Jane Morden and the Watershed Forest Alliance (WFA) have been fighting against logging at McLaughlin Ridge for close to half a decade now, but with city council’s unanimous decision on Monday night to support their efforts they may be one step closer to a solution.
Sarah Thomas, a volunteer with the WFA, presented the group’s concerns to city council and called on the city to support the WFA’s efforts to pause the logging at McLaughlin Ridge and have a conversation with the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations as well as landowners Island Timberlands.
The company owns McLaughlin Ridge and is legally permitted to log the old growth trees located there. The area represents a few hundred hectares of the 250,000 ha that Island Timberlands owns.
According to Thomas, the Mclaughlin Ridge old growth lands were identified by the province as areas that should be protected. However by 2004, the lands were removed from the Tree Farm Licence (TFL) and while promises were made to come to some agreement about how the lands would be protected, this never happened.
McLaughlin Ridge, which is about an hour southeast of Port Alberni, is home to a couple of hundred hectares of old growth Douglas Fir as well as the China Creek Watershed, the city’s main water source. Currently, the watershed meets Island Health’s 4-3-2-1-0 water requirements but the concern is that if the old growth is cut down, that might not be the case anymore.
“It’s important to protect [the China Creek Watershed] because you can always treat water but this costs a lot of money and it’s never as good as the original. We would like to make sure that nothing really bad happens to that water,” said Edna Cox of the Save Our Valley Alliance, a public education group.
“It’s designated a community watershed so we’re asked to stay out of the area and yet logging continues,” said Thomas at city council.
While the city does have other, secondary sources of water in Bainbridge Lake and Lizard Lake, China Creek is the best water source that Port Alberni has due to the filtration that the old growth up McLaughlin Ridge provides.
“The water comes down very, very slowly and it’s really well filtered [by the old growth]. If it comes of a bare slope or washes a lot of silt down then it’s not such high quality water,” said Cox.
If a lot of silt is washed down, the amount of sediments in the water increase, as does the turbidity.
“When there’s turbidity there’s a problem because you can’t even treat the water, it doesn’t help,” Cox said.
The old growth also helps keep the city’s water supply steady throughout the year. With the old growth there, the snowpack up on the ridge melts a little slower.
“The forest acts as a sponge so you don’t have all the water coming down in the spring melt and then no water in the summer.
“We’ve had low water conditions now for over a year; we didn’t have much of a snowpack last year either,” said Jane Armstrong, also from the WFA.
Armstrong is not sure what the future holds for Port Alberni’s water supply, but she thinks that with climate change happening that drought conditions will stick around and that instead of rain throughout the year, the watershed will be filled up by occasional huge downpours.
[“If this happens] the forest is a natural solution for helping to control the flow of water,” Armstrong said.
Clearcutting also has another, more immediate danger; landslides. In 2006, clearcuts in the Beauforts, followed by a large amount of precipitation, were thought to have caused landslides that affected Beaver Creek’s water and brought gravel in debris into people’s homes.
There’s a chance that clearcutting on McLaughlin Ridge could lead to the same.
While Island Timberlands is required to replant trees that they cut down—and states that they typically do so within nine months —the high elevation of McLaughlin Ridge means that it will be generations until those replacement trees are big enough to serve any purpose, says Morden.
“This area is at a higher elevation, we’re talking about a thousand metres up, so it’s not going to grow back at a fast rate. Up there, you can have a 20-year-old tree that’s not anywhere much above your waist, said Morden, “and when the roots start to decompose from the huge [old growth trees,] then your chances of landslides are going to increase.”
In an e-mailed statement, Morgan Kennah, Manager of Sustainable Timberlands and Community Affairs for Island Timberlands, said that they “have and continue to work cooperatively with the city to ensure water quality is maintained in China Creek. In cooperation with the Ministry of Environment, we have installed a continuous water quality monitoring station in the watershed to ensure we meet the applicable water quality objectives.”
