February 27, 2023
The Narwhal
By Sarah Cox
Almost two decades after the Williamson’s sapsucker was listed as endangered under Canada’s Species at Risk Act, the BC government continues to sanction logging in the bird’s old-growth forest critical habitat.
Biologist Les Gyug was working for BC’s environment ministry when a logging permit application caught his eye. A forestry company planned to clearcut rare old-growth larch stands in the province’s southern interior, set aside decades earlier as seed trees to allow for natural regeneration. “Rather than log them, let’s go look, and see what’s in them,” Gyug recalls saying.
He expected to find a suite of forest birds in the scattered 400-year-old western larch stands: birds like Townsend’s warblers, gaily-coloured western tanagers and brown creepers, a small songbird that spirals up tree trunks. Walking through the trees after dawn, binoculars in hand, he heard a mysterious bird drumming in staccato rhythm. “I had never heard this before. And I realized only afterwards, ‘Jeez, that was a Williamson’s sapsucker and it was in an old larch stand!’ ”
Back then, in the mid-1990s, little was known about Williamson’s sapsucker — the only one of the world’s 250 woodpecker species where the plumage of males and females is so strikingly different they were once thought to be two distinct species.
Gyug became a global expert on the bird, whose males have a lemon yellow belly and a distinctive cherry-red patch on their chin and upper throat. Females are banded in black and white, with a tawny head and a yellowish patch on their belly.
“I’ve found my niche,” Gyug says. “I could have just as happily worked on pelicans or something else. But this was a mystery bird. We didn’t have a clue how many there were. We only had a general sense of what their habitat needs were.”
Surveys conducted by Gyug and other biologists found only about 450 Williamson’s sapsucker pairs in BC, the only place in Canada where they live. Populations were dwindling. And the sapsucker’s old-growth habitat was vanishing, primarily due to logging. It all added up to an endangered listing under the federal Species at Risk Act in 2006.
But that wasn’t enough to protect the sweet-toothed bird, which migrates to BC every spring from Mexico and the southwest U.S. Nor did a BC Conservation Data Centre summary report, rating logging threats to the sapsucker as “high,” make any difference. The government-run data centre, which collects scientific data about species and ecosystems, singled out western larch logging in the woodpecker’s Okanagan-Boundary and Kootenay ranges as a particular concern.
The BC forests ministry continued to sanction logging in the sapsucker’s federally designated critical habitat — the habitat necessary for a species to breed and for populations to recover — including in western larch forests in the Okanagan-Boundary and Kootenay regions.
“Critical habitat is still being logged,” Gyug tells The Narwhal. “If we keep losing it, [the sapsucker] will never get off the endangered list … And right now, we’re just not doing enough.”
Sapsucker ‘condos’ are falling to the ground
Williamson’s sapsuckers often nest in a single old-growth western larch — a sapsucker “condo” — where they excavate holes the size of a toonie and raise three to five chicks.
Like maple syrup farmers, they tend sap trees, visiting a handful of Douglas firs, larches and pines several times daily during breeding season to tap new wells or keep existing wells flowing. Woodpeckers have barbs on their tongues to latch onto insects and grubs; the Williamson’s sapsucker has a brush-like tuft on the edge of long tongues for licking up sap.
Williamson’s sapsuckers also feed on carpenter and western thatching ants that hustle up and down tree trunks to tend aphid colonies on branch tips. The ants have a symbiotic relationship with the aphids. They protect them from predators, carry them to their nests at night and during winter and milk their antenna for sugar-rich liquid secretions called honeydew.
“You’ve got to have trees because they take ants off tree trunks; if tree trunks aren’t there, they can’t make a living,” Gyug explains. “They need the nesting trees and they need foraging habitat — you need the combination of the two in close proximity to each other.”
Gyug’s work saved the western larch seed stands from logging. Over time, he also helped secure the designation of about 150 small, scattered wildlife habitat areas for the sapsucker. But the wildlife habitat areas only represent about three per cent of the territory the sapsucker occupies in the province, leaving the majority open to logging and other disturbances.
In the Boundary region, about 15 per cent of the sapsucker’s federally designated critical habitat was clear-cut from 2017 to 2022, according to wildlife biologist Jared Hobbs. Sapsucker “condos” fell to the ground. Hobbs says logging is likely taking place at the same rate, or even more extensively, in the other two areas where sapsuckers live — the east Kootenays and the Merritt-Princeton area. “In the other regions they’re logging like crazy as well.”
Hobbs recently helped document 182 cutblocks, covering more than 3,000 hectares, in federally mapped Williamson’s sapsucker critical habitat within the Boundary area (a small portion of the Okanagan-Boundary region). He found a nest tree logged — “not an uncommon occurrence” — even though the slow rot and hard shell that makes the trees desirable for the sapsucker and other cavity dwellers means they are of little or no commercial value to the forest industry.
The BC government continues to sanction logging in federally designated critical habitat for the Williamson’s sapsucker, including in BC’s Boundary region.
“These trees are so valuable that with every one that’s lost, you are eroding the recovery potential of the population,” Hobbs says. “It takes hundreds of years to replace that tree cut down by the timber industry. It’s cut down as garbage and left lying on the ground. And that was gold for the Williamson’s sapsucker.”
If logging in the sapsucker’s critical habitat continues, Hobbs says populations will reach a critical tipping point. He points to the northern spotted owl as a cautionary tale. Only one wild-born spotted owl remains in Canada, despite years of warnings from biologists about impending population collapse following widespread industrial logging in the owl’s old-growth rainforest habitat in southwest BC.
When a species falls below what biologists call its minimum viable population, decline quickly becomes irreversible — as in the case of spotted owls, cod on the east coast and southern mountain caribou populations in BC Individuals struggle to find mates and reproduce, while genetic diversity — necessary for good health and adaptations, including to environmental shifts wrought by climate change — is lost.
“At that point, the crash is catastrophic and irreversible,” Hobbs says. “That’s what we did to the spotted owl. And we’re about to do that with the Williamson’s sapsucker. At that point, no matter what you do, and how much in recovery dollars you throw at it, like caribou and spotted owls, you’re not going to pull it back. The challenges become insurmountable.”
