Category Archives: Forestry

An Indigenous-led review of a massive wildfire that destroyed more than 100 homes in British Columbia’s southern Interior four years ago has produced 30 calls to action to improve wildfire management and recovery practices. The Elephant Hill wildfire scorched more than 1,900 square kilometres of land in the summer of 2017, directly affecting numerous First Nations. The report released by the Secwepemcul’ecw Restoration and Stewardship Society asserts the fire could have been better managed if the province, including the wildfire service, had worked with Indigenous communities earlier and more actively throughout the response and recovery processes. The society, based in Kamloops, B.C., was founded by eight Secwepemc communities affected by the blaze, and the report chronicles their experiences and push toward a more collaborative approach with the B.C. government.

Research has shown that soil disturbance associated with some forestry practices can lead to soil degradation and affect long-term forest productivity. Further, these effects are often slow to manifest, taking several decades to measure and understand — demonstrating the value of long-term research efforts that federal science can provide to the sector. Charlotte Norris, is a soil biogeochemist at the Pacific Forestry Centre in Victoria, British Columbia where her research is focused on forest soil health. …Norris brought her skills in data collection and analysis to the Pacific Forestry Centre in 2019 where she continues Doug Maynard’s research legacy in long-term productivity trials in the BC interior … to investigate effects of soil compaction and organic matter retention on forest productivity over the long term. Norris expects the results to confirm … that organic matter removal would have negative effects on tree survival and growth, and soil compaction would adversely affect tree survival and growth.

In my opinion one of the most significant announcements from COP26 was by Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, who managed to sign up all major western banks to his Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, (GFANZ) enabling him to announce the $130 trillion of private capital directed to meaningful decarbonization. Access to funds is critical for decarbonization in provincial forest programs. For example The Forest Enhancement Society of BC. (FESBC) has been very effective in supporting projects around the province that fit its mandate. The B.C. government has invested $238 million in FESBC, of which $237.6 million has been allocated for 269 forest enhancement projects as of March 2021.

The B.C. government and its logging agency BC Timber Sales (BCTS) have pulled three more cutblocks from their sales plan in Argonaut Creek north of Revelstoke, on the traditional territory of the Ktunaxa, Syilx, Secwépemc and Sinixt nations. Since last year 14 cutblocks have been taken off the chopping block. All but two are in core critical habitat for the at-risk North Columbia caribou herd. “The value this habitat holds for the North Columbia caribou herd is irreplaceable,” said conservation and policy campaigner Charlotte Dawe. “Knowing chainsaws won’t be levelling their habitat anytime soon is amazing news.” …Significant pressure began last summer with environmental organizations Wilderness Committee, Echo Conservation Society and Wildsight raising the alarm on the disastrous logging plans. …The groups are calling on the government to begin restoring the five kilometres of a logging road that’s been punched into caribou habitat.

Murray Rankin

…we need to take urgent and decisive action against climate change and towards ensuring people can enjoy life in B.C. for generations to come. And a key part of this is transforming B.C.’s forestry management system. We know that healthy forests are home to … ecosystems that help reduce the consequences of climate change. And that’s why earlier this month, we announced our intention to defer 2.6 million hectares of old-growth forests in the province, in partnership with First Nations rights and titleholders. …We have now introduced legislation to amend the Forest Act to ensure that First Nations, local communities, and smaller companies have opportunities in the forest sector. …We are moving past decades of inaction and an inefficient system, towards true reconciliation and stability for communities. …The steps our government is taking will help preserve our province’s beauty, protect against climate change, and build a stronger B.C. moving forward.

A 30-day deadline for B.C. First Nations to respond to a plan that calls for the deferral of old-growth logging in forests at risk of permanent biodiversity loss has passed while the province says the process has been affected by recent emergencies. …On Nov. 2, the province … advised logging deferrals for two years, while a more fulsome plan balancing conservation and industry could be devised. At the time the province asked First Nations to decide within 30 days whether they support the deferral of logging in those areas or if the plan required further discussion. …The Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, along with organizations like the Wilderness Committee, want the province to immediately defer logging in all at-risk old-growth forests, compensate First Nations for any lost revenue in the short term, provide funding for long-term planning with nations, and provide immediate support for workers.

Chief John Powell

Emaciated bears and dwindling salmon stocks have prompted the Mamalilikulla First Nation to push forward with a conservation plan to protect part of its traditional territory. It has declared an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) in the Gwa̱xdlala/Nala̱xdlala (Lull Bay/Hoeya Sound) area — located up Knight Inlet on B.C.’s Central Coast. …Frances Roberts, the Mamalilikulla marine and lands co-ordinator, says about a year and a half ago, the First Nation hired a bear biologist to assess grizzlies in the area. She says the findings were stark. …Meetings with Interfor and commercial fishers have also been set up to discuss use of forest tenures and the waters within the IPCA. …The ministry says it is working with the Mamalilikulla “to conserve and protect environmentally and culturally significant areas surrounding Knight Inlet but did not comment on a timeline for those discussions. 

