Category Archives: Forestry

Climbing caribou numbers in northeastern BC prove that collaborations between Indigenous and colonial governments can reverse decades-long declines, but focus needs to shift to culturally meaningful recovery targets, a consortium of researchers and community members say in a new paper published this week in Science. UBC Okanagan’s Dr. Clayton Lamb and West Moberly First Nation Chief Roland Willson co-lead the paper, Braiding Indigenous Rights and Endangered Species Law, alongside nine others. “Abundance matters,” says Lamb. …“There is a large gap between what the laws see as species recovery and what communities need for health, food security, and cultural well-being.” …Canada and the United States have endangered species laws that are designed to recover species abundance to levels that will minimize the chance of extinction, but these recovery targets do not take into account culturally meaningful abundance or distributions of plants and animals, the authors say.

Nelson, B.C. – the Selous Creek Wildfire Risk Reduction Project near Nelson, B.C. has demonstrated that it is possible to harvest trees to reduce wildfire risk while maintaining cultural, ecological, recreational, and aesthetic values. With funding from the Forest Enhancement Society of BC and partnerships among regional, municipal and provincial governments, fire services, and a local timber licensee, a wildfire risk reduction project is a prime example of collaboration to better protect a community. …The Regional District of Central Kootenay (RDCK), with several stakeholders, took steps to reduce the risk of wildfire in Nelson. …Operating area tenure holder Kalesnikoff Lumber Company completed 80 hectares of mechanical harvesting or removing trees using machines. Ground-based mechanical fuel modification, or piling additional debris left after harvest, was completed on 20 hectares. …John Cathro of Cathro Consulting played a major role in the project and applauded the initiative taken by RDCK. 

The Alberta government has closed 12 provincial parks and recreation areas ahead of the Victoria Day long weekend to lower the risk of more wildfires starting and spreading. “The fire danger is expected to be extreme across the northern parts of the province again, which could result in some active wildfire behaviour,” Christie Tucker,  with Alberta Wildfire, said. “We will manage the wildfire situation in the face of extreme conditions and we ask Albertans for their help, too.” …Tucker and Todd Loewen, Alberta’s minister of forestry, parks and tourism, called on Albertans to follow local rules and restrictions to prevent fires. Unseasonably high temperatures are expected to return to Alberta this weekend, threatening to fuel wildfires burning across the province. As of Thursday, 98 wildfires are burning in Alberta. Of the 92 wildfires burning inside forest protection areas, 26 are considered out of control.

I worked for Alberta Wildfire for seven years as a lookout observer. …More impressive than the rate of spread of the wildfires was the speed at which Alberta’s firefighting response system was triggered into action. The tower to my east reported the locations of the fires to the district’s duty officer. A radio dispatcher answered and dispatched firefighting crews. …Within minutes, the wildfire was confirmed. The radio erupted with voices. I watched tankers hit the flames with red clay retardant to box the fire in. Multiple crews landed to work the fire from the ground. As a rookie lookout, I was in awe. …A series of government cutbacks and defunding, however, has seriously damaged Alberta Wildfire’s ability to prevent and respond to wildfires. The NDP cut $15-million from the budget in 2016. Three years later, the United Conservative Party (UCP)… slashed the Rappel Attack Program and decommissioned 26 fire towers.

The BC Community Bat Program is looking for volunteers to count bats at local roost sites around the capital region starting in June. The B.C. Annual Bat Count helps biologists understand bat distribution and monitor for impacts of a devastating bat disease called white-nose syndrome. The fungal disease has been slowly making its way across Canada and is fatal for bats, but does not seem to affect other animals or people. …Results from the Bat Count data may help prioritize areas in B.C. for research into treatment options and recovery actions for bats threatened by the deadly fungus, like the Little Brown Myotis. …Volunteers wait outside a known roost site, such as a bat-box, barn, or attic, and count bats as they fly out at twilight. 

SMITHERS, BC — The wood pellet proposal, made in 2015, by an existing particle board manufacturer called NewPro, included references to how the pellet mill would help bring an end to much of that slash burning. Instead. …But from the moment the pellet mill opened in 2018, whole logs, not logging slash, were one of the mill’s primary raw material supplies along with woodchips and sawdust from the sawmill next door. …We have asked Minister George Heyman to suspend the amended permit and to require the companies that now run the pellet operation – the Drax Group and lumber producer West Fraser Timber – to fully disclose exactly how many whole logs are being consumed at the pellet mill each year.

There are a lot of quirky days designed to remember certain things. For instance… May 16 was Love a Tree Day. I think that is something we can all get behind. …My children and I recently watched The Lorax… it is a cute film with a good message. We need to protect the trees. …Wait, before you send me hate mail. I truly believe our country can have a thriving logging industry and we can protect our forests. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. The forest sector contributed $5.6 billion to the provincial GDP in 2020. …It is the a cornerstone of our economy. The BC Chamber recently said the opportunity for BC to support an inclusive, sustainable and competitive forest sector is significant. …On the other hand, a step the federal government has promised to take, is not taking root.