Williamson’s sapsucker populations in BC are genetically valuable because they’re at the northern extent of their range and have adapted to a different environment than U.S. populations, making them essential to help the species adjust to climate change and other stressors, Hobbs says.
“These are not populations that should be dismissed, they should be cherished.”
‘Nothing happens’ to save sapsucker
For Sean Nixon, a lawyer with the environmental law charity Ecojustice, the plight of the Williamson’s sapsucker is all too familiar. Many old-growth forest-dependent species in BC are in trouble, Nixon notes. “We know the causes of the decline. Generally commercial logging is the primary threat. We know what needs to be done to save the species. But then nothing happens.”
In large part, that’s because BC has no legislation dedicated to protecting and recovering the sapsucker and 1,340 other species at risk of extinction in the province. The BC NDP campaigned on a promise to enact endangered species legislation, but quietly reneged after coming to power in 2017.
The federal Species at Risk Act automatically protects critical habitat for most at-risk species only on federal land, a scant one per cent of BC.
The Act nominally protects migratory bird nests on provincial land. But enforcement is almost impossible, Nixon observes. Nests would have to be identified in advance of logging and other destructive activities and “there aren’t federal enforcement officers in most places.”
“Generally, industry and the provincial government do very little to survey an area in advance of logging to see if it contains nests and where they are.”
Forests occupied by the Williamson’s sapsucker could be safeguarded if the federal cabinet issued an order under the Act to protect the critical habitat of migratory birds, which fall under federal jurisdiction.
But Nixon doubts an order will be forthcoming. Reluctant to tread on the jurisdictional toes of the provinces, the federal government has issued emergency orders only for two species in the 20-year history of the Act — the western chorus frog in Quebec and the greater sage-grouse in Alberta. Federal cabinet will also soon consider issuing an emergency order to protect the northern spotted owl.
The provincial government will sometimes voluntarily designate wildlife habitat areas for the Williamson’s sapsucker and other at-risk species, Nixon notes. Yet road-building and some logging are still permitted in wildlife areas.
“They’re not required to follow objective scientific advice, like the advice in the federal recovery strategy, about how big those areas need to be, where they need to be, what kinds of activities they need to prohibit,” he says. “They’re just kind of ad hoc postage stamps on the landscape.”
When asked why the province allows federally designated critical habitat for the Williamson’s sapsucker to be destroyed, the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship did not respond directly. Instead, the ministry said the government has established many wildlife habitat areas for the sapsucker and best management practices are in place for timber harvesting, roads and silviculture.
The ministry also sidestepped a question asking why the province has turned a blind eye to to nest tree logging, saying trees occupied by the sapsucker are protected under the BC Wildlife Act, while the federal Migratory Birds Convention Act prevents nests from being disturbed or destroyed.
Asked what steps the government is taking to prevent further destruction of the sapsucker’s critical habitat, the ministry said the province is continuing work, in partnership with First Nations, to develop a declaration prioritizing ecosystem health and biodiversity conservation.
Biologist calls lack of action ‘disheartening’
Ecojustice says Ottawa has embraced a “dangerously narrow” interpretation of its duty to protect the critical habitat of at-risk migratory birds under the Species at Risk Act. Under that interpretation, the Act protects only nests, not any other habitat necessary for the survival and recovery of at-risk migratory birds. In the case of a secretive bird such as the at-risk marbled murrelet, which lays a single egg on a mossy branch high in an old-growth tree, nests are almost impossible to find.
“The key problem is that nests are very hard to identify from the ground for most species,” Nixon says. “The birds do a very good job of hiding them. And they’re generally quiet or they disappear as soon as people show up.”
Last year, on behalf of Sierra Club BC and the Wilderness Committee, Ecojustice announced it is suing the federal government for failing to live up to its statutory duties to protect habitat necessary for survival and recovery of migratory bird species.
If Ecojustice wins the case, scheduled to be heard in federal court this spring, Nixon says the federal government will be obliged to take steps to ensure protection of the sapsucker and other at-risk migratory birds.
A win would compel federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault to regularly recommend cabinet issue an order to protect migratory bird habitat on provincial land, including the old-growth stands where the Williamson’s sapsucker nests and feeds, according to Nixon.
“It would basically be the government stepping in and doing what the province hasn’t been willing or able to do: namely, set aside and protect and conserve the habitat that these species need to survive and recover.”
Hobbs says Williamson’s sapsuckers have an intrinsic right to live in the forest. That right is acknowledged in the preamble to the Species at Risk Act, which states, “Wildlife, in all its forms, has value in itself.”
“It’s really hard to find these old-growth patches that can sustain Williamsons’ sapsucker,” Hobbs says. You can spend days hiking around and not get into a patch that’s good enough. And then you do get to one and find that it’s just been logged. And then you find it’s in critical habitat, which the province is supposed to recognize and afford effective legal protection to.”
“Yet the BC forest ministry is approving the [cut]blocks in these habitats. It’s really disheartening.”
View the original article.
Deer Ferns
/in EducationalDeer fern is abundant in the coastal rainforest. This delicate little plant has two distinct forms: its sterile fronds are evergreen and lie flat on the ground, and its fertile fronds produce spores, they appear only in the spring and stand straight up from the forest floor. True to its name, deer fern is an important source of winter forage for our coastal blacktailed deer.
Big-tree hunters with the AFA have also noticed that some of the most magnificent groves of giant cedars on the coast are densely populated with lovely beds of deer fern. Cedars are unique among our coastal giants in that they are, like ferns, symbiotically linked to arbuscular mycorrhizae (Douglas-firs and Sitka spruces are connected to another group of fungi called ectomycorrhizae), this means that the mammoth pillars of ancient cedars are intimately connected with the delicate fern gardens that grow in their shadow.
Earth Week Event with Andy MacKinnon & TJ Watt – Wed. April 19th
/in EventsAre you curious to learn about biodiversity and old-growth ecosystems in BC, what they can teach us, and how you can help see them protected?
Then please join us for a free night of insightful presentations and a special photo show on Wednesday, April 19th from 7–9pm (doors at 6:30pm) at St. Mary’s Church in Metchosin, BC (4125 Metchosin Rd.)!