However, Cox doesn’t think that this is good enough because while “drinking water is protected [that] protection will take precedence when there’s an imminent threat, when it’s basically too late.”
According to Coun. Cindy Solda, the issue has been brought up at the Association of Island and Coastal Communities (AVICC), the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) and the Alberni-Clayquot Regional District (ACRD) and that a main goal of these government-led bodies is to change the way private land is regulated.
“One main goal is to get private land and Crown to be the same… we want to have more say,” Solda said.
“[Water] is a human right, we really need to have water,” said Coun. Wendy Kerr, “the forest companies have to know that they don’t own that water, they’re only renting the space, nobody owns this planet but we need to start taking care of it now.”
With that, Kerr raised motions to give city council’s support to the WFA and support the organization’s request to pause the logging at McLaughlin Ridge as well as to request a meeting between council, the WFA, Island Timberlands and the provincial forestry ministry.
City council carried the motion to applause from meeting attendees.
Quick facts:
◆ The first cut done at McLaughlin Ridge was four to five years ago, with a large cut occurring in 2011. Jane Morden of Watershed Forest Alliance says 50 per cent of the old growth remains.
◆ Port Alberni gets its water from the China Creek Watershed, located an hour southeast of the city. McLaughlin Ridge is located at the northern edge of the watershed boundary.
◆ There are two water intake sources within the China Creek Watershed: a creek intake off of China Creek at the western edge of the watershed and a lake intake off of Bainbridge Lake, located slightly northwest of the watershed boundary.
◆ The city primarily uses the creek intake due to its marginally higher water quality. However, if anything were to happen to the creek intake water quality, the city could use the lake intake.
Those two water intakes represent the redundancy in the city’s water supply, which means that it is unlikely that the two sources would both be unusable at the same time, city engineer Guy Cicon said.
◆ Port Alberni’s water is treated with chlorine before being stored in reservoirs. The city is currently in phase one of upgrading their water facilities by adding UV disinfection at a cost of $4 million. There is also the possibility of later adding a filtration system at an additional $3 million.
Read more: https://www.albernivalleynews.com/news/logging-mclaughlin-ridge-watershed-advocates-say-logging-threatens-citys-water-source/
B.C. First Nation is set to declare a vast chunk of the Chilcotin as a tribal park
/in News CoverageA B.C. First Nation is set to declare a vast chunk of the Chilcotin as a tribal park, including the site of the controversial proposed New Prosperity mine at Fish Lake.
A formal ceremony unveiling Dasiqox Tribal Park is set for Oct. 4, less than four months after a landmark Supreme Court of Canada ruling found that the Tsilhqot’in people have title to 1,750 square kilometres of land west of Williams Lake.
Taseko Mines Ltd.’s Fish Lake property lies outside the title area recognized by the courts, but the natives — who have long opposed the mine and claim hunting, fishing, and trapping rights in the area — have now folded the mine site into the tribal park boundary.
Questions immediately arise as to the validity of the tribal park declaration and what it means for the future of the $1.1-billion New Prosperity copper-gold project.
Brian Battison, vice-president of corporate affairs for Taseko, said Wednesday he is aware of the forthcoming ceremony but could not comment until he knows more details. “I don’t really know what it means. I don’t know what a tribal park is, how it’s constituted, and what may or may not be allowed.”
The tribal park would cover about 3,120 square kilometres and protect cultural, heritage and ecological values, according to the Tsilhqot’in, while connecting to five surrounding provincial parks.
Dave Williams, president of Friends of the Nemiah Valley, which works closely with the Tsilhqot’in people on conservation projects, explained in an interview that large-scale industrial mining and clear-cut logging would not be allowed in the tribal park, but that smaller-scale resource activities such as sustainable logging with portable mills may be suitable to provide employment for natives.
“Their view is this is their sovereign territory,” Williams said. “People going into the territory and applying for licences of occupation or permits … will have to go through the First Nations government.”
