Chief Peter Bill

Saskatoon and Pelican Lake First Nation signed an agreement to create an urban reserve at a special ceremony in front of a full room of band members at city hall on Wednesday. The urban reserve is located at 1944 St. George Avenue. Pelican Lake bought into the existing business, Adam’s Lumber, at that location. Pelican Lake Chief Peter Bill says the lumber business compliments Pelican Lake’s other forestry interests.  “What you take from the land you’ve got to give back, and reforestation is a big item that we push,” Bill said. “And what we take from, from sakaw askîy (forest and earth), that’s what we’re going to be building our our houses with.” …Pelican Lake has also signed forestry agreements with Tolko and Carrier Forest Products. “The lumber will be supplied direct to Adams Lumber, so it’s a preferred cost,” Bill said.

Alberta has seen the mountain pine beetle invade more than 2 million hectares of land used for forestry, but cold weather and prevention measures have radically slowed the spread. University of Alberta insect researcher Nadir Erbilgin shares the good news.

Elders from B.C.’s Pacheedaht and Wet’suwet’en First Nations have signed an open letter calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to stop siding with industry looking to develop new fossil fuel projects and log old-growth forests. The Dec 14 letter, implores Trudeau to “listen to the youth” and defend “life rather than perpetuating extractivism” through six actions. They include: playing a permanent moratorium on old-growth logging; stopping all construction of new fossil fuel projects…; and ending the surveillance and policing of Indigenous land defenders opposing their development. Together with David Suzuki, the group also implores Trudeau to take federal dollars used to police extractive projects and reallocate them to Indigenous communities so they can develop their own climate solutions and prop up alternative livelihoods. …“This could be your moment, Justin. COP-15 could be the defining moment of your legacy as prime minister,” said the letter.

Clint Carlson

Skill alone is rarely enough for professional athletes to succeed. …The same can be said of elite level loggers, and Clint Carlson, owner of Kaslo, B.C.-based, Sunshine Logging, is a good example of that. But even veterans like Carlson are feeling the pressure these days. …He says that the business environment today is so skewed that it’s hard to make the adjustments needed to facilitate a return to the more balanced business environment that existed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. While adjustments have been made in the cubic metre rate forest companies are offering to loggers, it’s still not enough to address the extra costs that loggers are facing. …Because of supply chain issues, many loggers today have to wait twice as long to replace equipment, and at substantially higher prices. …Carlson logs for Kalesnikoff Lumber based in Castlegar [and] customers who have won timber sales bids, such as Stella-Jones and Celgar Pulp.

MONTRÉAL – The Governments of Canada and Yukon are committed to working together to protect and conserve biodiversity, habitat, and species at risk in the Yukon. This will contribute to the goal of protecting 25 percent of land and fresh water in Canada by 2025 and 30 percent by 2030. The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, and Yukon’s Ministry of Environment, announced the Canada–Yukon Nature Agreement—the first agreement of its kind—to advance nature conservation and protection across the territory. The Government of Canada will invest a total of $20.6 million to implement the agreement. This will support Indigenous leadership in conservation; increased protection of sensitive habitats; and recovery actions for species at risk, as well as the protection and conservation of new land in the Yukon. The ministers announced the agreement at COP15 in Montréal. The Governments of Canada and Yukon will collaborate with Indigenous peoples and governments to implement Canada’s first Nature Agreement.

As the public ponders the various manipulated options for managing the North Cowichan Forests the silliness and eco-nonsense from the anti-forestry anti-logging crowd has intensified in our local media.  This campaign is well funded and has never disclosed where its money is coming from to stop logging in this municipal jewel. Is this where some of the $2 million Fairy Creek fundraising ended up? Now our politicians have been duped into stopping logging and creating a quagmire of fake concern about sustainable forestry. North Cowichan is the only municipal forest owner in BC that is considering killing its successful forestry business, egged on by people with little understanding of forest ecology and long on environmental shrillness. It hired a bunch of unqualified university professors with little or no real world experience to present faulty options that poorly reflect on the real value of wood and exaggerated the potential economic benefits of carbon credits.

This letter was also carried in the Victoria Times Colonist.