After a 10-year "climate action pause," Canada is back at the international table. Though expectations are high that the new government will work to end our dependence on fossil fuels and speed up the transition to renewable energy, there has been little discussion about the importance of and threats to our forests in the fight against global warming.
SFU Environmental Studies student Charly Caproff, the Sierra Club of BC's Mark Worthing, and bat and cave specialist Martin Davis, are working to highlight the risk to the limestone karst systems by proposed old-growth logging in the Central Walbran Ancient Forest. Here's an article in the Globe and Mail: "Mr. Davis is skeptical about the government’s commitment to ensure significant karst features are kept intact. He produced a detailed list for the caving community two years ago of karst sites damaged by logging. 'The B.C. Speleological Federation had brought these complaints forward to the provincial government, but no action was taken at that level, despite these practises violating provincial standards,' he said."
Mark Hume in Sunday's Globe: “Decisions on the coast would need to include engagement due to the controversial nature of logging old growth,” states the government document in a classic case of bureaucratic understatement. The logging of old growth is widely opposed in B.C. – the public surely won’t welcome a plan where taxpayers are supposed to pay for it. The plan outlines how the forest industry will be subsidized to go after pockets of old trees “that are uneconomic to harvest” because they are sparsely scattered or are at high elevation. Some of the costs would be recovered through timber sales, but it is a money-losing proposition. In year four, for example, the province will spend $25-million to get timber worth $6-million. Why do something like that? The government justifies this by saying it will keep loggers working and improve the supply of timber, which has been reduced by overcutting, a pine-beetle kill and forest fires. “They are running out of timber because of overharvesting throughout the province,” environmental activist Vicky Husband said. “This is a desperate move that’s all about keeping up the short-term timber supply, with no consideration for wildlife values. They are going after every last little bit of forest out there, with no consideration for the impact on biodiversity.”
Here's an article in the latest British Columbia Magazine about visiting the old-growth forests of the Port Renfrew region along the "Circle Route"! It also raises the plight of the old-growth forests in the Walbran Valley, Horne Mountain (above Cathedral Grove), and Mossy Maple Grove, and includes a blurb about the Ancient Forest Alliance.
Here's a new article by the Sierra Club's Jens Wieting about the significance of the endangered Central Walbran Ancient Forest based on its relatively large tracts of high productivity old-growth forest. Also see their map here: https://rainforestforever.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/sierra-bc-rainforest-at-risk-map-oct-15-2015s.jpg
See this clip on CTV News about a rally at the Ministry of Forests for the Central Walbran Valley, thanks to the Friends of Carmanah Walbran!
A march and rally for sustainable BC forestry garnered a crowd of upwards of 100 at Charles Hoey Park Friday afternoon. The event, organized by the Pulp, Paper, and Woodworkers of Canada and the Ancient Forest Alliance, and attended by folks from up and down the Island, had a message for the provincial government: exported logs equals exported jobs and that’s not acceptable. “If you’re going to cut a tree down and give it to somebody else, leave the goddamn thing in the ground,” PPWC president Arnie Bercov told the group. “In 2004, at a critical juncture, as the majority of the prime old growth forests were logged out and huge areas of second growth forest matured, the BC Liberal government removed the local milling requirement that would have required that the licensees for the Crown lands would have had to convert their old growth mills to handle second growth logs,” Wu said. “But, at that critical time they removed the requirement through the so-called Forestry Revitalization Act, then came a wave of mill closures across the province...There’s been no incentives and regulations by the government, no leadership by the government to ensure that there’s a sustainable value-added second growth industry...” Wu said.
Here's a comprehensive article in The Province about the AFA's use of a drone in the endangered Central Walbran Valley.
Here's an article in the Times Colonist about the Ancient Forest Alliance's use of a drone to highlight the endangered old-growth forest in the Central Walbran Valley.
Congratulations to the conservationists with the Elphinstone Logging Focus in Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast who got a temporary reprieve from BC Timber Sales for a tract of threatened old-growth yellow cedar forest in the Dakota Bowl through their protests, campaigns, reports, and constant efforts!
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