He said the tribal park declaration is unilateral for now, but his long-term hope is that the province could come on board under a joint management system similar to the Stein Valley Nlaka’pamux Heritage Park, established near Lytton in 1995.
Premier Christy Clark and John Rustad, Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, were in the Nemiah Valley on Wednesday, signing a letter of understanding that commits to building a more positive relationship with the Tsilhqot’in nation.
Communications officer Leanne Ritchie released a ministry statement saying the province had not received details of the tribal park, but hoped that the letter of understanding would provide the basis for future talks.
An August 2014 inventory report by consultant Wayne McCrory for the Xeni Gwet’in and Yunesit’in First Nations, with about 850 band members, noted that the area features a unique “rain shadow” forest ecosystem and some of the best habitat for large carnivores in North America.
Due to logging and mining threats, McCrory concluded: “The only option to protect this rich cultural/heritage landscape is through a designation of full protection status, such as a combined Tribal Park/provincial Class A Park or Conservancy.”
Taseko’s gold-copper mine project was approved by the provincial government, but twice rejected by federal panels and the federal government. Both federal panels cited damage to fish and fish habitat.
Even though Taseko changed its plans to preserve Fish Lake, which would have been destroyed in its first plan, the second panel review found the mine would result in the loss of Little Fish Lake to a 12-square-kilometre tailings pond and contaminate nearby Fish Lake and the upper Fish Creek system.
Taseko maintains the environmental review was badly flawed, saying it incorrectly assessed the project and its ability to prevent seepage from a tailings pond. Its legal challenge is before the Federal Court of Appeal, with a ruling possible before the end of the year.
First Nations are set to officially announce Dasiqox (“there for us”) Tribal Park in a ceremony at Fish Lake, also known as Teztan Biny, about 100 kilometres southwest of Williams Lake. Nuu-chah-nulth carver Tim Paul has donated a totem pole for the event.
Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada could not immediately comment on the tribal park designation.
On Monday, Taseko — which runs the Gibraltar copper-molybdenum mine 65 kilometres north of Williams Lake — announced a friendly $79-million takeover of Curis Resources, which is developing a copper project in Arizona.
lpynn@vancouversun.com
What a Dasiqox Tribal Park would help to protect:
(1) Would connect five surrounding parks: Ts’yl?os, Big Creek, Nunsti, Big Creek, and Southern Chilcotin Mountains.
(2) More than 10,000 hectares of threatened white bark pine forest, perhaps the largest and healthiest such stands remaining in Western Canada, not decimated by white pine blister rust, the mountain pine beetle, and wildfires driven by climate change.
(3) The last viable refuge for the dryland grizzly bear, which historically occurred down the western mountains of North America in the lee of the coast ranges. The diet of these grizzlies ranges from white bark pine nuts to salmon.
(4) Important spawning habitat for chinook, sockeye, and coho salmon, having made lengthy journeys via the Fraser and Chilcotin rivers; the low sockeye run in Yohetta Creek is considered a unique genetic stock that is endangered.
(5) Migratory routes for mule deer as well as ancient Tsilhqot’in trails, both local and long-distance, some of them thought to date back thousands of years.
Source: Inventory report by consultant Wayne McCrory.
Read more: https://www.vancouversun.com/news/metro/Unilateral+park+declared+Tsilhqot+includes+Prosperity+mine/10192766/story.html#ixzz3D4RT0pgo
Native Tree and Shrub Planting in Portage Park (View Royal) on Sept.14
/in AnnouncementsJoin the Greater Victoria Green Team, Ecological Pathfinder volunteers of Portage Park, and Ancient Forest Alliance for a fun day of planting trees and shrubs in the beautiful Portage Park (View Royal). An ecological restoration project has been taking place in Portage Park, with the removal of 1000s of pounds of invasive plants over the last year! Now we need to re-plant native trees and shrubs as the next step to improve the ecological integrity and health of this habitat.
Join a group of volunteers and learn about the ecology of Vancouver Island’s amazing forests, native plants, and help restore the native ecosystem. Thanks to the support of the Evergreen Foundation and Canon.