Old-growth forests the B.C. government has identified for logging deferrals are still at risk of being clear cut, according to a West Coast conservation group. “Intentions don’t stop chainsaws,” said Torrance Coste, campaign director for the Wilderness Committee, of the government’s failure to immediately act on the deferrals announced Nov. 2. Mapping by the committee indicates at least 50,000 hectares of the at-risk forest identified by the province — an area four times the size of Vancouver — is already approved for logging, has approvals pending or may already be cut down since being announced, Coste said. What’s more, approximately 2,000 hectares of the total cutblocks approved or applied for have occurred in the last month, he said. …Plus, announcing deferrals but not immediately implementing them only jeopardized irreplaceable ecosystems even further, he said. “How many logging companies are seeing the writing on the wall and racing to the finish?” he said.

Ben Parfitt

First Nation, environmental and former union leaders say the B.C. government must immediately disclose how many millions more old-growth trees are being logged thanks to provincial subsidies that reward logging companies with bonus trees to fall.  The demand comes after new research by the BC office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows how a 16-year-old government subsidy program known as “crediting” has rewarded logging companies that deliver lower quality logs to wood pellet and pulp mills by not counting those trees in the tallies used by government to limit what companies log.  Information on the credits is scant and confined mostly to paper documents, says Ben Parfitt of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, adding the government either cannot or will not disclose figures on the subsidy program’s overall impacts. Those seeking the information must launch a time-consuming, costly Freedom of Information process.

Fifty acres of urban forest in Saanich will be forever preserved following its purchase by the Capital Regional District and Habitat Acquisition Trust (HAT). The second-growth coastal Douglas fir forest near Saanich’s Mountain Road and Camosun College’s Interurban campus features Garry oak, arbutus strands and rock outcrop and is home to the western screech owl and common nighthawk. The CRD described their habitat as one of “Canada’s most rare and imperilled ecosystems,” in a press release. The property will be converted into a regional park within the CRD’s parks system, HAT executive director Katie Blake told Black Press Media, following a process of management planning which will be completed by early spring. While other CRD parks change direction in their planning over time, a conservation covenant made with HAT will ensure that Mountain Forest Road is always prioritized for ecological preservation, Blake said.

A caravan of seniors wound its way along pitch-black logging roads early Thursday to be in place before first light to block old-growth logging in the Fairy Creek region on southwest Vancouver Island. …Ten seniors and two younger activists stretched out on the gravel road and their arrest by RCMP began just before sunrise. The protest and the arrests were peaceful, said organizer Jay Van Oostdam. Shortly after the 12 individuals were carried off the road, logging industry vehicles continued into the cutblocks, according to RCMP. …RFS spokesperson Kathleen Code, adding activists aren’t overly optimistic given the court, in a sense, has already overturned Justice Thompson’s decision… “so we are contemplating having to go to the Supreme Court of Canada.” …As winter descends, the number of people in the two remaining camps has dwindled. …“I imagine there’s a dozen or so determined to hold up a permanent presence,” she said.

Gavin McGarrigle

…After decades of false starts and ‘talk and log’ politics, B.C.’s forestry policy is at a crossroads. Forestry policy is complex and involves a number of players and vested interests… It’s clear the provincial government is ready to … develop a new and comprehensive approach to managing forests that will try to address the concerns of all these players, to protect and preserve the province’s forests for generations to come. Yet workers and forestry-dependent communities are deeply concerned they will be left behind as the provincial government transitions toward a new sustainable working forest policy. …the real story of logging in B.C. has been one of systematic over-harvesting, short-term profits over long-term sustainability, and broken promises from the forestry companies themselves. Simply put …the forestry industry itself has been the co-author of its own demise. …We need to build … a simple premise – what should a working forest look like in B.C.?

Four years after the Elephant Hill megafire burned more than 190,000 hectares and destroyed over 100 homes in B.C.’s south-central Interior region, a new Indigenous-led report is recommending fundamental changes to the way wildfire management and post-fire recovery is conducted in B.C. The report notes that the wildfire could have been better managed if provincial agencies had engaged the affected Indigenous communities more actively, and earlier in the process. “There was widespread frustration that Secwépemc knowledge of fire and their territories was largely ignored, hindering effective wildfire response,” says report co-author Sarah Dickson-Hoyle, an ecologist and social scientist and a PhD candidate in the faculty of forestry at UBC. …The report also highlights the success of recovery efforts in the area, thanks to a new collaboration between the provincial government and the Secwépemc communities.

