The fight to protect what’s left of old-growth forests

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Let’s forget about the end of oil for a moment and worry about something more immediate: the end of old-growth forests.

British Columbia is the last place in Canada where you can still find ancient, monumental trees standing outside parks. We are not talking here just about big, old trees, but about trees 250 to 1,000 years old, that tower 70 metres in height. If one grew on the steps of Parliament, its tip would block out the clock face on the Peace Tower. And set down in Vancouver, they would be as tall as many office towers.

Surprisingly, it is still legal in B.C. to cut down trees like that. And so many of these giants have been cut over the past 20 years, says Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance, that the end of old growth is near.

“We’ve just about hit it already in the coastal Douglas-fir zone,” he said. “On eastern Vancouver Island, we’ve got 1 per cent of old growth left. On the south Island, south of Alberni, we’ve got about 10 per cent left.”

Three years ago, Mr. Wu founded the Ancient Forest Alliance, a small group dedicated to just one task – saving old trees. Since then, he and his colleagues have spent a lot of time tramping around coastal forests, mapping groves of giant trees – and pleading with the government to protect them.

They have successfully saved some patches of forest, such as the now-famous Avatar Grove, which has become a tourist attraction near Port Renfrew. But Mr. Wu has lost a lot of fights, too, returning to find stumps where there had been a majestic cathedral of trees.

“The place that stands out for me is in the Walbran Valley [on the West Coast of Vancouver Island.] … It really is a Jurassic Park landscape. You’d think there would be Brontosauruses walking through there, with enormous trees, hanging mosses and ferns everywhere. … But in the last few years, we’ve seen the area logged. It looks like Swiss cheese now. Huge stumps as large as my living room where there used to be trees as tall as a downtown skyscraper.”

Mr. Wu doesn’t mince words when asked what he thinks of scenes like that.

“So when you are getting down to the last of an ecosystem and the government is not doing anything to stop that, not only is that criminal negligence, it’s being an accomplice to the crime,” he said.

Of course, it is perfectly legal in B.C. to take a chain saw and cut down a tree that is 200, 400 or even 1,000 years old. Loggers don’t have to get special permits just because a tree is exceptionally old, or remarkably big. If it is in an authorized cut block, it can be logged – and for a long time, it seemed only Mr. Wu and a handful of other environmentalists have heard those giants fall.

But slowly a public distracted by debates over tanker traffic, oil pipelines and coal ports, is turning its interest back to the fate of B.C.’s iconic old-growth forests.

When the Ancient Forest Alliance started a petition recently calling for the protection of B.C.’s endangered old growth, 22,000 people signed up. Another 1,800 confirmed on the group’s website and Facebook page that they would attend a protest rally at the legislature.

Mr. Wu is hopeful that this growing public awareness will encourage the government to make policy changes. “The main goal is to get a provincial old-growth strategy in place that would inventory old growth and protect it in regions where it is scarce,” he said. “At the same time, we recognize that there’s a lot of people working in the forest industry.” Mr. Wu believes B.C. could get more value out of logging second-growth timber. He also thinks the province should stop exporting whole logs.

He feels confident government can be persuaded to act before the last old growth is logged.

But on Sonora Island, near Campbell River, a group of residents went for a walk in the woods recently and this is what they found – towering, 600-year-old trees marked to be cut.

If that logging goes ahead, B.C. will have lost another piece of the 1 per cent of old growth that remains in the area. That puts us pretty close to the end of the game.

Link to online article: www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/the-fight-to-protect-whats-left-of-old-growth-forests/article9868144/

Ancient Forest Alliance

Today’s CHEK TV news clip on the battle to stop Island Timberlands from logging the mountainside above Cathedral Grove!

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https://bcove.me/la6w1bkg – link to CHEK TV news clip on the battle to stop Island Timberlands from logging the mountainside above Cathedral Grove!

Environmentalists approve Liberal move on forest tenure

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Environmentalists are breathing a sigh of relief now that the BC government has backed off making changes to forestry licences.

Ken Wu with the ancient forest alliance says part of Bill 8 would have seen the logging rights to vast sections of public land granted to private companies.

“So it would have made it harder to establish new protected areas, to protect scenery and tourism opportunities. It would have made it more lengthy and difficult and complex to settle First Nations treaties, and it would have also taken away a lot of lands that communities would have wanted for community forestry.”

Wu says this proves the environmental movement is in fact a big player in BC politics — seeing as the Liberal government backed down with only days to go in the current session. 