Date: Sunday, September 14
Time: 9:45am to 2pm (Stay for as long as you want, and if you need to leave early that is okay!)
Tools, refreshments, and training will be provided!
Join the event and RSVP here: https://www.meetup.com/Greater-Victoria-Green-Team/events/201693132/
For more info contact Amanda at: amanda@greenteamscanada.ca
Great News! BC Government Backs Down from Tree Farm Licence Expansion Plans for Now – THANK YOU for Speaking Up!
/in AnnouncementsRecently, just before the Labour Day weekend, the BC government quickly mentioned that they have no immediate plans to introduce any legislation to expand Tree Farm Licences across British Columbia in 2014 or in the spring. This proposal has been a recurring scheme by the BC Liberal government – proposed before the 2013 BC election and then again this year until now – to give exclusive logging rights to major logging companies on vast areas of BC’s public forest lands. Each time, a massive public uproar has played an important role in preventing this “forest giveaway scheme” from being implemented!
THANK YOU to the many thousands of our supporters who formed the numeric bulk of the opposition speaking up against this proposal (see www.BCForestMovement.com), to the many First Nations who voiced their concerns and especially to the Tsilhqot’in First Nation who recently won the land title case in the Supreme Court, which was a fundamental reason for the BC government backing down. We must stay vigilant in case the relentless BC Liberal government tries again to attempt such a plan in the future.
[Original article in Clearwater Times no longer available]
SRD buys valuable piece of real estate
/in News CoverageThe Strathcona Regional District has agreed to purchase a hotly debated piece of property for nearly $1 million.
After five years of negotiations with Island Timberlands, the owner of the 70-acre greenspace on Cortes Island, the property is expected to soon belong to the regional district.
Island Timberlands accepted an offer of $839,000 for the property, known as Whaletown Commons, which is appraised at $826,000 ($475,000 for the timber and $351,000 for the land).
The Whaletown Commons Society, a non-profit which has been trying to secure the land for more than 20 years, is partnering with the regional district and has agreed to chip in roughly $73,000 towards the purchase with its share raised through local donations.
Cortes Director Noba Anderson told her constituents in a newsletter in June that the regional district has more than $571,000 in community parks reserve funds that it’s prepared to contribute towards the purchase.
Anderson said she’s pleased the regional district was able to secure the land for Cortes residents to enjoy for years to come.
“I am beyond delighted that this long-standing community park priority has finally become a reality,” Anderson said in a news release. “The purchase of Whaletown Commons is a rare opportunity to secure 70 acres of green-space in the centre of a neighbourhood, and I am honoured to be part of making this happen.”
The Whaletown Commons Society, which was formed with the sole purpose of keeping the greenspace as parkland, wants to use the property to create a community park in Whaletown and to provide a spot for potential re-location of some of the community’s public assembly buildings.
The greenspace is a valuable piece of land because of its high forest and riparian values, salmon-bearing Burnside Creek, and it provides a natural habitat for wolves and other animals.
It also connects three Whaletown sub-neighbourhoods and is set to become the first formal and permanent park in the Whaletown/Gorge area.
Anderson assured Cortes Islanders last month that the regional district has no interest in developing the property.
“It is important to underline that this park would be purchased as a green space – and a green space only,” Anderson wrote on Cortes’ online site, Tideline, in June. “What becomes of it in the future will be up to the community and the limitations of the covenant (on the land).”
