News Coverage

Big trees would bring more money into Sooke and Port Renfrew than logging a unique, old-growth grove, community groups have told the provincial government.

But the province is refusing to budge from its position that sufficient old growth has already been protected in that area.

The Sooke Regional Tourism Association and Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce wrote to the province asking that the area just outside Port Renfrew, nicknamed Avatar Grove, should be saved and that the Teal-Jones Group, which has cutting rights, should be offered a replacement piece of Crown land.

“Tourism would contribute more value and benefit many more people than cutting old-growth sites located in accessible tourism development areas,” tourism association president Neil Flynn said in a letter to Forests Minister Pat Bell.

But the reply from the ministry says 24 per cent of the grove is in an old-growth management area, meaning no cutting is permitted.

“I think it is important to mention that not all old-growth forests can be protected. A certain amount must be harvested to provide a viable and sustainable wood supply to the forest industry, which is an important component of the provincial economy,” says the letter from the ministry’s field operations staff.

Teal-Jones has not yet applied for a cutting permit in Avatar Grove, but a land swap would not be possible as the entire land base of TFL 46 is already under tenure, said company spokesman John Pichugan.

Note: Here is a recent news article about the Nanoose Bay Forest, followed by the media release from the Forest Practices Board, that notes that the province must do more to protect the highly endangered Coastal Douglas Fir ecosystem, yet does not prescribe further action. The AFA does not believe that any old-growth forests within the Coastal Douglas Fir zone on Crown or private lands should be allocated for logging – only 1% of the original old-growth remains in the Coastal Douglas Fir zone.

–Ken Wu, Ancient Forest Alliance

The provincial forestry watchdog agency agrees the province should allow a mature coastal Douglas fir forest in Nanoose to be logged, but stops short of saying how it can be done.

The Forest Practices Board investigated a complaint against the B.C. Forests Ministry for issuing a woodlot licence for District Lot 33, a 64-hectare property containing rare coastal Douglas fir forest in Nanoose Bay.

Two years ago, the province granted a woodlot licence to the Snaw-naw-as (Nanoose) First Nation to log DL 33. The band’s five-year licence allows up to 15,000 cubic metres of timber to be cut on roughly a third of the property. Logging is expected to start this summer.

In its complaint, the Arrowsmith Parks and Land Use Council said the woodlot licence conflicts with a provincial obligation to protect 1,600 hectares of Crown land to preserve rare Douglas fir forests.

The Forest Practices Board said while it agrees, there may be too little Crown land and too many competing interests to meet that obligation.

“Sometimes the best we can do is lay the facts out as objectively as possible and report on that,” said Al Gorley, board chairman.

Kathy McMaster led a petition to stop the logging and says she is disappointed the board didn’t offer any solutions to protect the property.

“The report is critical of the government, quite rightly, but it doesn’t make any recommendations for changing this. It says there isn’t enough land for government to do what it wants to do and it’s too bad.”

The Snaw-naw-as needs the timber for economic development. Its next step is to get final approval for its cutting permit. No word was available when that is expected to happen.

 

 

Forest Practices Board News Release, 18 June 2010:

Co-operation Key to Survival of Coastal Forest Ecosystem

VICTORIA – An investigation report released today upholds a public complaint about proposed logging in a rare forest type near Nanoose Bay on Vancouver Island.

Local residents filed a complaint with the board when they discovered about one-third of the 64-hectare parcel of coastal Douglas fir forest, known as DL 33, was slated to be logged, contrary to provincial government promises.

“In order to meet an Interim Measures Agreement with the Nanoose First Nation, the Province did not abide by its commitment to defer issuing new forest tenures until its stewardship strategy was in place,” said board chair Al Gorley.

As part of its stewardship strategy for the coastal Douglas fir (CDF) ecosystem, the Province identified 1,600 hectares of Crown]owned forest for potential protection. However, the Ministry of Forests and Range issued the tenure for DL 33 before the proposed protection order was approved, on the basis that it did not include DL 33. The ministry has not yet issued a permit to begin logging.