Jane Morden

Old growth near Cathedral Grove set for imminent logging: activists

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An old-growth forest, close to Cathedral Grove and formerly protected as a critical wildlife corridor, is ringed with logging tape and conservation groups fear harvesting is imminent.

The marked 40-hectare cutblock, part of Island Timberlands private lands that government agreed could be removed from a tree farm licence in 2004, is about 300 metres from the boundary of MacMillan Provincial Park on the Alberni Highway. It is one of Vancouver Island’s most popular tourist attractions because of giant Douglas firs.

Island Timberlands did not return calls Monday or Tuesday, but company spokeswoman Morgan Kennah wrote in an email: “We have no comment on the planned story.”

The logging tape and road markings were found by members of the Ancient Forest Alliance. Ken Wu, founder of the environmental group, said logging would affect tourism and wildlife populations.

Wu wants both the Liberals and NDP to commit to re-regulating lands removed from the more stringent rules of tree farm licences.

“And we want to see a provincial park acquisition fund of $40 million a year to purchase endangered ecosystems on private land,” he said.

Alliance campaigner TJ Watt said Cathedral Grove is B.C’s iconic old-growth forest.

“It’s like the redwoods of Canada,” he said.“The fact that a company can just log the mountainside above Canada’s most famous old-growth forest underscores the B.C. government’s deep failure to protect our ancient forest heritage.”

The cutblock intersects the Mount Horne Loop Trail, which connects with Cathedral Grove.

“It’s a circle trail, so a lot of people walk up it,” said Jane Morden of Port Alberni Watershed-Forest Alliance.

The planned logging is the latest in a series of proposed cutblocks on lands that were supposed to be protected as critical habitat for wintering deer and other species.

When the government agreed to allow then-owners Weyerhaeuser to remove 88,000 hectares of private land from Tree Farm Licence 44, the province insisted that critical winter habitat should be protected for two years and a committee should then decide on further levels of protection, according to documents obtained through a freedom of information request by Alberni-Pacific Rim NDP MLA Scott Fraser.

But, after the private lands went to Island Timberlands, meetings with the government were “terminated” by the company in 2009, with government biologists saying the company’s harvesting plans were not science-based, the documents show.

There is no doubt that logging in the winter range would have an adverse effect, said independent biologist Mike Stini, a former government contractor.

“They are totally wrong to do this,” he said. “Habitat means it is the animals’ home. If someone takes your house away and you have to live on the streets, you won’t die right away, but your life will be short and your reproductive chances are going to be slim.”

Fraser, who has met with Forests Minister Steve Thomson about the breakdown in the original protection agreement, said the government signed the document and must take responsibility for enforcing it.

“The government gave away public control and that’s what caused this problem,” he said.

Fraser acknowledges it will be tough to regain control of private lands, but, if the NDP forms the next government, he would like to see changes to the Private Managed Forest Lands Act, possibly giving more say to local governments, and more public representation on the Private Managed Forest Lands Council, which is now made up of two industry representatives, two government appointees and a chair chosen by the other four members.

“But some of this might be very simple. Having a government that protects the public interest may be all it takes,” he said.

Read More: https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/old-growth-near-cathedral-grove-set-for-imminent-logging-activists-1.90194

Ancient Forest Alliance

CHEK News – Cathedral Grove Threatened by Logging

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Direct Link to video: https://youtu.be/3exaYAqSrzw

Conservationists are calling for much stronger, comprehensive old-growth protection policies in BC after having discovered a major logging threat to Canada's most famous old-growth forest, Cathedral Grove in MacMillan Provincial Park on Vancouver Island. Conservationists came across survey tape marked “Falling Boundary” and “Road Location” in an old-growth Douglas fir and hemlock forest only 300 meters from the park boundary last week. See photos and a map (based on some GPS points) at: https://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/photos-media/cathedral-grove-canyon/ The planned cutblock by Island Timberlands is about 40 hectares and lies within an area formerly intended for protection as an Ungulate (deer) Winter Range. It lies on the southwest facing slope of Mt. Horne on the ridge above the park and highway that millions of tourists pass through each year. Logging the area would further fragment the forest that is contiguous with the small park, destroying an important wildlife corridor from mountain ridge to valley bottom in an area that conservationists once hoped the park could include for the deer winter range. The logging would also threaten eco-tourism in the area, by destroying a major section of the popular hiking trail, the Mt. Horne Loop Trail, which the cutblock overlaps. The Ancient Forest Alliance is calling on the BC Liberals and NDP to commit to a provincial plan to protect the province's old-growth forests, to ensure sustainable second-growth forestry, and to end the export of raw, unprocessed logs to foreign mills. For private lands, the organization is calling for a provincial “park acquisition fund” of $40 million/year to purchase endangered ecosystems on private land for protection, similar to the park acquisition funds of various regional districts, like the Capital Regional District around Victoria.