Mossy maple grove
/in News CoverageWhen most of us think of British Columbia’s old-growth forest we imagine towering ancient cedars, spruces, and firs. But along a salmon-bearing creek southwest of Vancouver Island’s Lake Cowichan there’s an enchanting rainforest of an entirely different sort—featuring centuries-old deciduous bigleaf maples. Ken Wu, executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance, came across the rare grove, which extends in a corridor at least four kilometres long, on a scouting mission two years ago and is advocating for its protection. This is Canada’s mossiest rainforest, he says. The trees are enveloped by hanging gardens of mosses, ferns, and lichens that thrive on the calcium-rich bark of the trees. The maples are an estimated 300 years old and are “exceptionally large,” with diameters up to two metres. “This is the most photogenic ecosystem in the entire country,” says Wu. “I’ve been through so many types of forest and landscapes and this one takes the cake. Hollywood couldn’t have created a more rainforesty rainforest.” Bigleaf maples are native to southwestern B.C. but old-growth stands are scarce—the aged wood of the species has high commercial value and is sometimes targeted by wood poachers. Wu suspects that these particular trees—a few dozen giants mixed with some second growth and other species—have been spared because they have hollowed out with age. The Mossy Maple Grove (also nicknamed Fangorn Forest after J.R.R Tolkien’s forest of animated tree-like beings) is primarily on Crown land. AFA runs occasional public hikes there but discourages independent visitation to avoid damaging the delicate understory and spooking the elk that rely on this riparian area. (The grove is also frequented by deer, cougars, black bears, and sometimes wolves.)
Info: Visit the Ancient Forest Alliance website for scheduled hikes (staging.ancientforestalliance.org). Watch a video on the Mossy Maple Grove (youtube.com/watch?v=FzOefJnAENI).
Read more: https://bcmag.ca/explore-more/mossy-maple-grove
New PHOTO GALLERIES of Avatar Grove Boardwalk progress in 2014
/in Photo GalleryThe Ancient Forest Alliance and teams of dedicated volunteers have made some signigicant progress on the construction of the boardwalk at Avatar Grove this summer. A big thanks goes to those who've come out to help and to everyone who's donated towards the project!
See photos of July's work here: https://on.fb.me/1ocTApr
See photos of August's work here: https://on.fb.me/1C0NIKG
Some of the latest additions include a beautiful new sign post at the trailhead; a much-needed bridge over the creek in the Upper Grove; a big section of stairs and platforms leading up the slope to the Gnarly Tree; new sections of landscape steps; extended bridges and platforms; and many other things!
Help us reach our $12,000 fundraising goal to complete the boardwalk this year!
$100 sponsors 1 metre of boardwalk and you will receive a thank you certificate with your name or a friend's name if it's a gift!
If you would like to help out, please send an email with your availability, any related experience or special skills, and physical limitations we should be aware of, to Avatar Boardwalk coordinator TJ Watt at: info@staging.ancientforestalliance.org Volunteers must be able to follow instructions accurately, be in good physical condition to do the work, and act safely, responsibly and respectfully without exception. Activities may include carrying heavy boardwalk planks, bucketing gravel, using hand tools, digging soil, moving rocks, etc. as well as having fun!
Logging McLaughlin Ridge: Watershed advocates say logging threatens city’s water source
/in News CoverageJane Morden and the Watershed Forest Alliance (WFA) have been fighting against logging at McLaughlin Ridge for close to half a decade now, but with city council’s unanimous decision on Monday night to support their efforts they may be one step closer to a solution.
Sarah Thomas, a volunteer with the WFA, presented the group’s concerns to city council and called on the city to support the WFA’s efforts to pause the logging at McLaughlin Ridge and have a conversation with the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations as well as landowners Island Timberlands.
The company owns McLaughlin Ridge and is legally permitted to log the old growth trees located there. The area represents a few hundred hectares of the 250,000 ha that Island Timberlands owns.
According to Thomas, the Mclaughlin Ridge old growth lands were identified by the province as areas that should be protected. However by 2004, the lands were removed from the Tree Farm Licence (TFL) and while promises were made to come to some agreement about how the lands would be protected, this never happened.
McLaughlin Ridge, which is about an hour southeast of Port Alberni, is home to a couple of hundred hectares of old growth Douglas Fir as well as the China Creek Watershed, the city’s main water source. Currently, the watershed meets Island Health’s 4-3-2-1-0 water requirements but the concern is that if the old growth is cut down, that might not be the case anymore.