When the B.C. government announced one month ago that it would defer logging on 2.6 million hectares of old growth forests, it also gave First Nations 30 days to indicate whether or not they agree with the deferrals. The Huu-ay-aht now has an answer for the government: It disagrees with the deferrals, and it will make its own decisions on how it manages its own treaty lands. And while the Huu-ay-aht have agreed not to log 96% of old growth identified in a two-year deferral, it can’t agree not to log 645 hectares, which is 4% of the forest under the two-year deferral. …”We have now confirmed that 33 per cent, not three per cent, of our Hahuułi (territory) and TFL 44 is old growth,” Chief Coun. Robert Dennis Sr. said in a press release. That 3% estimate was arrived at by three independent researchers in a study, B.C’s Old Growth Forests: A Last Stand for Biodiversity.

Additional coverage in The Victoria Times Colonist, by Roxanne Egan-Elliot: Huu-ay-aht First Nations agree to old-growth logging deferral

Stewart Phillip

B.C. Indigenous leaders say the government is falling short in its efforts to protect old growth forests. At a press conference Dec. 1, members of Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs called the current process inadequate, specifically pointing to a 30-day limit to respond in relation to old growth logging deferrals. Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, UBCIC president, said it was a “critically important discussion.” …Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, a lawyer and expert on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, said there have been long-standing issues with excluding First Nations and recognizing forests as part of their traditional territories. The government’s actions are contrary to the UN resolution, she said. …Phillip said it is important to understand the “deplorable state of affairs within B.C. forest lands.” …“The forest industry itself has traditionally been the piggy bank for the provincial government, no matter what political stripe they may be,” said Phillip. 

New mapping analysis by the Wilderness Committee shows at least 50,000 hectares — more than four times the area of the City of Vancouver — of the old-growth forest the B.C. government has targeted for deferral has been approved for logging, is pending approval and in some cases has already been logged. Despite assurances from the government that progress towards deferrals is underway, logging is still proceeding in at-risk old-growth. …“The takeaway here is that in absence of immediate deferrals, tens of thousands of the 2.6 million hectares of old-growth the BC NDP government committed to set aside is under imminent threat of logging. Some of it has already been logged or is being logged as we speak,” said National Campaign Director Torrance Coste for the Wilderness Committee. “The B.C. government threw the 2.6 million hectare number out there and patted itself on the back for it as if it was an accomplishment rather than a vulnerable target.”

Indigenous leaders and experts in British Columbia outlined their concerns Wednesday over the provincial government’s process to defer logging in old-growth forests, while underscoring the urgency to preserve at-risk ecosystems. The province announced on Nov. 2 that an independent panel of scientific experts had mapped 26,000 square kilometres of old-growth forests at risk of permanent biodiversity loss. It asked First Nations to decide within 30 days whether they support logging deferrals in those areas or if the plan required further discussion. Retired judge Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond told a news conference hosted by the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs that the government’s actions aren’t consistent with free, prior and informed consent, a key principle of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. B.C. adopted the declaration through legislation passed in 2019.

As the severity and frequency of extreme weather events increases in B.C., researchers say the long-standing use of clearcut logging has exacerbated the probability of floods.  But one of Vancouver Island’s largest forestry management companies disagrees, maintaining that it is an “effective” system that actually reduces the area of disturbance.  A recent University of British Columbia (UBC) study by XuJian Joe Yu and Younes Alila found that logging can increase the frequency of large floods by up to four times.  Alila is a UBC forestry professor who has been studying the relationship between the forest cover, logging, and hydrology for over 25 years.  …Aggressive forestry practices over the past several decades have resulted in cut rates of up to 60 per cent in some watersheds, said Alila. 

The past four weeks have been a time of stress and uncertainty for Salmon Arm’s Brett Barnard and others who earn a living in B.C.’s forestry industry.  This anxiety began on Nov. 2 when the B.C. government announced it was deferring the harvest of 2.6 million hectares of ancient, rare and priority large stands of old growth within the province.  …All of this leaves Barnard concerned for his own business, Mt. Ida Nursery, and for others who work in the forestry industry, of which he stressed there are many in the Shuswap.  Barnard explained Mt. Ida Nursery produces approximately 9.5 million seedlings annually and employs 20 full-time equivalent positions. The business started in 2017 with a crop of 1.7 million seedlings and has expanded over the last five years due to high demand and a lack of greenhouse space.  Since the Nov. 2 announcement, Barnard said his business strategy has changed drastically.