B.C. backs off plan that would give private companies more power over Crown forests

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VICTORIA — The B.C. government has backed off on a plan that critics said would have sold out public control over Crown forest land.

Forests Minister Steve Thomson says he’s withdrawn proposed changes to the Forest Act that would have allowed volume-based forest licences to be converted to area-based forest licences, essentially giving private companies more power over government-owned land.

Thomson says it’s become clear more public input is needed on the idea, so the government will conduct broad consultations this summer on the recommendations of a special committee that first proposed the change.

That means nothing will be done until after the May election.

NDP forests critic Norm Macdonald welcomed Thomson’s move.

“The proposed changes were deeply problematic and went in exactly the wrong direction,” MacDonald said in a news release.

“They threatened public control over B.C.’s land base and risked hard-won environmental standards.

“I’m glad to see that the minister listened, not only to what I had to say, but to the concerns of thousands of British Columbians who let the Liberal government know that this was simply unacceptable.”

Independent MLA Bob Simpson also praised the government’s decision to shelve the amendments, saying the Liberals responded to mounting public concerns over plans to make sweeping changes to B.C. forest policy.

He also called for a public inquiry into future forest policy.

“The last inquiry into B.C.’s forests and forest policy was in the 1990s, and given all that’s happened with the mountain pine beetle epidemic, our shrinking timber supply, corporate concentration and control of log supply, and climate change’s threat to our public forests, we need a full public inquiry before considering any forest policy changes,” Simpson said in a statement.

Ken Wu of the environmental group Ancient Forest Alliance is also applauding the Liberals for backing down.

“The BC Liberals wanted to give a ‘parting gift’ to the major logging companies before they leave office, but in this politically sensitive pre-election period that’s not going to happen now — thanks to thousands of people who spoke up and the great work of Bob Simpson,” Wu said in a statement.

Ancient Forest Alliance

B.C. backs off on changes to licensing forest lands

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The provincial government has backed away from a plan that critics claim would have radically reduced public control of forest land.

Conservationists, who were girding for a full-fledged fight over proposed changes to the Forest Act, reacted with delight Tuesday after Forests Minister Steve Thomson said he was withdrawing plans to allow a rollover of volume-based forest licences to area-based tree farm licences.

The backdown appears to be sparked by a massive public uproar, said Ancient Forest Alliance executive director Ken Wu.

“The forest-giveaway bill would have taken us backward,” he said. “The B.C. Liberals wanted to give a parting gift to the major logging companies before they leave office, but, in this politically sensitive pre-election period, that’s not going to happen now.”

Under a volume-based system, licence holders have the right to a specific volume of timber within an area. Under an area-based system, companies are given exclusive tenure in defined areas.

Critics of the changes said they would increase private property rights for forest companies, making protection harder, First Nations treaty settlements more complicated, and resulting in less land available for other foresters.

The changes were contained in a multi-faceted omnibus bill. Thomson said Tuesday that more public consultation was needed.

Thomson had previously said that, although conversions from forest licences to tree farm licences would have been at the minister’s discretion, there would be public reviews and consultation before changes were made.

Joe Foy of the Wilderness Committee said the proposed changes sparked a flurry of opposition from First Nations, environmentalists, unions, politicians and individuals.

“It really goes to show how much people value our public forests and don’t want to see them fall into corporate hands,” he said.

Greenpeace Canada forest campaigner Eduardo Sousa said the decision to pull the legislation will keep Crown land in the hands of the public and First Nations.

“This means that people remain stewards of the land, and governments, not companies, are responsible for building prosperous communities and protecting our forests,” he said.

Withdrawal of the Forest Act changes will not alter plans for a rally for “ancient forests and forestry jobs” outside the legislature on Saturday at noon, Wu said.
 

Logs to be processed are pictured at Interfor's Acorn Division mill in Delta

Tourism in the Discovery Islands feels the force of logging

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Images of narrow sea channels backed by towering, thickly forested mountains have long been featured in government ads promoting tourism under the slogan: Super, Natural British Columbia.

