Premier John Horgan is getting failing grades when it comes to protecting B.C.’s old-growth forests, according to a report card issued by a coalition of environmental groups on Thursday. The report card evaluates the province’s progress at the six-month mark after its promise to act on 14 recommendations outlined in a report that followed a strategic review of B.C.’s old-growth forestry practices. Most urgently, the province grades poorly around the call to take immediate action to protect at-risk old-growth and stem the loss of rare ecosystems, said Andrea Inness, a campaigner with the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA), which issued the report card along with the Wilderness Committee and the Sierra Club BC. …The report card suggests that the province is also failing to adequately chart a new forest approach that prioritizes the integrity of ecosystems and biodiversity as called for by the review plan.

Eastern Vancouver Island has been named one of nine of the country’s Ecocrisis Regions by the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC). The conservancy released a study on 77 ecological regions in the country’s southern half, looking at the number of endangered species, the amount of parks and protected areas, and the amount of remaining habitat. The study then ranks the areas in terms of the biodiversity and the threat they face in coming years as the climate crisis continues. Eastern Vancouver Island is one of the nine most at risk areas in the country. According to the study it “supports more biological diversity than anywhere else in the province.” …What makes the Island stand out are the Garry Oak ecosystems in the south. …Many of the most diverse areas also happen to be the most populated by humans, which can increase the risk to the species.

City of Powell River councillors are supportive of recommendations regarding protection of old-growth trees BC. At the March 2 committee of the whole meeting, councillor CaroleAnn Leishman said she was happy the matter was back on council’s agenda. The item had been postponed from a previous committee meeting so Tla’amin Nation could be consulted. … There was a recommended motion to the committee that a letter be sent to the provincial government endorsing recommendations in the report, especially recommendation six, which entailed immediate response to ecosystems at very high risk. The report recommends that until a new strategy is implemented, to defer development in old forests where ecosystems are at very high and near-term risk of irreversible biodiversity loss. … Councillor Cindy Elliott said … that the immediate protection is not for all old growth, it is specifically for old growth that is ancient – 500 years old and older… for this region, there would be very small pockets.

The slaughter continues as a company is planning to log in the Barkley Sound and Clayoquot Sound, including old growth forests. These is a prime tourist destination. Other logging companies, like Mosaic, are continuing to lock and gate people out from reaching provincial and other recreational areas in the Port Alberni Valley and elsewhere. …The new NDP majority government campaigned on an election promise to implement all 14 of the old growth review panel recommendations, which was received in April 2020. One of those recommendations was to ban logging in at-risk old growth forests within six months. These deferrals are overdue – they should have been implemented by the end of October at the latest. …Sierra Club’s recent polling indicates that more than 90 percent of people living in British Columbia support action to protect endangered old growth forests.

David Suzuki

H.L. Mencken said “there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” This is often the case with society’s responses to human-caused wildlife decline. Take salmon populations along B.C.’s coast. According to assessments by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, only two of 29 wild Chinook salmon populations aren’t at risk of extinction. …A number of factors cause salmon populations to decline, including overfishing, climate change and stream, river and estuary degradation. …Human activity is also putting caribou at risk throughout Canada. Their decline is driven by habitat loss and degradation, especially from linear corridors such as seismic lines, logging roads and recreational trails. Predators use these corridors to increase their caribou-hunting success rates.  …As long as we capitulate and default to easy solutions to complex problems, we’ll likely continue to drive wildlife decline and disappearance.  

B.C. First Nations Forestry Council is inviting students of First Nations, Inuit, or Métis descent to apply for the Indigenous Forestry Scholarship Program. The IFSP program is applicable to areas including forestry technician, natural resources, environmental technology, skidder operators and heavy-duty mechanics. “The program provides indigenous students with tuition and living scholarship, paid summer work-term experience and one-on-one mentorship with a program partner, and support from your local Indigenous Skills and Employment Training (ISETP)  centre,” B.C. First Nations Forestry Council said. The deadline for 2021-2022 cohort is Mar. 31, and 25 seats are available. “We always receive a high response, so students should apply as soon as possible,” Karen Sorensen, Workforce Development Manager, B.C. First Nations Forestry Council, said. The forestry council has partnered with B.C. Timber Sales, B.C. Wildfire Services and the ISETP for the delivery of program. The program is for students interested in attending full-time studies in a designated post-secondary institution.

Amanita phalloides, or death cap mushrooms, originated in Europe but were accidentally introduced in B.C. through hitching rides on the roots of trees, such as the sweet chestnut. Once planted in the yards of urban neighbourhoods here, the fruiting bodies began to make their presence known. Initially, the notoriously poisonous mushroom would only show up near the base of transplanted European trees. …However, in the last few years B.C. scientists discovered that death caps have learned to live off the roots of Garry oak trees, shared Metchosin biologist Andy MacKinnon. This means that the mushroom species has adapted, spread itself farther, and can now also be found anywhere Garry oaks grow. …“It is difficult to tell whether the death cap would displace other fungi that grow on the [Garry oak] roots, or just grow in addition to what is there already.”

ALBERTA — Last summer, a logging company cleared approximately 1,200 metres of an Indigenous ancestral trail in Bigstone Cree Nation territory, Treaty No. 8 region, in spite of government regulations in place to protect land. As an ancient archeological site, the trail should have been protected by the Alberta Historical Resource Act. A Historical Resource Impact Assessment should have been conducted to assess the site’s protected value. The logging company, Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc., conducted a “desktop” assessment. But no one physically visited the area, and the assessment missed identifying the trail. The trail is a valued cultural place, as the Bigstone Cree Nation Lands Department repeatedly informed Alberta-Pacific. Darren Decoine, the Bigstone Lands Department GIS technician, repeatedly requested detailed maps of the logging plans from Alberta-Pacific, but he says they were never provided. 

Taryn Skalbania

…Ministry of Forests Lands’ top logger, the Chief Forester, Diane Nicholls, gave taxpayers two months to comment on how much clear-cut logging can be supported by the watersheds in our basin. This is a one in ten year opportunity. Knowing what we know about today’s uncertain climate change and the certain effects of clear-cut deforestation in high elevation snow zones, perhaps the question the chief forester should be asking is not what to clear-cut but if we harvest trees at all. …Nicholls is not precautionary in her AAC calculations, the formulas she uses have been criticized for coming up short and climate change is not taken into consideration anywhere in BC’s experimental forestry land management plans. …Academics, common sense and practicing foresters like Herb Hammond know “you end up creating problems… by practicing the kind of industrial forestry that’s happening in the Peachland watershed.

Pressure is on the B.C. government to reform trespassing laws so the public can gain access to Crown-owned lakes, streams and wilderness….B.C. judges have recently made it clear that it’s Victoria’s job to fix illogical laws that allow private property owners to keep anglers and hikers away from publicly owned lakes and rivers because they own the land surrounding the waterways. At the centre of the right-to-roam dispute is Friday’s B.C. Court of Appeal ruling. …Louise Pederson said it’s particularly a problem on southern Vancouver Island, “where large swaths of forests are privately owned, and the Crown land within them, including lakes, are off-limits to the public” because of controversial railway land grants from the 1800s. Even the 95 per cent of B.C. wilderness that is owned by the Crown isn’t always accessible, Pederson said, because entry ways are often cut off by private land owners and logging companies.