Dr. Andy MacKinnon, renowned forest ecologist, educator, and co-author of Plants of Coastal British Columbia, among other publications, will speak to the connections between old-growth ecosystems and biodiversity and how they affect the planet’s well-being as well as our own.
TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance’s award-winning conservation photographer, will present on Exploring & Photographing Ancient Forests in BC, giving a behind-the-scenes look into how his images are captured, new updates on the old-growth campaign, and how people can help move it forward!
Arrive at 6:30pm to enjoy a few refreshments while viewing TJ’s photos, which will be on display for this event. TJ’s photography will be on display for public viewing April 20th, 22nd, 24th, 26th, 27th, and 29th from 1–3 pm, April 21st and 28th from 6-8 pm, April 25th from 10–12 pm. The event is free, but donations to the Ancient Forest Alliance are welcome!
Click here to register for the Earth Day event. We look forward to seeing you!
Western Skunk Cabbage
/in EducationalA sure sign of spring on the coast is the emergence of the spectacular western skunk cabbage. These magnificent plants, with their gargantuan leaves, flourish in wet, swampy areas in the rainforest and are among the earliest flowering plants to grace our forests. Their pungent odour is the chemical equivalent of birdsong, though instead of attracting a mate of the same species, the skunk cabbage’s olfactory music lures in flies and beetles to pollinate its dense column of flowers called a spadix.
Bears relish skunk cabbage, feasting on it after they emerge from hibernation in the early spring when other food resources are scarce. If you come across a skunk cabbage garden in the forest, look for bear tracks in the mud and pits where the hungry animals have dug up their swamp salad. Don’t be tempted to follow their example though, as the leaves of skunk cabbage contain crystals of calcium oxalate, the same substance that makes rhubarb leaves toxic.
Also called a swamp lantern because of its bright yellow spathe, encountering dozens of these bright “lanterns” glowing in the shadow of ancient cedars on a cool spring morning, while varied thrushes and pacific wrens pour out their music, is one of the quintessential pleasures of the coastal rainforest.
Earth Month Contest: Prints for Forest Protection!
/in Take ActionEarth Month Contest Alert! ?
To honour Earth Month, we’re hosting a PRINT GIVEAWAY to help protect endangered ancient forests in BC! All you need to do to enter is Send a Message to the BC government calling for funding to help protect old-growth forests using our recently UPDATED take-action tool! Help us reach 15,000 messages by sharing the link with friends and family as well.
*Note, those who have already sent a message to the BC government using our updated tool (since March 30, 2023) will automatically be entered into the draw. If you sent messages prior to that, you can send a NEW one today.
Send a Message to Enter!
Included in the prize is a signed 20”x30” fine art print from Ancient Forest Alliance photographer, TJ Watt, and an “I ? Ancient Forests” tote bag.
The winner will choose their print from a number of picturesque scenes including the Brooks Peninsula, Avatar Grove, Caycuse Valley, Nootka Island, Great Bear Rainforest, Big Lonely Doug, and more. See them here or browse the gallery below.
Speaking up really does make a difference!
Thanks, in part, to the tens of thousands of letters sent in by people like you over the past few years, we’re seeing many of our main campaign requests materialize, such as the BC government’s recent commitment to protect 30% of the province by 2030, which will double the amount of area currently under legislated protection; creating a conservation financing mechanism to help protect old-growth forests through the creation of new Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (this is huge!); prioritizing biodiverse areas for protection and creating a new BC Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework; investing in a transition to a lower-volume, higher-value forest industry that focuses on processing smaller diameter trees; and more.
However, we’re not there yet
There are still a few major provincial policy and funding gaps to be filled to make sure the government’s commitments lead to protecting the most endangered old-growth forests while supporting the sustainable economic diversification of First Nations communities, whose unceded lands these are and who have the final say in what gets protected — or not.
So please, add your voice to the thousands of individuals and hundreds of businesses who are also calling on the BC government to fund old-growth protection!
Send a Message to Enter
The contest will close at 11:59pm on Earth Day (April 22, 2023) and is open to residents of Canada. The winner will be announced the following Monday (April 24, 2023). We will contact the winner by email, so be sure to add Ancient Forest Alliance to your contacts, so it doesn’t end up in your junk/spam folder.
To keep track of news, photos, and future contests, be sure to follow Ancient Forest Alliance on Instagram and Facebook, and tag your friends in our giveaway post so they can get involved, too!
For the forests,
The AFA team
Thank You to Our Amazing Business Supporters!
/in Thank YouWe would like to extend a massive thank you to the following businesses for generously supporting the old-growth campaign.
Thank you to:
WildPlay Element Parks, whose Canadian division voted to contribute their 1% For The Planet donation to Ancient Forest Alliance.
Patagonia Victoria for not only their ongoing support, but who have graciously been selling AFA merchandise in their store for over a year now. If you’ve had your eye on a Big Lonely Doug tee or AFA tote bag, head to Patagonia’s storefront at 616 Yates St. in Victoria to scoop one up for yourself!
Flow Motion Aerials and West Coast Trail Bus Express Inc. for their ongoing generous gifts.
Your support makes our important work possible and we’re extremely grateful!
Indigenous funding model is a win-win for ecosystems and local economies in Canada
/in News CoverageMarch 10, 2023
Mongabay: News and Inspiration from Nature’s Frontline
by Spoorthy Raman
Over the past 15 years, First Nations in Haida Gwaii and central and northern coastal British Columbia, Canada, have turned the tables around: once subjected to massive economic, social and cultural damages due to the extractive logging industry, they have now successfully built a sustainable economy that focuses on protecting sensitive ecosystems, while increasing communities’ well-being, a recent report shows.
The report was released by Coast Funds, an Indigenous-led conservation finance organization set up in 2007 as part of a historic land-use planning agreement negotiated between First Nations, environmental organizations, and the provincial and federal governments. Named the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement, it aimed to prevent logging in 85% of the approximately 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) of temperate rainforests — the largest of its kind in the world — stretching up Canada’s west coast and home to the iconic spirit bears (Ursus americanus kermodei) and coastal sea wolves (Canis lupus crassodon).