While the government maintains that branding is being protected through careful forest management, ecotourism businesses in the Discovery Islands say a prime part of the pristine landscape on which Beautiful B.C.’s image rests is rapidly being ruined by logging.
“It’s heart-wrenching,” Ralph Keller, a spokesman for the Discovery Islands Marine Tourism Group, said Tuesday. “The Discovery Islands are probably the most geographically spectacular islands in the world … [but] in some places we have gone from beautifully forested shorelines to industrial logging … these channels have just been nuked.”

Forests Minister Steve Thomson was not immediately available for comment, but he said in an e-mail his government values the economic contributions of both tourism and forestry. He said the government, through its entity BC Timber Sales, has been trying to minimize the impact of logging on ecotourism by avoiding clearcut harvesting and doing more selective cutting.

“BC Timber Sales has been working closely with the local tourism operators and to ensure there is limited visual impact from the water of their proposed cutblocks,” he said. “BC Timber Sales has also agreed not to log during the summer kayak season.”

Mr. Keller, however, notes that the Discovery Islands, an archipelago north of Campbell River on Vancouver Island’s east coast, are the second most popular marine tourism destination in the province. Only the Tofino-Long Beach area on the west coast of Vancouver Island draws more visitors. He said the Discovery Islands support 120 tourism businesses, including lodges, resorts and nature tour operations, employing 1,200 people and generating $45-million in revenue annually.

Despite that, he said, the government is managing the area primarily for its logging values – and that is starting to hurt ecotourism.

“The Internet is great for getting your message out to the world,” he said. “But at the same time, when our clients see these logged areas they can post negative reviews just as quickly. You get TripAdvisor sending out bulletins that the place has been worked over, or it’s overrated as wilderness, and that really hurts you.”

Mr. Keller said the government had been protecting “view corridors” until 2003, when “they rewrote the rules” and relaxed controls over coastal logging, allowing it to take place in key wilderness tourism zones. “We had higher visual quality objectives 10 years ago,” he said. “The government reduced them because the forest companies were having a hard time [finding timber]. So they started approving logging along the shorelines and now there are cuts all over the place.”

He said when members of the Discovery Islands Marine Tourism Group complained to the government, they were told to take their concerns directly to the logging companies, several of which operate in the area. “But when you go to the licensees, their opening comment is ‘this cut block has been approved’ [by the government]. The licensees aren’t interested in talking to us … they just want to go about the business of logging.”

Mr. Keller said logging should be stopped until stakeholders have worked out a land use plan for the Discovery Islands.

NDP tourism critic Spencer Herbert said the government is damaging tourism and putting B.C.’s brand at risk. “We’re Super, Natural British Columbia,” he said. “One of our main marketing values has always been the wilderness, the unspoiled outdoors, and that’s something we have to protect.”

Mr. Herbert said wilderness tourism and logging can co-exist, but the government has to facilitate a dialogue between the parties to find solutions. “You don’t kill off one business to support another,” he said.

Read More: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/tourism-in-the-discovery-islands-feels-the-force-of-logging/article9703141/

Ancient Forest Alliance

Tree licence rollover has no public benefit

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At first glance Bill 8 — the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act — looks like housekeeping legislation. Read a little closer and one discovers one of the most pernicious pieces of forest legislation to be tabled in the legislature since a forests minister lost his job over the same issue in 1989.

Bill 8 includes an addition to the Forest Act that would allow the forests minister to invite corporations to roll over their forest licences into Tree Farm Licences (TFL), effectively transferring private ownership rights to the corporation without any reciprocal benefit in the public interest such as requirements to tie timber to local mills for local jobs; to upgrade existing mills; to invest in new mills; and to hand back more than five per cent of the allowable annual cut from existing forest licences, say 30 per cent, to deal with known timber supply shortages and to redistribute timber rights among communities and First Nations.

Imagine many large apartment complexes under a singe landlord. What sane landlord would invite selected tenants to roll over their month-to-month tenancies into a renewable 25-year lease with a token annual rent but without payment for the lease or any substantial reciprocity in kind other than five per cent loss of area? Well, that is precisely what your land agent, the government, is planning to do with your forest land. And matters get worse still.

Unfortunately, this offer realistically works for only corporate tenants of the larger apartments. If you happen to be a First Nations’ band or a forest-dependent community occupying smaller apartments, this offer is not for you because your rented areas are uneconomic in size to roll over into a renewable 25-year lease.