“Taken in isolation, DL 33 is important, but is not the real issue,” said Gorley. “It is a symptom of a problem that has been more than 100 years in the making. Given the large proportion of CDF on private land, and competing interests and priorities on provincial land, there may be little the Province can do on its own to ensure long-term viability of this ecosystem.”

The Province controls just 23,500 hectares (about nine percent) of the remaining CDF forests, and has protected 7,600 hectares to date. The proposed order would protect another 1,600 hectares. The board’s report notes that the stewards of private, federal and local government lands will have to participate further in conservation if greater viability of the ecosystem is desired.

This is the board’s third complaint investigation involving management of the CDF by the Province. In 2005, the board recommended a conservation protocol be developed before any further logging of CDF on Crown land. Then, in 2007, the board recommended the Province finalize a stewardship strategy for management of this ecosystem.

The Forest Practices Board is B.C.’s independent watchdog for sound forest and range practices, reporting its findings and recommendations directly to the public and government. The board is required to investigate public complaints about forest planning and practices.

The following is an excellent article from March in UBC’s student newspaper, The Ubyssey. Note the comment from the president of the Truck Loggers Association in favour cutting down Cathedral Grove as the old-growth is “decaying” and “falling over” and creating a park in younger forests somewhere else! Old school 1980’s thinking, long since marginalized by insights from the science of forest ecology.
– Ken Wu, Ancient Forest Alliance

Canada is among the last of the developed nations that logs its old-growth forests. In the US, the vast majority of logging takes place in second-growth stands, while Europeans log second- and third-growth forests. Southwestern Australia halted the logging of its old-growth forests six years ago, as did New Zealand in the year 2000.

Enter the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA), a recently launched lobby group that works to change this.

The Handcuffs Come Off
The AFA advocates for the protection of old growth forests and ban raw log exports. They held their launch event this January in front of Greater Victoria’s largest douglas fir, where they outlined their approach to environmental advocacy.

Unlike similar organizations, the AFA announced that they will not seek charitable status. This hurts the group’s ability to fundraise, but relieves them of what co-founder Ken Wu calls “the handcuffs of charitable status.”

Organizations with charitable status cannot support or oppose any political candidate running for public office. Charities are also limited by what is called the “ten per cent rule”: only ten per cent of the charity’s resources can be spent explicitly calling for law or policy changes. Without these limitations the AFA can exert as much of their resources as they see fit to call for governmental policy changes.

The AFA will also be able to publish which politicians support policies to protect old-growth forests, and which politicians maintain that old-growth forests in BC are not endangered. The handcuffs are off and the gloves are on.

The AFA wants the BC Liberals to pursue policies that protect remaining old-growth stands. Wu maintains that BC’s policies surrounding company rights to log old-growth forests will have to change soon. He said that the supply of large and readily accessible old-growth trees in southern BC is almost exhausted.

The UBC Connection

Several of the core members of the AFA – Ken Wu, Tara Sawatsky and TJ Watt – previously worked for the Western Canada Wilderness Committee (WCWC), an organization that was instrumental in getting UBC’s Ancient Forest Committee (AFC) up and running.

Monika Dean, the current head of the UBC AFC, said the WCWC helped them create strategies to inform the public about the urgency to protect old-growth trees and train AFC members for campaigning. They also helped fund trips to Tofino so that students could see first-hand the wilderness that the UBC AFC wants to protect.

It’s a high priority for the UBC AFC to keep them going on the Tofino trips, but they are expensive. Students not only get to see what an old-growth forest looks like, but also learn about how to run a political campaign and talk to the media.

The AFA intends to do much its lobbying very near UBC at the Vancouver-Point Grey, which is also Premier Gordon Campbell’s riding. “The AFA plans to work very closely with the students and community old-growth protection groups – including the UBC and Point Grey Ancient Forest Committees. We also want to start new [Ancient Forest Committees] on other campuses and swing ridings,” said Wu.

Logging, Old-Growth and Clear-Cutting

The AFA has formulated several specific calls for the BC Liberal government. Their first call is not at all that surprising given their name – they’re calling for the immediate protection of at risk old-growth forests. Their second call is for the BC Liberal government to ensure a sustainable rate of second growth logging.

