Suzanne Simard

In her scientific memoir, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, forestry researcher Suzanne Simard gracefully intertwines her private and professional lives. As a child, she learned the rough-and-ready ways of her logging ancestors and developed a deep devotion and commitment to forests. As a researcher, she pressed colleagues to look beyond the superficial, above-ground perception that forests are merely collections of individual trees. …For her inspiring and illuminating writing, she will be presented with the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science at The Rockefeller University on April 17. Named after its first recipient, noted physician-scientist and essayist Lewis Thomas, the prize was established in 1993 by Rockefeller’s Board of Trustees.

Columbia Basin Trust’s most recent Ecosystem Enhancement Program will provide funding to ten projects that seek to enhance biodiversity and ecosystems throughout the region. CBT will distribute $2.6 million in support to four large-scale projects around the Basin and $316,000 to six smaller scale, shorter-term projects, to prioritize on-the-ground action aimed at improving ecological health and native biodiversity. The Ecosystem Enhancement Program has supported 27 total programs. …Kimberley’s Randy Moody, president of the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation of Canada (WPEFC) has spent nearly two decades working to preserve and protect the endangered tree species in the Purcell and Rocky mountains.

A report card from B.C. environmental organizations said the province is still continuing to score failing grades as old-growth forests remain at risk. Sierra Club BC, Stand.earth, and the Wilderness Committee issued their fifth report card, assessing the B.C. government’s progress in implementing the Old Growth Strategic Review (OGSR) recommendations. The report card comes two-and-a-half years into the provincial government’s three-year timeline for implementing all 14 recommendations from the OGSR. “It is crucial because we are close to the brink with some of the last endangered old-growth forests.” said Jens Wieting, Sierra Club BC. …“We are nowhere close to the implementation of the three-year promise from the government — it has not translated to the ground,” Wieting said. The organizations gave the province failing grades on issues including action on funding for conservation, changing course in forest stewardship and transparency.

Re: Pellet sector not to blame for forestry problems. In his letter, David Elstone’s absolution of the forest industry is history by omission, a version that does not withstand closer scrutiny. What Elstone fails to tell readers is that the forest industry made its own bed and is responsible, not for the mountain pine infestation itself, but for the way in which it chose to log dead wood and where. …As to Elstone’s trumpeting of a recent study that found that 85 per cent of the B.C. pellet industry’s fibre supply comes from byproducts of sawmills, we are left asking: Who financed the study? Drax? Who provided the data? Drax? And why didn’t the forest professionals who authored the study use the same data sourced by Ben Parfitt from official government records?

UNIVERSITY OF BC — Forestry students are about to see a massive change in how their faculty grants undergraduate degrees. Starting in fall 2024, five of the Forestry department’s seven existing Bachelor’s degrees will become majors under a new, unified Bachelor’s of Science in Natural Resources. Currently, the faculty offers seven direct-entry undergraduate programs, five of which are Bachelor’s of Science. These five will be combined into the new program, with students having the option to choose bioeconomy sciences and technology, conservation, forest management, forest operations, forest sciences or wood products as majors. New students will no longer need to choose which Bachelors of Science program they want to pursue before coming to UBC. Rather, they will take a common core of 20 credits in first year before having to declare their major going into second year. 

Thirty years after B.C.’s War in the Woods, where do things stand in the fight for old-growth forests? That’s the question The Narwhal’s Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood and David Suzuki posed on a trip to the site of that seminal battle against logging in Clayoquot Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island.  “The forest is still standing,” Suzuki notes, but “the bridge is breaking down.” The impacts of the historic logging blockade are on full display in Clayoquot Sound, and the subject of the brand new documentary War for the Woods airing this Friday on CBC’s The Nature of Things (you can already stream it here on CBC Gem).  Steph and David take viewers on that 30-year journey through archival footage, old-growth maps and interviews with members of First Nations who have stewarded these lands for thousands of years. 

Communities in the Kootenay region are collectively receiving $2.5 million for wildfire mitigation projects through a funding partnership between the Columbia Basin Trust and the Province. “Wildfire-resilient communities are built through partnerships and people working together to protect our forests and surrounding communities,” said Bruce Ralston, Minister of Forests. “These wildfire risk reduction projects are a valuable part of healthy, sustainable forest management in BC. Thank you to Columbia Basin Trust and the 20 communities and organizations around the Basin that are doing this important work.” The Columbia Basin Trust is administering the funding to 20 different communities in the Columbia Basin, as the funding partners also include the Ministry of Forests and the BC Wildfire Service, through the province’s Community Resiliency Investment Program.

Saya Masso

Saya Masso stands in front of a culturally modified tree. It has two massive crevices down its trunk, leaving a large smooth block in the middle of otherwise bumpy bark. This smooth block was left after Tla-o-qui-aht (ƛaʔuukʷiʔatḥ) people cut planks from the tree for a long house hundreds of years ago — a way of harvesting the wood they needed while preserving a living tree for centuries to come, he explains. …Logging companies didn’t approach forestry management in the same way. …So they fought back. In 1984, Nuu-chah-nulth people famously turned away B.C.-based logging company MacMillan Bloedel, which planned to clear cut old-growth forests. It was the first major logging blockade in Canadian history, and the beginning of a series of blockades in Clayoquot Sound known as the War in the Woods. 

Thanks to Google Earth Engine, people are able to see the effects of humans on our ecosystems happen in a flash. On Vancouver Island specifically, it’s easy to see the deforestation of Fairy Creek near Port Renfrew as well as several other locations. The provincial government recently made an announcement on efforts in protecting some of Vancouver Island’s last precious old-growth groves and pristine ecosystems. …This innovative tool also sheds light on urban sprawl in metro areas such as Greater Victoria, specifically, the Westshore. In 1984, when the timelapse began, the population of Greater Victoria was around 242,000. Now the population has grown to nearly 398,000. Greater Victoria is limited in where it can sprawl to, but Langford and the entirety of the Westshore have boomed and sprawled considerably over the past 39 years.