Category Archives: Forestry

No bear should burn to death in a slash pile. That’s the message longtime Greeny Lake trapper Paul Blackwell is trying to spread this fall as bears prepare to go into hibernation. He said that as slash piles grow ever larger they’re becoming attractive places for bears to build their dens ahead of winter hibernation. “(They are) so appealing to bears it’s almost like a hotel. You’ve got this great pile of wood that insulates the bear from the snow, so it’s no wonder they like it so much,” Blackwell said. …Rather than burning large slash piles, Blackwell said forestry companies should be required to burn their slash in smaller piles or arrange them in windrows across the cut blocks. He said the Ministry of Forests is aware of these facts but doesn’t seem interested in pushing for legislation that would reduce the size of slash piles or eliminate them altogether.

Amalia Schelhorn taught Victoria, B.C., to dance to protect old-growth. This one-time National Ballet of Canada soloist helped bring media attention to the call to end old-growth logging in British Columbia by choreographing and organizing community dance protests. …I know the media likes visual and performing arts and, as a dancer and teacher, I had good networks. I choreographed and taped a dance to Bruce Cockburn’s If a Tree Falls and contacted everyone I could think of. …Three days later, 40 people, young and old, showed up to Dance for the Ancient Forests. We were very successful in attracting media attention because it was a novel and visually compelling protest. Since then, I have created another dance to a rewritten version of Stop In the Name of Love. …Once again, the media has picked up these protests.

The Province is taking more steps to conserve nature for the long-term health and well-being of communities with the release of a draft biodiversity and ecosystem health framework. “Together, we are charting the next steps for conserving B.C.’s rich biodiversity and healthy ecosystems that support us all,” said Nathan Cullen, Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship. B.C. has the greatest diversity of species, ecosystems and habitats of any jurisdiction in Canada. The resilience of the province depends on an integrated and inclusive approach to stewarding B.C.’s water, land and natural resources. The framework is another action the Province is taking as part of ongoing work to improve stewardship of B.C.’s lands, forests and water, to implement the recommendations of the Old Growth Strategic Review and to honour B.C.’s commitments under the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

Two Merritt-based companies are revolutionizing sustainable forest management in British Columbia. …Stuwix Resources Joint Venture (SRJV) and Valley Carriers have announced that they will be working together to make a better use of leftover forest materials, such as forest residuals. …According to the release, the BioHub Pilot Project is centred around Stuwix’s transition from the traditional cut-to-length forestry practice to now full-length tree harvesting, moving toward a full tree utilization and zero-waste approach. “Through the Bush Grinding project, forest residual will be ground instead of being left behind and burned in slash piles, helping to reduce waste and avoid greenhouse gas emissions,” the release reads. “This ground fibre will be transported to a green energy facility in Merritt.” …Gord Pratt, FESBC senior manager, added “Exploring new ways to optimize the delivery and use of forest fibre is long overdue.”

HARRISON MILLS, BC — Recent logging activity in the Chehalis area is seen as a setback for one of the rarest birds in British Columbia. In 40 years, a swath of forest north of Harrison Mills could have qualified as old growth, which would have been viable habitat for the spotted owl. The forest that had been growing since around World War II was approved for logging this year, and it’s being harvested. …Joe Foy with the Wilderness Committee, said that while the harvesting of the Chehalis area trees isn’t necessarily fatal for spotted owl conservation efforts, it would make species recovery less likely. …Foy said the fragmented nature of potential habitat for spotted owls comes down to the federal and provincial governments having different plans to preseve the species.

James Hobart trudges up an old logging road and into the territory of the last wild-born northern spotted owl in Canada. …Chief of the Spô’zêm First Nation, Hobart has put his people’s weight behind saving the owl. …Where once that territory supported upwards of a thousand owls, today, the survival of Canada’s wild-born population has dwindled to a single female, who lives high up in the Spô’zêm watershed in the territory of Hobart’s people. Early failures to reintroduce captive bred owls have revealed duelling visions over what’s causing the bird’s near extinction — and how best to pull it back from the brink. On one side, B.C.’s provincial government says it’s focused on the culling and removal of invasive barred owls, while breeding the endangered species back; on the other, a federal ministry says it makes no sense to release owls into a forest ecosystem when its integrity remains shattered.

An enchanting forest called Wildwood, south of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, has tall old-growth Douglas-firs soaring into the sky, the rat-a-tatting of pileated woodpeckers echoing through the trees and emerald-green moss blanketing the ground. Surprisingly, this magnificent 31-hectare patch of old-growth forest has been commercially logged since 1945 and stands in stark contrast to the patchwork clear cuts of modern industrial forestry. At Wildwood, nature rules, while also yielding a harvest for humans to reap. …Merv Wilkinson logged this land, not by clear-cuts and monoculture plantations, but instead by selective logging. For more than seven decades, the old-growth beauty has been preserved, the habitat maintained for black-tailed deer, squirrels, bats, pileated woodpeckers and more. His logging was revolutionary not only in method, but also in philosophy. Although Merv’s methods are ignored by the provincial logging industry, his wisdom was recognized by others. 

VERNON, BC — The long process of restoring trails lost to the Bush Creek East wildfire will begin with wildfire impact assessments. Assessments for two of those trails… are being initiated by the Shuswap Trail Alliance (STA) with Forsite Consultants. “Forsite will be creating a process for us, as well as doing the initial assessments,” said Jen Bellhouse. …“There will be slope stability assessments required because soil becomes hydrophobic after a fire so it’s a longer process for that,” said Bellhouse, noting the process will involve reassessing slope stability after year of snow melt and precipitation, to see how slopes impacted by the fire are holding up – recognizing there may be slides. …Bellhouse said BC Parks is going through a similar process for its trails impacted by the wildfire.

Satellite surveillance shows 31,800 hectares of old-growth trees — 50 per cent more than the government reported — have been logged in the three and a half years since the province promised a “paradigm change” in B.C. forestry practices. That’s according to a recent report from the environmental group Stand.earth, which used a satellite watchdog platform to track old-growth logging since April 2020. That month marked the release of the Old Growth Strategic Review, a landmark report that signalled government might put an end to cutting the rarest old-growth stands. The satellite tracking system, known as Forest Eye, was built with the help of the satellite firm Planet Labs. It systematically tracks forest cover change across the province since the B.C. government promised to halt logging in big treed old-growth forests nearly three years ago. The group said it manually verifies all the alerts the system flags to ensure forest cover loss occurred due to logging activity.

Additional coverage: Stand.earth press release