Category Archives: Forestry

Protesters from the Fairy Creek old-growth logging blockades say their belongings are being improperly removed and treated as garbage by industry. The forest company operating in the area in question says most of the items in question were either in defiance of the injunction against the blockades or abandoned. …According to protester Carole Toothill, most of the items are coming from camps which are not blocking roads or directly impeding industry. …“Overall, everything has been beautifully managed,” she said. Teal Jones says it is just cleaning up the mess protesters left behind.  ”Teal Jones makes good faith efforts to remove any personal effects before disposing the garbage”. …Toothill disputes this claim and says most items are disposed of indiscriminately.

Laurey-Anne Roodenburg and Brian Frenkel

B.C. local government leaders have endorsed a message to the province that local and Indigenous governments have to be involved in decisions over old-growth logging, in a split vote that reflects the urban-rural tensions and continued protests on Vancouver Island. Delegates to the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention voted 62 per cent in favour of the executive’s motion Wednesday, over the objections of those demanding sweeping logging bans. The province has supported Indigenous communities near Port Renfrew to defer more logging, but Premier John Horgan has insisted that communities, not protesters, will decide their economic future. …UBCM president Brian Frenkel, urged delegates to support the executive’s work to expand community forests, support value-added industry and meet the government’s commitments to Indigenous people. …“To say that there should be blanket bans on old growth forest logging in the entire province is absolutely ridiculous,” Burns Lake Coun. Charlie Rensby said.

NANAIMO — Public concerns over climate change should play a large part in deciding whether a British Columbia forestry ­company is granted an ­extension to an injunction against ­protests over the logging of old-growth forests, a court heard ­Wednesday. The B.C. Supreme Court must weigh the importance to the environment that ­protecting old-growth trees plays in the Fairy Creek area of Vancouver Island as opposed to considering the economic interests of Teal Cedar Products Ltd., which has applied for a one-year extension to the injunction, lawyer Steven ­Kelliher said. …Kelliher said he represents Victoria landscaper Robert (Saul) Arbess, who is opposed to the extension of the injunction on grounds that logging of old-growth trees in the Fairy Creek area harms the environment. …Teal Cedar lawyer Dean Dalke [said] the blockades are impeding the company’s legal rights to harvest timber and alleged that the actions of protesters pose dangers to employees and the RCMP.

The Union of BC Municipalities membership will debate 170 resolutions at their convention Sept. 15 and 16. The resolutions are classified into 14 categories including legislative, community safety, elections, transportation, taxation, finance, environment, land use, health and social development and housing. …The executive will also put forward a special resolution on forest management; specifically requesting the province engage and consult with local governments and Indigenous communities while it implements recommendations of its Modernizing Forest Policy in BC intentions paper released in June, including matters related to old growth designations and deferrals. The resolution consolidates seven separate resolutions related to forests submitted by members. “The special resolution put forward by the executive reflects the need for continued local government consultation as the province moves forward to implement forest policy change that will impact B.C. communities,” the resolutions package says.

Murray Wilson

Why does every summer’s fire season seem to be worse than the last? A simple answer is climate change. It’s hard to ignore the record-setting heat that Western Canada and, in particular, British Columbia is experiencing this summer. But it is also much more complicated than just one factor. Our forests are increasingly old and unhealthy. A big reason is aggressive fire control; B.C. has become really good at managing and snuffing out wildfires over recent decades, which quickly reduced the burned area. In addition, we, correctly, prioritized the harvesting of diseased forests. Millions of hectares of Lodgepole Pine were killed by Mountain Pine Beetle over the last 30 years. Historically, large, stand-replacing fires would have burned these diseased forests. It was part of the cycle of nature. The combination of fire control and priority harvesting minimized fires, but left a legacy of trees living longer, that are now highly susceptible to catastrophic fire.

A B.C. forestry company appeared in court Tuesday to apply for a one-year extension of an injunction against ongoing protests over logging. A lawyer for Teal Cedar told a B.C. Supreme Court judge that the protests against logging are becoming more sophisticated, organized and dangerous and “anarchy” will result if the extension is not granted until September 2022. “It falls on this court to restore law and order on southern Vancouver Island,” said Dean Dalke. “If there is no injunction in place, the blockades will be there.” …Dalke said the blockades are impeding the company’s legal rights to harvest timber and alleged that the actions of the protesters pose dangers to employees and the RCMP. He said the protesters have placed spikes in roads, chained themselves to gates, sometimes dug themselves into trenches or attached themselves to trees in efforts to thwart police.

VICTORIA – The Forest Practices Board will audit the forest planning and practices of TAAN Forest Limited Partnership on tree farm licence (TFL) 60 and TAAN Forest Ltd. on forest licence to cut A87661 on Haida Gwaii during the week of Sept. 20, 2021. Auditors will examine whether harvesting, roads, silviculture, fire protection and associated planning carried out between Sept. 1, 2019, and Sept. 24, 2021, met the requirements of the Forest and Range Practices Act and the Wildfire Act. The audit area is located in the Haida Gwaii Natural Resource District. Haida Gwaii is the current, historical and ancient home of the Haida people, with two major Haida communities located on Graham Island: Old Massett at the north end on the shores of Massett Inlet and Skidegate in the island’s southeast corner.