With an initial fund of C$120 million ($87 million) — half of it financed through money raised by First Nations and philanthropic partners toward conservation and the rest matched by provincial and federal governments toward economic development — Coast Funds began providing funds directly to First Nations in the region to use on projects they deem necessary in their territories. Its funding model allowed it to avoid the typical issues surrounding conservation finance and Indigenous communities, and, according to the report, delivered a long list of successes.
Spirit bear in the Great Bear Rainforest. Image by Andrew S Wright.
The C$109 million ($79 million) invested by 27 First Nations across 439 environmental stewardship and economic development projects in the Great Bear Rainforest and Haida Gwaii region has generated more than C$296 million ($214 million) in additional investment to date — almost three times the initial investment.
“When I look at that report, I think about how amazing our leaders were 15 years ago,” says Christine Smith-Martin, who is of Tsimshian and Haida descent and is the CEO of the 11-nation coalition Coastal First Nations. “I think it is a great success story, because it was owned by the community.”
Since 2008, using funding from Coast Funds, First Nations in the region have set up 123 Indigenous-led businesses, spent C$122 million ($88 million) toward sustainable infrastructure projects like buildings and equipment, and diversified their local economies with investments in sectors like ecotourism and renewable energy. These investments have created more than 1,200 jobs in the past 15 years, some of which have lured Indigenous people away from resource-extractive industries like logging and placed them in conservation-oriented stewardship positions.
These employment opportunities have infused more than C$63 million ($46 million) into the local economy as salaries.
Wei Wai Kum Guardians, part of the Laich-Kwil-Tach group of First Nations, patrol the Nation’s territory, conduct research, restore salmon habitat, and partner with Crown agencies and industry to monitor impacts on lands and waters. Image by CoastFunds.
When unsustainable logging was thriving in the Great Bear Rainforest region, before the agreements were in place, the industry would clear-cut old-growth trees in vast areas of First Nations’ territories and take the timber elsewhere for processing. “All the money came back to the industry owners and the provincial government through royalties,” says Adra, the CEO of Coast Funds, adding that First Nations had very little say in how that resource extraction happened in their territories. Decades of logging also decimated salmon, a culturally significant species for coastal First Nations, in many streams.
However, once the funding came through, the report notes, First Nations led 389 research and habitat restoration initiatives that benefit 75 species in the region. These include the development of a recovery program for Haida Gwaii’s national bird, the threatened northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis laingi), by the Council of the Haida Nation; an aerial survey of mountain goats in the Nass Wildlife Area by the Nisg̲a’a Nation; and tracking whale movements by the Gitga’at Nation.
“Our grants are not specific to a species,” Adra told Mongabay. “It’s all about what the Nation’s priority is and what they like to use the funding to research on.”
Natalie Ban, a marine conservation scientist at the University of Victoria, has spent more than a decade working on some of these conservation projects, such as understanding the cultural and ecological importance of Dungeness crabs and monitoring paralytic shellfish poisoning levels, driven by the Kitasoo/Xai’Xais, Haida and Gitga’at nations aided by Coast Funds.
“One of the things that’s been amazing is that the First Nations can do their own science,” Ban says, adding that without this, these nations would have to rely on outsiders. “Now they can develop their own programs where you don’t need somebody else to bring in money.”
Wei Wai Kum Guardians, part of the Laich-Kwil-Tach group of First Nations, patrol the Nation’s territory, conduct research, restore salmon habitat, and partner with Crown agencies and industry to monitor impacts on lands and waters. Image by CoastFunds.
Guardians of the land
Funding has also helped set up 18 guardian programs to date in the First Nations that monitor more than 7 million hectares (17 million acres) of land and marine territory each year in the region.
“Guardians are our eyes and ears on the land,” says Valérie Courtois, director of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, an Indigenous-led nationwide conservation and stewardship organization in Canada. “It is people who are trained for being the caretakers of our spaces, our lands and waters.”
These programs include training community members with the required skills, buying equipment like boats, and providing them with full-time jobs as coastal guardians or stewardship directors.
“Guardianship is an important stewardship mechanism for nations to reflect their authority over their territories,” Adra says. He cites the example of the Kitasoo/Xai’Xais guardian watchmen, who monitor the many fjords and inlets in their territory — areas where federal departments’ monitoring programs do not reach — to keep poachers away.
Guardians from the Mamalilikulla First Nation conducting a kelp survey. Image by Markus Thompson / Thalassia Environmental.
“These guardians are going in specific areas to keep track of because they know the areas to go to,” adds Smith-Martin. “They have a very comprehensive understanding of their territory.”
This funding into guardian programs have bolstered the Coastal Guardian Watchmen Program, a regional collaboration set up in 2005 to steward the entire coast, which, Courtois says, is “one of the most stable, well-funded and most successful of the guardian programs in Canada.”
Although Canada is home to more than 600 First Nations, funding challenges have prevented most from establishing similar guardian programs. “Often, programs are based on cyclical funding or project-based funding,” Smith-Martin says, adding that guaranteed funding is necessary to successfully set up such programs.
A first-of-its-kind Indigenous finance model
Conventional funding for conservation projects relies on fundraising or short-term grants, which can be piecemeal or insufficient to manage vast protected areas, like the Great Bear Rainforest. Hence, Coast Funds is set up to be a project finance for permanence (PFP) model, where the entirety of the C$120 million was raised before its inception and this funding is permanent.
Penstock installation for Kitasoo/Xai’xais Nation’s hydropower project by Barkley Project Group, a renewable energy company. Image by Taylor Stubbins.
Each Nation has a predetermined share that’s available to it. “Nations aren’t trying to compete for limited resources, they have long-term sustainable financing that they know how much they’re expecting to receive every year,” Adra says. Coast Funds acts like a trust through which each Nation can access its allocated funds.
Adra credits the ingenuity, creativity and determination of the communities, who are at the center of decision-making, with the success of Coast Funds.
Many instances in the past have shown that while funding toward conservation projects led by Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) is increasing, the communities don’t benefit much. For instance, at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, several governments and private funders pledged $1.7 billion — the largest such pledge — to support ILPCs’ land tenures. However, a year later, a report from the funders found that only 7% of the funding went directly to ILPCs. Often, most of that funding goes to international NGOs, consultancies, development banks and other intermediaries. There’s also a lack of IPLC representation at the advisory board level, along with a shortage of capacity to manage financial resources and flexibility in funding to adapt to changing priorities.