Hugh Watt

The Nakusp and Area Community Forest, a corporation that’s brought millions of dollars to the Arrow Lakes community over the last decade, is coming under new management. The community-owned forest company’s board has hired Cabin Resources to take over the management of the business from True North Forestry in June. True North’s Hugh Watt, who has guided NACFOR’s operations since 2012, has decided not to renew his contract in order to pursue new challenges – though he won’t be far away if they need his advice. “When you feel it’s time, it’s time,” Watt said. “But we will continue to help with transition to new management.” Under Watt’s management, the company has weathered wild swings in forest prices, forest fires, COVID, and new restrictions to harvesting. He thinks one of the True North team’s biggest achievements was helping NACFOR deliver more than $2.5 million in direct benefits to the community.

John Vaillant has spent years investigating wildfires and the reasons today’s fires are more destructive. He uses photos and videos to show CBC’s chief correspondent Adrienne Arsenault what’s been happening.

There’s a serene pocket of mountainous habitat in northwest B.C. where 33 caribou live. Though it’s peaceful, they have nowhere to go. They’re surrounded. They’ve been cut off from where they gave birth to their young and the tracts of land that supported them through the long northern winters by highways, hydroelectric dams, rail lines, clearcuts and farmland. The herd’s range has been fragmented for more than a century and faces imminent threats. …The Telkwa caribou are considered threatened federally and blue-listed provincially, which means a species of special concern. But the herd’s population has been plummeting since colonization and its numbers dropped to single digits in the 1990s. According to the province, the downward trend over the decades puts the herd at “continual risk of extirpation.” Because conservation status is not applied to individual herds, the imminent threat to widzïh doesn’t trigger protections afforded to endangered species.

The northern spotted owl population in British Columbia has declined precipitously since pre-colonization. Earlier this month, two captive born males, which had been released into the wild last August, died, leaving just one female still in the wild. The owls depend on old-growth forests, particularly for nesting habitat, but logging of these forests continues to be a threat to the species — less than 3% of BC’s big-tree old-growth forest is left — along with competition from invasive barred owls. The owls hold deep cultural significance to First Nations, and the Spô’zêm First Nation, on whose traditional territory the last owl is found, are among those advocating for their protection and a halt to old-growth logging. Recent developments include indications the federal government may enact a provision in the Species at Risk Act allowing it to overrule provincial authorities in terms of spotted owl management.

VICTORIA – The Forest Practices Board will audit forestry activities on forest licences A77899 and A77900 held by the numbered company 1175401BC Ltd. on Texada Island. The audit will take place during the week of May 29, 2023. Texada Island is within the Sunshine Coast Natural Resource District and the territories of the Shishalh, Tla’amin and Snaw’Naw’As Nations. Auditors will examine whether timber harvesting, roads, bridges, silviculture, wildfire protection and associated planning carried out between June 2021 and June 2023 met the requirements of the Forest and Range Practices Act and the Wildfire Act. Once the audit is complete, a report will be prepared. Any party that may be adversely affected by the audit findings will have a chance to respond. The board’s final report and recommendations will be released to the public and government.

We’re in Stage One water restrictions. If you’re not concerned yet, our watershed is about to be logged. If you think we’re having problems with drought, flooding, salmon runs and water sources now, logging the face of Elphinstone could knock everything we’ve seen so far right out of the park. Polar Geosciences Ltd. released a comprehensive assessment of the Mount Elphinstone Watershed, completed for BC Timber Sales (BCTS) on March 7. Our local Elphinstone Community Association (ECA), along with the Sunshine Coast Conservation Association (SCCA) published a response to this BCTS hydrology report last week that got me plenty concerned. …Maybe not surprising, the conclusions drawn from that information seem eager to justify BCTS’s mandate to profit off a pretty sensitive patch of forest. …I grew up in a RivTow family of the ‘80s; This isn’t an anti-logging industry narrative. There is a great deal of Crown land we could log. 

Public hearings about the N.W.T.’s proposed Forest Act have been postponed this week because of an out–of-control wildfire.  A territorial committee is still scheduled to… talk about Bill 74, which, if passed, would mean people with Aboriginal or treaty rights to harvest wood for personal use would no longer require a permit to exercise that right. The bill was presented to a committee in late April where Deh Cho MLA Ron Bonnetrouge hinted at the significance of changing that rule in particular. “Many of our members have been charged in the past,” he said, referring to people harvesting wood as heating fuel or to build cabins.  The bill also deals with wildfire management, sustainable forest management, and the roles played by government departments, renewable resource councils, and forest management committees when it comes to the N.W.T.’s forests.

EDMONTON, AB – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to stop in Edmonton this morning to meet with Canadian Armed Forces personnel who are assisting Alberta in fighting ongoing wildfires. About 300 members of the Canadian Armed Forces will be deployed across the province to help with the blazes that have forced thousands of Albertans to flee their homes and rural properties. Wildfires officials are warning that rising temperatures that have been a problem for crews battling wildfires in the province’s north are now also a concern in Alberta’s south. Josee St-Onge of Alberta Wildfire says conditions in the south aren’t as extreme at the moment, but the province may need to reposition resources so it can be ready to respond quickly to new fires in the area. …Colin Blair of the Alberta Emergency Management Agency urged people in areas that are threatened to prepare in advance to evacuate, including having an evacuation kit ready.