“It’s important to protect [the China Creek Watershed] because you can always treat water but this costs a lot of money and it’s never as good as the original. We would like to make sure that nothing really bad happens to that water,” said Edna Cox of the Save Our Valley Alliance, a public education group.
“It’s designated a community watershed so we’re asked to stay out of the area and yet logging continues,” said Thomas at city council.
While the city does have other, secondary sources of water in Bainbridge Lake and Lizard Lake, China Creek is the best water source that Port Alberni has due to the filtration that the old growth up McLaughlin Ridge provides.
“The water comes down very, very slowly and it’s really well filtered [by the old growth]. If it comes of a bare slope or washes a lot of silt down then it’s not such high quality water,” said Cox.
If a lot of silt is washed down, the amount of sediments in the water increase, as does the turbidity.
“When there’s turbidity there’s a problem because you can’t even treat the water, it doesn’t help,” Cox said.
The old growth also helps keep the city’s water supply steady throughout the year. With the old growth there, the snowpack up on the ridge melts a little slower.
“The forest acts as a sponge so you don’t have all the water coming down in the spring melt and then no water in the summer.
“We’ve had low water conditions now for over a year; we didn’t have much of a snowpack last year either,” said Jane Armstrong, also from the WFA.
Armstrong is not sure what the future holds for Port Alberni’s water supply, but she thinks that with climate change happening that drought conditions will stick around and that instead of rain throughout the year, the watershed will be filled up by occasional huge downpours.
[“If this happens] the forest is a natural solution for helping to control the flow of water,” Armstrong said.
Clearcutting also has another, more immediate danger; landslides. In 2006, clearcuts in the Beauforts, followed by a large amount of precipitation, were thought to have caused landslides that affected Beaver Creek’s water and brought gravel in debris into people’s homes.
There’s a chance that clearcutting on McLaughlin Ridge could lead to the same.
While Island Timberlands is required to replant trees that they cut down—and states that they typically do so within nine months —the high elevation of McLaughlin Ridge means that it will be generations until those replacement trees are big enough to serve any purpose, says Morden.
“This area is at a higher elevation, we’re talking about a thousand metres up, so it’s not going to grow back at a fast rate. Up there, you can have a 20-year-old tree that’s not anywhere much above your waist, said Morden, “and when the roots start to decompose from the huge [old growth trees,] then your chances of landslides are going to increase.”
In an e-mailed statement, Morgan Kennah, Manager of Sustainable Timberlands and Community Affairs for Island Timberlands, said that they “have and continue to work cooperatively with the city to ensure water quality is maintained in China Creek. In cooperation with the Ministry of Environment, we have installed a continuous water quality monitoring station in the watershed to ensure we meet the applicable water quality objectives.”
However, Cox doesn’t think that this is good enough because while “drinking water is protected [that] protection will take precedence when there’s an imminent threat, when it’s basically too late.”
According to Coun. Cindy Solda, the issue has been brought up at the Association of Island and Coastal Communities (AVICC), the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) and the Alberni-Clayquot Regional District (ACRD) and that a main goal of these government-led bodies is to change the way private land is regulated.
“One main goal is to get private land and Crown to be the same… we want to have more say,” Solda said.
“[Water] is a human right, we really need to have water,” said Coun. Wendy Kerr, “the forest companies have to know that they don’t own that water, they’re only renting the space, nobody owns this planet but we need to start taking care of it now.”
With that, Kerr raised motions to give city council’s support to the WFA and support the organization’s request to pause the logging at McLaughlin Ridge as well as to request a meeting between council, the WFA, Island Timberlands and the provincial forestry ministry.
City council carried the motion to applause from meeting attendees.
Quick facts:
◆ The first cut done at McLaughlin Ridge was four to five years ago, with a large cut occurring in 2011. Jane Morden of Watershed Forest Alliance says 50 per cent of the old growth remains.
◆ Port Alberni gets its water from the China Creek Watershed, located an hour southeast of the city. McLaughlin Ridge is located at the northern edge of the watershed boundary.