However, Coast Funds’ model is built to overcome such issues, Adra says, where the 27 First Nations appoint the board members, and every project needing funding is reviewed and approved by that Nation’s chief and council. Should a Nation’s priorities change mid-way, they still can access their unused funds for new initiatives.
Haida House at Tllaal oceanside cabins on Haida Gwaii, owned by the Haida Enterprise Corporation (HaiCo), the economic development corporation of the Haida Nation. Image by K. Bialous/ Entrée Destinations.
“Everything is rooted in the determination of the nations, in how they access the capital and in how they communicate with our team,” he says, “From cradle to grave, it’s done in service of the nations, by the determination of the nations.”
Ban, whose research relies on the work of the guardians and the use of boats and other equipment, which are expensive to buy and maintain, says programs financed through Coast Funds have been transformational for communities as it “provides longer-term, more sustainable financing for many of these programs.”
Coast Funds’ success has inspired similar conservation funding mechanisms elsewhere. In Brazil, the Amazon Region Protected Areas (ARPA) for Life program aims to protect about 150 million hectares (370 million acres) of rainforest, and in Costa Rica the $55 million Costa Rica Forever program protects 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of land and 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of sea. Similar projects are underway in Bhutan, Colombia and Peru to protect local ecosystems.
At last December’s United Nations biodiversity conference in Montreal, COP15, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced an additional C$800 million ($580 million) investment in four Indigenous-led conservation models funded through PFPs, which include the marine protected areas in the Great Bear Sea, the stretch of Pacific Ocean that extends from the north of Vancouver Island to the Canada-Alaska border.
“When you have a funding financial model that’s set up by communities, I think that the success of that model becomes the success of the communities,” Smith-Martin says.
Read the original article.
SALMON PARKS: Inside a movement to conserve Pacific Northwest old growth
/in News CoverageMarch 21, 2023
The Seattle Times
By Lynda V. Mapes, Erika Schultz, and Lauren Frohne, Seattle Times staff
Check out this amazing international coverage in The Seattle Times featuring the Nuchatlaht and Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nations’ efforts to establish a number of Salmon Parks in their unceded territories that would protect hundreds of square kilometres of ancient forests, salmon watersheds, and previously logged areas in need of restoration. These Salmon Parks recognize the integral role that old-growth forests play in the health of wild salmon and are geared towards preserving the full range of habitats and ecosystems that salmon depend on, from the tops of the mountains all the way down to the ocean.
The initiative, located in the Tahsis, Nootka Island, and Gold River region on western Vancouver Island, has been underway for several years and is grounded in Nuu-chah-nulth principles of iisaak (respect), uu-a-thluk (caring), tsawalk (essential oneness), and the responsibility of the nations to look after their lands and waters. The two nations are working to ensure that the BC government recognizes and honours their Salmon Parks with corresponding legislation.
A map of the Salmon Parks proposed on Vancouver Island and Nootka Island.
The Ancient Forest Alliance is proud to be supporting this incredible work through our partner organization, the Nature Based Solutions Foundation. Alongside our collaboration with the Kanaka Bar Indian Band on its Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area, we are increasingly working to support First Nations-led old-growth conservation initiatives across BC.
Read the full, interactive article here.
Sapsucker housing crisis: endangered woodpecker ‘condos’ are being clear cut
/in News CoverageFebruary 27, 2023
The Narwhal
By Sarah Cox
Almost two decades after the Williamson’s sapsucker was listed as endangered under Canada’s Species at Risk Act, the BC government continues to sanction logging in the bird’s old-growth forest critical habitat.
Biologist Les Gyug was working for BC’s environment ministry when a logging permit application caught his eye. A forestry company planned to clearcut rare old-growth larch stands in the province’s southern interior, set aside decades earlier as seed trees to allow for natural regeneration. “Rather than log them, let’s go look, and see what’s in them,” Gyug recalls saying.
He expected to find a suite of forest birds in the scattered 400-year-old western larch stands: birds like Townsend’s warblers, gaily-coloured western tanagers and brown creepers, a small songbird that spirals up tree trunks. Walking through the trees after dawn, binoculars in hand, he heard a mysterious bird drumming in staccato rhythm. “I had never heard this before. And I realized only afterwards, ‘Jeez, that was a Williamson’s sapsucker and it was in an old larch stand!’ ”
Back then, in the mid-1990s, little was known about Williamson’s sapsucker — the only one of the world’s 250 woodpecker species where the plumage of males and females is so strikingly different they were once thought to be two distinct species.
Gyug became a global expert on the bird, whose males have a lemon yellow belly and a distinctive cherry-red patch on their chin and upper throat. Females are banded in black and white, with a tawny head and a yellowish patch on their belly.
“I’ve found my niche,” Gyug says. “I could have just as happily worked on pelicans or something else. But this was a mystery bird. We didn’t have a clue how many there were. We only had a general sense of what their habitat needs were.”
Surveys conducted by Gyug and other biologists found only about 450 Williamson’s sapsucker pairs in BC, the only place in Canada where they live. Populations were dwindling. And the sapsucker’s old-growth habitat was vanishing, primarily due to logging. It all added up to an endangered listing under the federal Species at Risk Act in 2006.
But that wasn’t enough to protect the sweet-toothed bird, which migrates to BC every spring from Mexico and the southwest U.S. Nor did a BC Conservation Data Centre summary report, rating logging threats to the sapsucker as “high,” make any difference. The government-run data centre, which collects scientific data about species and ecosystems, singled out western larch logging in the woodpecker’s Okanagan-Boundary and Kootenay ranges as a particular concern.
The BC forests ministry continued to sanction logging in the sapsucker’s federally designated critical habitat — the habitat necessary for a species to breed and for populations to recover — including in western larch forests in the Okanagan-Boundary and Kootenay regions.
“Critical habitat is still being logged,” Gyug tells The Narwhal. “If we keep losing it, [the sapsucker] will never get off the endangered list … And right now, we’re just not doing enough.”