Under TFL tenure, private property rights transferable to corporations include rights to control access; to withhold information about public land (e.g., inventory statistics and maps); to sell and transfer the TFL tenure for which they did not pay in the first place; and to receive compensation if, for example, treaty negotiations should settle land title in favour of First Nations. In short, TFLs alienate public lands.

So how does the government justify provincewide forest tenure reform on the fly without public discussion?

First, in a recent news release, forests minister Steve Thomson declares, “the legislation fulfils recommendations made by the Special Committee on Timber Supply in their August, 2012 report …” This statement not only misrepresents the scope and object of the committee’s work but it is patently false. The committee’s final report does not contain one recommendation that the government enable TFL-rollover legislation provincewide.

Secondly, the forest minister claims, “area-based tenures [have] a number of benefits, such as creating an incentive for licence holders to make enhanced silviculture and infrastructure investments that will improve the midterm timber supply.”

Again, this assertion is not substantiated by fact. Government directly and indirectly subsidizes most forest management functions on TFLs.

For example, the taxpayer directly pays for insect and disease monitoring and for timber and non-timber inventories.

So what precisely is the incentive for the TFL holder to invest any more in public forests than the minimum required by law?

Thirdly, MLA John Rustad claims area-based tenures lead to “higher productivity and higher return on our land base.” Of timber and profits only. Because area-based management produces “normalized” forests designed to maximize timber growth at the expense of other forest values such as water, soil and biodiversity.

In British Columbia, we ostensibly, and badly, manage natural forests for ecosystem services and for many other cultural values other than timber such as recreation, big game hunting, and tourism.

In just about every country in which area-based forest management is practised, they have completely lost their natural biodiversity of ecosystems, species and genetic richness.

Ironically this government is trying to ram through Bill 8 just as the Auditor General releases a scathing report on the status of the province’s biodiversity.

We in British Columbia still have a chance to do it right for future generations by enacting a Sustainability Act for the protection of air, water, and soil and by implementing a provincewide conservation framework for biodiversity; all resource-use and tenure laws should be subordinate to both.

Further administrative fragmentation of landscapes and enclosure of the commons by TFLs will only make matters worse and infinitely more expensive for us to settle First Nations’ land claims and to assert the public interest in how our forest lands are best managed for the protection of air, water and soil and for the conservation of the biodiversity that bestows on us bountiful timber and non-timber benefits.

Anthony Britneff recently retired from a 40-year career with the B.C. Forest Service during which he held senior professional positions in inventory, silviculture and forest health.

Read more: https://www.vancouversun.com/news/Tree+licence+rollover+public+benefit/8059516/story.html#ixzz2MvKFwm3s

Ken Wu

Activist Tackles Raw Log Exports

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A BC environmental activist is talking about raw log exports at a community forum tonight, Wednesday, March 6.

Ken Wu, of the Ancient Forest Alliance, is speaking at 7 pm in Trinity Hall, United Church, on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Duncan Street.

Last year, more than 5.7 million cubic metres of raw logs were exported from BC. In January, Forest Minister Steve Thomson announced changes to export rules that would include the cost of transporting logs to the Vancouver log market as a factor in determining whether logs are available for export.

“The government has essentially made it easier for companies to export raw logs, especially from Vancouver Island,” said Wu.

In terms of solutions, Wu said, the government needs to restructure the industry to provide the support for a value-added second growth forest industry. “Right now, a lot of the second growth logs are being exported to foreign mills,” he said.

As well, Wu said, he will be talking about the proposed expansion to tree farm licences in the province. The government has proposed amendments to the Forest Act that will allow for the conversion of volume-based forest licences to area-based tree farm licences at the minister’s discretion.

The government is increasing corporate control over Crown lands in BC by introducing the new bill in the legislature, just before the writ is dropped for the election, Wu said. “It enables the minister of forests to readily create new tree farm licences which confer exclusive logging rights over vast areas of land for these companies,” he said.

Another topic Wu will speak about is the need to protect old-growth forests, he said. “There’s controversial logging all around the province, including on the Sunshine Coast, in old-growth forests,” he said.

The community forum is sponsored by PR Voices, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers’ Union of Canada and Malaspina Sierra Club. Discussion and refreshments will follow Wu’s presentation and admission is by a suggested donation of $5.
 

Read More: https://www.prpeak.com/articles/2013/03/06/community/doc51369a7eaa879890427028.txt