◆ There are two water intake sources within the China Creek Watershed: a creek intake off of China Creek at the western edge of the watershed and a lake intake off of Bainbridge Lake, located slightly northwest of the watershed boundary.
◆ The city primarily uses the creek intake due to its marginally higher water quality. However, if anything were to happen to the creek intake water quality, the city could use the lake intake.
Those two water intakes represent the redundancy in the city’s water supply, which means that it is unlikely that the two sources would both be unusable at the same time, city engineer Guy Cicon said.
◆ Port Alberni’s water is treated with chlorine before being stored in reservoirs. The city is currently in phase one of upgrading their water facilities by adding UV disinfection at a cost of $4 million. There is also the possibility of later adding a filtration system at an additional $3 million.
Read more: https://www.albernivalleynews.com/news/logging-mclaughlin-ridge-watershed-advocates-say-logging-threatens-citys-water-source/
Groups push to halt old-growth harvesting
/in News CoverageThe City of Port Alberni has joined a push initiated by environmental groups to halt old-growth harvesting on privately-owned McLaughlin Ridge. Council unanimously voted to support the Watershed Forest Alliance’s letter to Island Timberlands CEO Darshan Sihota and Steve Thomson, Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations. McLaughlin Ridge is within the China Creek Watershed, Port Alberni’s source of drinking water.
In a presentation to city council on Monday, Sarah Thomas of the Watershed Forest Alliance said large sections of forest removed from the watershed eliminate the natural filtration provided by trees, placing expensive demands on the municipality to clean water through a treatment plant.
“As the water percolates into the system the trees act as a sponge and help to hold water so that it can be let out slowly over time, as opposed to having a runoff and rushing down the slopes and into the creek,” said Thomas, adding that a logging ban was lifted from McLaughlin Ridge in 2004.
The group says a few hundred hectares of extremely endangered old-growth forests still stand for now in McLaughlin Ridge near Cathedral Grove, including “major stands of ancient Douglas-fir trees, the overwhelming majority of which have been logged on B.C.’s coast.”
Prior to Thomas’s presentation to council, a succession of locals stepped up to the microphone to support the halting of oldgrowth logging.
“We have to stand up for our rights to clean, healthy water in Port Alberni and on Vancouver Island,” said Dan Cebuliak.
Jacques Savard said the watershed has been “raped and ravaged” by Island Timberlands. McLaughlin Ridge is privately owned by the forestry company, the result of regulatory changes to land within Tree Farm Licence 44 in 2004.
The handling of private forest is overseen by the Private Managed Forest Land Council, who have recently concluded in a report that Island Timberlands’ activities in McLaughlin Ridge does not increase the turbidity (cloudiness) of water in the China Creek Watershed, said Morgan Kennah, Island Timberlands’ manager of community affairs.
“Their report concluded that our practices are above average for coastal operations,” said Kennah.
“The study noted that although harvesting activity has increased in the area in the past decade, the hydrological capacity for the watershed to balance this harvesting with current forest cover and regenerating forests is below the threshold for best management in watersheds.”
Privately owned forest is currently regulated differently than the standards of Crown land, which is enforced by the Ministry of Forests.
“This creates problems,” said Coun. Cindy Solda, who also serves as chairwoman of the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District. “We’re getting really tired of this. The rules aren’t the same for private land and we’re not happy with that, One main goal is to get private land and Crown to be the same, so that they are equal.”
Coun. Hira Chopra encouraged the Watershed Forest Alliance and residents to work with the city to lobby for the laws to be changed.
“We need all of the help, everything that we can find to justify that government is wrong,” he said. “Those standards are raised by the B.C. provincial government. We have to push the government to keep their promise up.”
Another motion passed to ask Island Timberlands representatives to present to council on their operations in the area.
Coun. Rob Cole cautioned of the need to closely consult with the forestry company to find a solution.
