stock over time in different parts of the boreal forest belt, which extends through Canada, the American Alaska, Russia, Sweden, Finland, and Norway. The analysis, undertaken by 25 researchers from these six countries, as well as from IIASA, is based on the data that the countries involved have reported to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