When asked if the AFA had formulated a concrete definition for ‘sustainable rate of cut,’ Ken Wu says:
“A sustainable rate of cut involves reduced rate of cut. You slow down. It means that you’re not going to run out of mature trees and be left with young trees that are not ready to harvest. It means a longer rotation of 200 or 400 years in coastal forests. It would mean a loss of conventional clear-cutting jobs, but it doesn’t necessarily mean a loss of jobs in the logging industry. We advocate more labour-intensive selective logging combined with value added manufacturing.”

They will face some opponents. “Clear cutting is done for a reason,” says Wayne Lintott of the Interior Logging Association, who claims that clear-cutting is not solely a profit-driven practice. He gives clear-cutting the interior of BC as an example because like in Hope by Manning Park, the mountain pine beetle is devastating wood crops. The trees which he was referring to are second growth trees. Lintott likened the logging industry to farming. “We can replant. It regrows. It’s a sustainable industry.”

Dave Lewis of the Truck Loggers Association challenges the unthinking use of the word “old-growth.” The definition of “a previously untouched tree,” is an unrealistic one, he explains given the First Nations’ use of trees and the forest-thinning effects of large fires.

“The forest typically referred to as ‘old-growth’ are 600 to 700 years old and are at the end of their lives,” he said. “They have decaying and falling over trees. Naturally these forests typically revert from large Douglas first to a hemlock and cedar mix.”

“The way to regenerate the douglas first that people so prize is for there to be a burn – but burns are unsafe and not publicly tolerated. Harvesting mimics the effect of the burn.”

According to Lewis, old Douglas first typically regenerate in full sunlight and in mineral soil, which are the typical conditions to be found after a large forest fire.

Lewis believes that a longer rotation period could be good. He says a longer rotation time, particularly for trees in isolated locations such as cliff faces, make logging more economical, because the lumber per square meter becomes more valuable. Also, more land is protected in reserves than is available for harvesting this way. Lewis feels that it is in everyone’s best interests – environmental activists and logging interests alike – to work together.

“We need to identify a reasonable amount of forest types in specific areas that we want to preserve and how we can best manage that,” he says. “Imagine if we started to actively manage our parks. If people are saying that ‘we love old douglas firs’ – how cool would it be if when a park [like Cathedral Grove] turns 400 years old and starts to decay we could replace it with a 200 year old park [in the same area with the same types of trees] and let that park grow for 200 years.”

Beyond Logging

How trees are logged isn’t the only issue. The AFA is also concerned about BC’s policies regarding raw log exports. They would like to see the BC Liberals shift the focus of the logging industry away from raw log exports and towards BC-based milling and value-added manufacturing.

To this end, the AFA wants the BC Liberal government to halt the export of raw logs to countries like the USA and Japan in order to promote log supplies for BC industries. Moreover, the AFA wants to see the BC Liberals assist in the re-tooling of local mills to handle second-growth logs rather than old-growth logs, and the building of value-added wood processing facilities in BC.

Finally, the AFA wants the provincial government to undertake new land-use planning initiatives based on First Nations land-use plans, scientific assessments and climate mitigation strategies. Wu believes that “old-growth forests should be an important part of BC’s climate change mitigation strategy because old-growth forests can store as much as two to three times more carbon per hectare than second-growth forests.”

“Our goals are doable,” Ken Wu says confidently. “We’re following a strategy that works. We’re continually building grassroots support and education the public. An educated public exerts the greatest lobby pressure on government.”

The AFA will be in the neighbourhood very soon. On March 27, they’re holding an Avatar-themed protest at noon starting at Canada Place. There will be speeches to follow in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery at 1pm.

It’s going to be a busy week for environmental protestors, as the UBC AFC is also having a protest on Friday, March 26, on campus. They will be doing an “aerial art piece” where protesters will arrange themselves at noon in front of Koerner’s Library in a configuration to be photographed form above. In the past, UBC AFC members arranged themselves into the shape of a pine tree.