With lumber prices remaining at near-record highs a fully integrated forestry company is pledging to help. San Group recently started operating its mill in Port Alberni and says their lumber is not only the most environmentally friendly choice but likely the most affordable thanks to a discount offered to Vancouver Island customers. Their lumber has recently hit retail stores on Vancouver Island. “It’s really exciting for us to increase our brand and increase our market share to the local Vancouver island residents and businesses that we’re partnering up with,” said Bruce Molander, The San Group’s Port Alberni Mill Manager. It comes as lumber prices soar. Monday another record price was set at over $1,400 dollars per thousand board feet. The San Group says it would like to help those feeling the pinch of high lumber prices.

It’s been dubbed the new “War in the Woods”: A growing Vancouver Island protest encampment aimed at disrupting planned logging in Fairy Creek, an expanse of old-growth rainforest located just north of the British Columbia capital of Victoria.  But this month yielded an unexpected twist in the Fairy Creek saga: Local First Nations leadership are definitely not on board.  “We do not welcome or support unsolicited involvement or interference by others in our Territory, including third-party activism,” read an April 12 letter drafted by the Pacheedaht First Nation, whose traditional territory encompasses the Fairy Creek watershed. …It’s a phenomenon that is becoming not all that uncommon in British Columbia which – unlike much of Canada – sits largely on untreatied land. As the province’s Indigenous communities acquire greater control of development and natural resources, they are increasingly butting up against environmentalist groups who claim to represent them.

VICTORIA — The B.C. government should prepare the public for the coming “big shock” when “fairly large chunks” of provincial Crown land are recognized as actually owned and controlled by Indigenous Nations. So says Jack Woodward, the lawyer who won the case that resulted in the first declaration of Aboriginal title in B.C. and who is taking another title case to court next year. …“Over the next generation we’re going to see a replacement of ownership of large parts of the province. It is going to be a big shock and a big change and a big adjustment for the system to get used to.” “There’s going to be a different landlord.” …Woodward suggests that where Aboriginal title is recognized, a Crown tenure is “a worthless piece of paper.” …The end result, says Woodward, will be local control by First Nations, as opposed to forestry and other tenures being held by multinational corporations.