Additional coverage in the Northern View, by Norman Galimski: Forest Practices Board to audit TAAN Forest on Haida Gwaii

The woods surrounding Fairy Creek, one of the few remaining stands of old-growth temperate rainforest in British Columbia, has become home to the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. …The numbers are now higher than those who were arrested during the so-called “War in the Woods” in the early 1990s that ultimately put an end to clear-cutting in nearby Clayoquot Sound. …The increasingly violent tactics used by cops against land defenders – many of them Indigenous – deserve far more coverage from stretched-thin media outlets, but it’s becoming harder to ignore a very different protest movement given that outbreaks are now taking place in cities and towns across the country. A consortium of crackpots and conspiracy theorists once again descended on Vancouver city hall yesterday to voice their opposition to everything from life-saving COVID-19 vaccines to newly introduced vaccine passports.

The B.C. Council of Forest Industries (COFI) held a special meeting with the Village of Burns Lake town council via zoom to provide an update report on the governments forestry modernization plan as well as challenges that the forest industry is currently facing. The B.C. Government recently outlined a forestry modernization plan during the summer, which in theory will help address the dwindling fibre supply by adapting to the impacts of climate change and protecting old growth forests. According to COFI, over 70 per cent of old growth forests will never be logged. Another one of the the proposed changes is a framework to redistribute forest tenures to Indigenous nations, small operators and forest communities such as Burns Lake. According to COFI President and CEO Susan Yurkovich, COFI is partnering with with Indigenous communities, in an agreement that will generate $250 million in direct economic benefits to them.

The Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation (HCTF), in collaboration with the Forest Enhancement Society of BC (FESBC), has announced funding for projects in the Okanagan including one being led by the Applied Mammal Research Institute which aims to improve habitat for B.C.’s native mustelid species. The project, which received $31,500 in funding from HCTF and FESBC, will conduct an array of forest management techniques to restore understory cover and accelerate forest regeneration in stands affected by Mountain Pine Beetle infestation. This year, HCTF has awarded $9.3 million in funding for 175 individual conservation projects throughout British Columbia.

The battle over old-growth logging in British Columbia shows no signs of abating, as protesters keep on coming back to Fairy Creek, in one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in the country. …This week, the RCMP will be asking the B.C. Supreme Court for greater enforcement powers of an injunction prohibiting blockades in the area. Police say they are losing against what they describe as a sophisticated and well-funded protest movement using increasingly risky tactics. Last Thursday… officers faced more than 70 people sitting on the damp gravel with limbs intertwined to form a giant human knot that barred the only route to the approved logging sites. This protest tactic is called a blob and is now familiar to the police. …“Protesters have deployed increasingly extreme and dangerous methods to thwart the RCMP’s enforcement,” states an Aug. 31 application to the B.C. Supreme Court.

A coalition of people wanting to protect old-growth trees on Vancouver Island held a protest in front of the Nanaimo courthouse Monday. It comes a day before the logging company Teal Jones files an application to extend the court-ordered injunction around the land it’s logging on Vancouver Island. The old-growth defenders, as they call themselves, arrived in front of the Nanaimo courthouse at one o’clock Monday afternoon and remained for several hours. …What’s at stake is the BC Supreme Court injunction that prohibits roadblocks or any protests that would disrupt logging activities in the fairy creek region or TFL 46. Now Teal Jones wants that injunction extended. The protesters are opposed.

Additional coverage in the Nanaimo News Bulletin, by Chris Bush: Old-growth forestry protesters in Nanaimo say unchecked climate change is a death sentence

VICTORIA and the Traditional Territory of the Lekwungen Peoples – The BC Community Forest Association (BCCFA) is announcing the release of its new report: Community Forest Indicators 2021: Measuring the Benefits of Community Forestry report. The indicators report is a detailed culmination of input from 30 community forests across BC on 18 indicators that reflect the multi-value management approach of community forests. The combined results from their last full operating year are evidence of the success and promise of community forestry. “As the province moves from a focus on volume to value and to an increase in the participation of First Nations and communities in the forest sector, community forests provide compelling examples of how this can be done,” said Harley Wright, BCCFA President.  

A slew of legal applications involving the contentious Fairy Creek old-growth blockades are moving forward in B.C. Supreme Court this week. …On Tuesday, court proceedings will get underway to address a variety of court requests, including a one by Teal-Jones to extend the injunction by a year, said RFS spokesperson Kathleen Code, adding the activist group’s defendants plan to challenge the application. …RSF’s legal counsel plans to argue the extension request should be denied on the basis that Teal-Jones and the RCMP have acted unlawfully and failed to follow aspects of the injunction, Code said. …The court application also alleges the RCMP has used excessive force. …In turn, the RCMP is applying to the court to change the injunction to allow the force greater powers, including the right to control access to areas in the injunction zone where enforcement is occurring and any routes in or out of those areas.

VICTORIA — The province of British Columbia has granted reserved practice – or practice rights – to applied biology professionals making BC the first jurisdiction in the world to recognize the profession of applied biology as full partner in resource management. The amended Applied Biologists Regulation now clearly defines the practice of applied biology and delineates those functions that require the education and competencies of a registered applied biology professional. In practice, the new reserved practice for applied biology will require the use of Registered Professional Biologists (RPBio) or Registered Biology Technologists (RBTech) to carry out or supervise work in resource management activities that fall within the definition of “reserved practice” in the regulation. The addition of reserved practice ensures that applied biology practitioners are qualified, competent, and accountable by way of registration with the College.