Sapsucker ‘condos’ are falling to the ground
Williamson’s sapsuckers often nest in a single old-growth western larch — a sapsucker “condo” — where they excavate holes the size of a toonie and raise three to five chicks.
Like maple syrup farmers, they tend sap trees, visiting a handful of Douglas firs, larches and pines several times daily during breeding season to tap new wells or keep existing wells flowing. Woodpeckers have barbs on their tongues to latch onto insects and grubs; the Williamson’s sapsucker has a brush-like tuft on the edge of long tongues for licking up sap.
Williamson’s sapsuckers also feed on carpenter and western thatching ants that hustle up and down tree trunks to tend aphid colonies on branch tips. The ants have a symbiotic relationship with the aphids. They protect them from predators, carry them to their nests at night and during winter and milk their antenna for sugar-rich liquid secretions called honeydew.
“You’ve got to have trees because they take ants off tree trunks; if tree trunks aren’t there, they can’t make a living,” Gyug explains. “They need the nesting trees and they need foraging habitat — you need the combination of the two in close proximity to each other.”
Gyug’s work saved the western larch seed stands from logging. Over time, he also helped secure the designation of about 150 small, scattered wildlife habitat areas for the sapsucker. But the wildlife habitat areas only represent about three per cent of the territory the sapsucker occupies in the province, leaving the majority open to logging and other disturbances.
In the Boundary region, about 15 per cent of the sapsucker’s federally designated critical habitat was clear-cut from 2017 to 2022, according to wildlife biologist Jared Hobbs. Sapsucker “condos” fell to the ground. Hobbs says logging is likely taking place at the same rate, or even more extensively, in the other two areas where sapsuckers live — the east Kootenays and the Merritt-Princeton area. “In the other regions they’re logging like crazy as well.”
Hobbs recently helped document 182 cutblocks, covering more than 3,000 hectares, in federally mapped Williamson’s sapsucker critical habitat within the Boundary area (a small portion of the Okanagan-Boundary region). He found a nest tree logged — “not an uncommon occurrence” — even though the slow rot and hard shell that makes the trees desirable for the sapsucker and other cavity dwellers means they are of little or no commercial value to the forest industry.
The BC government continues to sanction logging in federally designated critical habitat for the Williamson’s sapsucker, including in BC’s Boundary region.
“These trees are so valuable that with every one that’s lost, you are eroding the recovery potential of the population,” Hobbs says. “It takes hundreds of years to replace that tree cut down by the timber industry. It’s cut down as garbage and left lying on the ground. And that was gold for the Williamson’s sapsucker.”
If logging in the sapsucker’s critical habitat continues, Hobbs says populations will reach a critical tipping point. He points to the northern spotted owl as a cautionary tale. Only one wild-born spotted owl remains in Canada, despite years of warnings from biologists about impending population collapse following widespread industrial logging in the owl’s old-growth rainforest habitat in southwest BC.
When a species falls below what biologists call its minimum viable population, decline quickly becomes irreversible — as in the case of spotted owls, cod on the east coast and southern mountain caribou populations in BC Individuals struggle to find mates and reproduce, while genetic diversity — necessary for good health and adaptations, including to environmental shifts wrought by climate change — is lost.
“At that point, the crash is catastrophic and irreversible,” Hobbs says. “That’s what we did to the spotted owl. And we’re about to do that with the Williamson’s sapsucker. At that point, no matter what you do, and how much in recovery dollars you throw at it, like caribou and spotted owls, you’re not going to pull it back. The challenges become insurmountable.”
Williamson’s sapsucker populations in BC are genetically valuable because they’re at the northern extent of their range and have adapted to a different environment than U.S. populations, making them essential to help the species adjust to climate change and other stressors, Hobbs says.
“These are not populations that should be dismissed, they should be cherished.”
‘Nothing happens’ to save sapsucker
For Sean Nixon, a lawyer with the environmental law charity Ecojustice, the plight of the Williamson’s sapsucker is all too familiar. Many old-growth forest-dependent species in BC are in trouble, Nixon notes. “We know the causes of the decline. Generally commercial logging is the primary threat. We know what needs to be done to save the species. But then nothing happens.”
In large part, that’s because BC has no legislation dedicated to protecting and recovering the sapsucker and 1,340 other species at risk of extinction in the province. The BC NDP campaigned on a promise to enact endangered species legislation, but quietly reneged after coming to power in 2017.
The federal Species at Risk Act automatically protects critical habitat for most at-risk species only on federal land, a scant one per cent of BC.
The Act nominally protects migratory bird nests on provincial land. But enforcement is almost impossible, Nixon observes. Nests would have to be identified in advance of logging and other destructive activities and “there aren’t federal enforcement officers in most places.”
“Generally, industry and the provincial government do very little to survey an area in advance of logging to see if it contains nests and where they are.”
Forests occupied by the Williamson’s sapsucker could be safeguarded if the federal cabinet issued an order under the Act to protect the critical habitat of migratory birds, which fall under federal jurisdiction.
But Nixon doubts an order will be forthcoming. Reluctant to tread on the jurisdictional toes of the provinces, the federal government has issued emergency orders only for two species in the 20-year history of the Act — the western chorus frog in Quebec and the greater sage-grouse in Alberta. Federal cabinet will also soon consider issuing an emergency order to protect the northern spotted owl.
The provincial government will sometimes voluntarily designate wildlife habitat areas for the Williamson’s sapsucker and other at-risk species, Nixon notes. Yet road-building and some logging are still permitted in wildlife areas.
“They’re not required to follow objective scientific advice, like the advice in the federal recovery strategy, about how big those areas need to be, where they need to be, what kinds of activities they need to prohibit,” he says. “They’re just kind of ad hoc postage stamps on the landscape.”
When asked why the province allows federally designated critical habitat for the Williamson’s sapsucker to be destroyed, the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship did not respond directly. Instead, the ministry said the government has established many wildlife habitat areas for the sapsucker and best management practices are in place for timber harvesting, roads and silviculture.
The ministry also sidestepped a question asking why the province has turned a blind eye to to nest tree logging, saying trees occupied by the sapsucker are protected under the BC Wildlife Act, while the federal Migratory Birds Convention Act prevents nests from being disturbed or destroyed.