“Lobbying can be a lot stronger when we’re in communication with those groups. We have to see all sides of the picture,” he said. “If we totally push away the industry that has control of that land now legally in our country, then we can also not get very far.”
Read more:[Original article no longer available]
Groups fear fragile B.C. area logged
/in News CoverageEnvironmental groups and labour organizations on Vancouver Island are demanding the province lend protection to a section of forest being logged near Port Alberni — except the company in question denies it’s logging fragile areas.
McLaughlin Ridge sits about one hour southeast of Port Alberni in a 78,000-hectare parcel, including a swath being logged by Island Timberlands.
Environmental groups are concerned habitat used by deer and elk in winter is being compromised.
TJ Watt of the Ancient Forest Alliance said part of the area is valuable ungulate winter habitat, and the province was supposed to follow up with an agreement to protect parts of it after a 2004 decision to open it up to logging.
“They failed to pursue that agreement, so now Island Timberlands has moved ahead with logging these areas,” Watt said.
Meanwhile, local MLA Scott Fraser of the BC NDP said the government has ignored its own scientists, who recommended the ungulate habitat not be logged.
The land was removed from the Timber Forest License under Weyerhaeuser, and eventually acquired by Island Timberlands but, said Fraser, Victoria signed nothing more than an agreement recognizing the land was important.
“They made a big deal of signing a memorandum of understand assuring that those key values would be protected and then they didn’t do it,” he said.
But Island Timberlands said the land it has already logged is not in the area marked as ungulate territory.
“There are specific areas mapped and discussed at length across McLaughlin Ridge noted as good winter habitat for deer and elk during heavy snowfalls,” said Morgan Kennah of Island Timberlands.
“We are currently not harvesting within these mapped areas,” Kennah said. “We have no immediate plans to harvest within these areas at this time.”
The Ministry of Forests said as far as it’s concerned the land is private, adding it was told by Island Timberlands the sensitive area is not being logged.
Watt said he finds the claims they are not in the ungulate areas “questionable.”
Among those asking the government to protect the region are the Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers of Canada and Valhalla Wilderness Society.
Read more: [Original article no longer available]
Environmental and labour organizations call on Island Timberlands to stop logging old-growth forest
/in News CoverageThe Council of Canadians, Pulp, Paper, and Woodworkers of Canada (PPWC) union and various environmental organizations have signed a joint statement calling on Island Timberlands to halt logging the endangered old-growth forests of McLaughlin Ridge near Port Alberni, BC. They asked the BC Liberal government show leadership and ensure the forest’s protection.
“The company and the BC government really need to heed the call of so many diverse organizations, otherwise the controversy will only continue to grow,” said Jane Morden from the Port Alberni Watershed-Forest Alliance, which is spearheading the campaign to protect old-growth forests around the region, including McLaughlin Ridge.
Island Timberland owns over 258,000 hectares of private forest lands in BC. Environmental advocates have criticized the company for logging Douglas fir forests and endangered Queen Charlotte goshawk habitat at McLaughlin Ridge.
McLaughlin Ridge is part of 78,000 hectares of land that were removed from Tree Farm Licence (TFL) 44 on Vancouver Island in 2004, which exempted the area from the environmental policies and/or regulations designed to protect species at risk, old-growth forests, ungulate winter ranges, and riparian areas.
“By all measures, McLaughlin Ridge is of the highest conservation priority – as ungulate winter range, for species at risk, for scarce old-growth Douglas-fir groves, and as part of Port Alberni’s drinking watershed,” said Ancient Forest Alliance photographer and campaigner TJ Watt in a news release.
Ancient Forest Alliance executive director Ken Wu said Island Timberlands was “charging forward to log their most contentious, environmentally significant old-growth forests and socially-valued lands” despite strong opposition to the project.
He said “time is short and options for McLaughlin Ridge will run out soon if the corporation continues to cut out the heart of its ancient forest.”
Read more: https://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/environmental-and-labour-organizations-call-island-timberlands-stop-logging-old-growth-forest