Asked what steps the government is taking to prevent further destruction of the sapsucker’s critical habitat, the ministry said the province is continuing work, in partnership with First Nations, to develop a declaration prioritizing ecosystem health and biodiversity conservation.
Biologist calls lack of action ‘disheartening’
Ecojustice says Ottawa has embraced a “dangerously narrow” interpretation of its duty to protect the critical habitat of at-risk migratory birds under the Species at Risk Act. Under that interpretation, the Act protects only nests, not any other habitat necessary for the survival and recovery of at-risk migratory birds. In the case of a secretive bird such as the at-risk marbled murrelet, which lays a single egg on a mossy branch high in an old-growth tree, nests are almost impossible to find.
“The key problem is that nests are very hard to identify from the ground for most species,” Nixon says. “The birds do a very good job of hiding them. And they’re generally quiet or they disappear as soon as people show up.”
Last year, on behalf of Sierra Club BC and the Wilderness Committee, Ecojustice announced it is suing the federal government for failing to live up to its statutory duties to protect habitat necessary for survival and recovery of migratory bird species.
If Ecojustice wins the case, scheduled to be heard in federal court this spring, Nixon says the federal government will be obliged to take steps to ensure protection of the sapsucker and other at-risk migratory birds.
A win would compel federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault to regularly recommend cabinet issue an order to protect migratory bird habitat on provincial land, including the old-growth stands where the Williamson’s sapsucker nests and feeds, according to Nixon.
“It would basically be the government stepping in and doing what the province hasn’t been willing or able to do: namely, set aside and protect and conserve the habitat that these species need to survive and recover.”
Hobbs says Williamson’s sapsuckers have an intrinsic right to live in the forest. That right is acknowledged in the preamble to the Species at Risk Act, which states, “Wildlife, in all its forms, has value in itself.”
“It’s really hard to find these old-growth patches that can sustain Williamsons’ sapsucker,” Hobbs says. You can spend days hiking around and not get into a patch that’s good enough. And then you do get to one and find that it’s just been logged. And then you find it’s in critical habitat, which the province is supposed to recognize and afford effective legal protection to.”
“Yet the BC forest ministry is approving the [cut]blocks in these habitats. It’s really disheartening.”
View the original article.
BC extends ban on old-growth logging for two years to assist endangered spotted owl’s recovery
/in News CoverageMarch 3, 2023
CBC News
By Winston Szeto
The BC government says it’s extending an old-growth logging ban for part of the Fraser Canyon, located about 100 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, for another two years to help with the recovery of the endangered spotted owl.
On Friday, the province announced it had extended the suspension of old-growth logging activity in the Fraser Canyon’s Spuzzum and Utzilus watersheds — which span more than 300 square kilometres — until February 2025.
Two years ago, the BC and federal governments reached an agreement with the Spuzzum First Nation to hold off logging in the watersheds for a year while the governments continued working on a recovery plan. The agreement was later extended for another year.
The province says the two-year logging deferrals in the Spuzzum and Utzilus watersheds are part of its plan to bring back a “sustained breeding population” of the owl.
“These deferrals are an important component of a complex process that will allow us to learn as much as possible to support the reintegration of the spotted owl into its habitat,” Nathan Cullen, BC’s minister of water, land and resource stewardship said in a written statement.
Northern spotted owls are endangered species
Northern spotted owls have been defined as endangered since 1986 and are under pressure due to habitat loss. They thrive in old, mature forests and help maintain the biodiversity of those areas.
Protection of spotted owls has fuelled decades-long disputes between environmental groups and the forest industry, as their future is often tied to saving old-growth forests where the birds live.
In a joint statement last week, environmental groups Ecojustice and Wilderness Committee and the Spuzzum First Nation said they had learned that the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, is recommending an emergency order to protect the spotted owl from imminent threats to its survival and recovery.
The statement said the minister has determined that logging must be prevented in the two Fraser Canyon watersheds within the Spuzzum First Nation’s territory, and that he is also calling for the protection of a further 25 square kilometres of forest habitat considered critical to the spotted owl’s survival but at a higher risk of being logged within the next year.
Forests Minister Bruce Ralston says further extending the logging deferral will support recovery efforts to increase the bird’s population.
Province’s measures not enough to save owls: advocates
Ecojustice staff lawyer Kegan Pepper-Smith says he welcomes the province’s latest move to help the endangered species, but it’s insufficient in light of Guilbeault’s recommendations.
“It’s laughable that the BC government suggests these two simple deferrals demonstrate a commitment to recovering the species, when it’s clear that [old-growth] logging continues,” Pepper-Smith said.
“Logging elsewhere is completely jeopardizing any kind of recovery of the species.”
The province says there are only three northern spotted owls known to live in the wild in BC, two of which were released by a breeding facility in Langley in August last year.
BC’s Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development says it spends $400,000 annually on spotted owls recovery programs.
TJ Watt, campaigner for BC environmental group Ancient Forest Alliance, says the province needs to spend even more to save the species.
“We’re calling for $120 million in short-term … funding that would help offset the loss of logging revenues for First Nations to accept deferral in the long-term,” Watt said.
“We’re calling for … $300 million towards conservation financing to support sustainable economic development, guardian programs and new Indigenous-protected areas.”
View the original article from CBC News.
Conservationists decry lack of funding to protect old-growth forests despite major provincial budget surplus and ecological crisis in the woods
/in Media ReleaseFor immediate release
Tuesday, February 28th, 2023
Still needed is short-term funding for First Nations to offset lost logging revenues from accepting logging deferrals as well as long-term conservation financing to develop sustainable economic alternatives to old-growth logging linked to the creation of new Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas.
VICTORIA (Unceded Lekwungen Territories) – Conservationists are disappointed that the BC government has failed to allocate critical funding in the 2023 provincial budget for old-growth protection despite having a major budget surplus and recently committing to creating a conservation financing mechanism to protect old-growth forests and biodiverse areas. The Ancient Forest Alliance has repeatedly called on the province to provide significant short- and long-term funding for First Nations, many of whom now have an economic dependency on the revenues of old-growth logging, to help further conservation efforts.
“Today the BC government missed an historic opportunity to use its multi-billion dollar budget surplus to help safeguard critically endangered old-growth forests and ecosystems,’” stated AFA Campaigner and Photographer, TJ Watt. “David Eby has committed to ‘accelerating’ the government’s efforts on old-growth, to protect 30% of BC by 2030, and create a conservation financing fund to protect old-growth forests and the most biodiverse areas. Allocating significant funding in this budget would have been the gas in the tank to accelerate those commitments. Instead, the conservation fund remains empty and the expectation so far is that it will be filled through private and philanthropic donations, a complete abdication of the province’s responsibilities.”
Two types of funding are still urgently needed from the province in order to help achieve the protection of old-growth forests: both short and long-term.
In the short term, at least $120 million in “solutions space” funding is needed to help offset lost logging revenues for First Nations who accept temporary logging deferrals in the most at-risk old-growth forests, as identified by the government’s independent science panel, the Technical Advisory Panel (TAP). To date, less than half of the 2.6 million hectares of the most at-risk ancient forests identified for deferral by the TAP have been secured and progress on additional priority deferrals has stalled, leaving over one million hectares of BC’s most at-risk old-growth forests without even temporary protection. The vast majority of old-growth forests in BC are located on the unceded territories of diverse First Nations communities, whose consent and support are a legal necessity for the creation of any new deferrals or protected areas.
A pink ribbon signalling a new road to be built through an old-growth forest in the Caycuse Valley on unceded Ditidaht Territory. Photo by TJ Watt – Ancient Forest Alliance.
“The province should use its massive budget surplus or unallocated funds at a later date to provide short-term funding to help offset lost logging revenues when asking First Nations, who have the final say on whether they want to defer logging or not in the most at-risk old-growth forests. The point of temporary logging deferrals is to ‘stop the bleed’ while long-term land use plans can be developed and the province — the one responsible for creating the ecological wounds in the first place — must use its vast resources to make the path to protecting old-growth as painless as possible,” stated Watt. “Without deferrals, many areas remain in a “talk and log” situation where, day by day, we continue to lose the best of the big-tree, ancient, and rare old-growth forests. $120 million in “solution space” funding would help to ensure that First Nations communities aren’t forced to choose between setting aside at-risk old growth and generating revenue for their communities. With billions of dollars in surplus money, there’s never been a better time for the province to fully fund all avenues of old-growth protection. Why haven’t they done so?”
In the long term, at least $300 million in conservation financing is needed from the province to support First Nations’ sustainable economic development, stewardship jobs, and creation of new Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs) linked to protecting the most at-risk old-growth forests and ecosystems. This can include new land-use planning, guardians programs, and the development of sustainable economic alternatives to old-growth logging such as tourism, clean energy, sustainable seafood harvesting, non-timber forest products, and a value-added, second-growth forestry. Support for forestry workers and contractors, as well as legally defined compensation for major licensees, would be above and beyond this total.
The federal government has significant funding available to support environmental protection as well. $2.3 billion has been committed to help Canada achieve its international commitments to protect 25% of lands and waters by 2025 and 30% by 2030 (a goal to which BC has also committed) and of this, several hundred million dollars are available for the expansion of protected areas in BC, with $55 million specifically allocated to old growth in BC so far. The BC government must commit to providing matching funding and formalize the long-awaited BC-Canada Nature Agreement, which remains under negotiation, and would allow the federal funds to flow into BC.
Also missing from the budget is any investment into a much-needed “Provincial Land Acquisition Fund” which would help the province to purchase privately held lands of high conservation, scenic, cultural, and recreational value that are under threat from logging or development. The Ancient Forest Alliance has called for such a fund for more than a decade, which would start with an initial investment of $70 million, to be increased by $10 million a year until the fund reaches $100 million. The fund would fill a crucial gap in BC’s current conservation policies by allowing for the acquisition and permanent protection of endangered old-growth forests and other threatened ecosystems across the province that otherwise have no form of legislated protection.
A positive note was the allocation of $21 million over three years in funding for the development of eight new Forest Landscape Planning projects. Landscape planning work includes First Nations as well as a variety of stakeholders and is part of the pathway towards permanent protection for old-growth forests. However, conservationists stress that without significant conservation financing, future land-use plans will not go far enough when it comes to protecting BC’s rarest and most productive forest ecosystems. Conservationists also argue that the implementation of logging deferrals is the essential prerequisite for fulsome and comprehensive land-use planning, as it alone ensures that those ecologically critical forests will not be lost while planning is underway. Additionally, $101 million was committed to help preserve and enhance outdoor recreational opportunities in BC Parks and outdoor recreation sites and trails.
“David Eby promised to accelerate the protection of old-growth forests as well as protect 30% of lands in BC by 2030. That would be a major step forward for conservation, but it won’t happen for free,” stated Watt. “You wouldn’t promise a paradigm shift in health care or expect to build major new infrastructure without the money to back it up. The province should be using its multi-billion dollar surplus to help solve the decades-long battle to protect old-growth forests once and for all. It must also match and accept the hundreds of millions in funding available from the federal government to support Indigenous-led conservation efforts, including protecting old-growth forests. Every day there’s a delay, we further lose our chance to protect these irreplaceable ecosystems.”
Ancient Forest Alliance photographer TJ Watt stands beside an old-growth redcedar tree before and after logging in the Caycuse watershed in Ditidaht territory on Vancouver Island, BC.
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Background info:
Conservation financing is an approach that was successfully used on BC’s Central and North Coasts, where $120 million was committed by the provincial and federal governments and conservation groups to support First Nations business development and economic alternatives to old-growth logging. The result was a globally significant conservation achievement, with 80% of what is now known as the Great Bear Rainforest being reserved from logging.
This funding helps to supplant the lost revenues and jobs from forgoing old-growth logging through the creation of alternatives such as eco-tourism, sustainable aquaculture, non-timber forest products, renewable energy, and even sustainable second-growth logging. It can also provide funds needed for First Nations’ guardian and stewardship programs.
Old-growth forests are vital to support endangered species, First Nations cultures, the climate, clean water, wild salmon, and tourism. Under BC’s current system of forestry, second-growth tree plantations are typically re-logged every 50–60 years, never to become old-growth again.