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IF WE CAN’T maintain a viable mountain caribou herd in a vast protected area like Wells Gray Provincial Park, then what hope is there of doing so elsewhere?

That’s my question for Canfor, the corporate giant now ramping up to “salvage log” hundreds of hectares of mature and old-growth forest near the southern and western boundaries of Wells Gray, two hours north of Kamloops.

Clearcut logging in the Clearwater Valley will inevitably create winter forage favourable to deer and moose. As these animals increase in numbers, so will their main predators, cougars and especially wolves. This is hardly good news for the mountain caribou that make their home in the park’s high-elevation old-growth forests a few kilometres distant.

Government biologists are well aware that past logging just outside the park is largely to blame for a recent collapse of the south Wells Gray herd. Ten years ago this herd numbered about 325 animals. Today only about 200 are left, down by about one-third.

Clearcut logging exposes the mountain caribou to levels of predation they did not evolve with and are unable to adapt to. Compounding the problem is a low reproductive rate, a mature cow caribou giving birth to only one calf every two years. Clearly it doesn’t take much to tip these animals toward extinction.

The flow of cause and effect could hardly be more straightforward: clearcuts support more moose and deer, more moose and deer support more top predators, more top predators roam in greater numbers into nearby protected areas, and then mountain caribou decline. Or to simplify, the more adjacent clearcuts we create, the more rapidly the mountain caribou disappears.

Clearly this is not the time to lobby the B.C. government for management decisions certain to bolster predator populations in Wells Gray area. Canfor’s Vavenby planner Dave Dobi acknowledged as much at a public meeting about a year ago, but is proceeding with his plans nonetheless. At the same meeting he also made clear his company’s intention eventually to log the entire Clearwater Valley. Whatever timber Canfor has a legal right to log, it will log.

Such a statement is hard to reconcile with sentiments recently expressed by Canfor CEO and president Don Kayne, who in a letter to the Vancouver Sun asserted that Canfor “will not support actions that impact parks or critical habitat for species at risk”. One can’t help feeling that Kayne would be appalled if he knew what his Vavenby planner was up. To be implicated in the decline of a nationally threatened animal like the mountain caribou surely can’t be good for business.

In 2002, the mountain caribou was designated as nationally threatened. Its global range lies almost exclusively within British Columbia. Decisions being made in B.C. today will have long-term implications for its future viability. Already the province’s southern herds are blinking out—sustained entirely by predator culls and other costly, dubiously effective forms of life support.

Best science identifies Wells Gray Park as one of only two regions where the mountain caribou might reasonably be expected to persist into the long term, in a human-dominated world. (The other area is the Hart Ranges in the far north of the range.) This makes it imperative that the Wells Gray herd receive special attention now, before it’s too late.

This returns me to my opening question: If we can’t maintain a viable mountain caribou herd in a vast wilderness park like Wells Gray, then what hope is there of doing so elsewhere?

In its Mountain Caribou Recovery Implementation Plan, announced in 2008, the B.C. government placed 2.2 million hectares of prime high-elevation winter caribou habitat off limits to logging. Clearly this isn’t working; it’s not enough. For recovery to take place, we also need to refrain from creating additional pressure from predators by logging at lower elevations just outside their key habitat. Areas like the Clearwater Valley.

The Wells Gray World Heritage Committee (WHC) recently challenged the B.C. government to help make Wells Gray Park ecologically self-sustaining by adjusting its boundaries southward. This has been done twice in the past: once in the mid ’50s, and again in the mid ’90s.

The habitat needs of mountain caribou played a major role in both decisions. Protecting a small area adjacent to the park would be a huge step to recovery for the Wells Gray herd.

As an interim measure, WHC is also calling upon B.C. minister of environment Terry Lake to establish a moratorium on industrial logging in the Clearwater Valley. For more information, or to help, please visit the WHC website.
 

Link to online article: https://www.straight.com/news/351556/trevor-goward-protecting-clearwater-valley-would-help-mountain-caribou-recovery

Minister’s account is ‘pure fiction’ 

In response to Ben Parfitt’s op-ed about the B.C. Liberals’ intention to introduce legislation to rollover replaceable volume-based timber licenses to area-based tenures, the forests minister claims as a “fact” that the legislation stems from a recommendation from the special committee on timber supply that toured B.C. last summer.

That is pure fiction.

According to a leaked cabinet document, the “rollover” of volume-based licenses to area-based tenures was recommended to cabinet in April as an option to enable the rebuilding of the Burns Lake sawmill — a month before the committee was formed and five months before it made its recommendations public.

The committee did not “in fact” recommend the conversion of volume-based licenses to area-based tenures. Rather, it gave significant and thoughtful cautionary recommendations “if conversion to more area-based tenures is desirable.” The committee found there is still no consensus on the relative merits of area-based tenures and significant concern about the potential privatization of our largest public asset.

The minister also gave Hampton Affiliates a “letter of intent” in September committing to the conversion of this U.S. company’s volume licenses to area-based tenures — a full month before he publicly released a response to the committee’s recommendations.

The fact is: the Liberals were on the rollover path long before any public process.

Enabling legislation will not guarantee in law any defined public process in the rollover decisions. It is used to give politicians “flexibility” to take actions without the constraints of law or guiding regulations. Used inappropriately, it can be a very “sneaky” instrument indeed.

We must oppose giving politicians the unfettered right to radically alter forest tenures or to privatize our public forests. I certainly intend to do that in this upcoming session. It would be nice to know if the NDP will join me in this fight.

Bob Simpson, MLA, Cariboo North

Prove me wrong

Forests Minister Steve Thomson takes issue with the “highly speculative” nature of my recent op-ed in which I suggest that the provincial government intends to grant cabinet open-ended powers to give forest companies de facto control of public forestlands.

He does not quibble with the fact that legislation is, in fact, coming, but says that government will be open and accountable by “ensuring” that the public is consulted.

But will public consultation be enshrined in law? That’s the question. If Mr. Thomson wishes to end speculation that the interests of First Nations, communities and other stakeholders could be circumvented in the upcoming bill, he should simply publish the contemplated legislation. I would consider it a public service and a small price to pay to be proven wrong.

Ben Parfitt, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Link to online article: https://blogs.theprovince.com/2013/01/30/letters-b-c-forests-steve-thomson-ben-parfitt-bob-simpson-post-office-sun-media-protesters-public-sector-pensions/

Given the short duration of the upcoming legislative session and the provincial election to follow, a government plan to introduce a scant two-paragraph bill granting it powers to fundamentally alter the course of forestry in B.C. is disturbing, to say the least.

According to several sources who have been briefed on the legislation, the bill would give the provincial cabinet powers to grant forest companies de facto private control over public forestlands without first having to notify or consult with the public.

Instead of companies enjoying rights to log set volumes of trees on public forestlands, companies would gain dramatically expanded powers to log trees on defined areas that in effect become their own semi-private fiefdoms.

The bill follows a year in which the government has faced mounting criticism over a forest-health crisis due to decades of over-cutting and an unprecedented mountain pine beetle attack. Numerous sawmills now face closure, with all the hardships that portends for many rural communities.

It also follows the losses of sawmills in Burns Lake and Prince George due to explosions and ensuing fires. In the wake of those events, various government documents were leaked indicating that the provincial government was revisiting a controversial “rollover” idea first pursued 25 years ago. At that time it met with such a groundswell of political and public opposition that the initiative was scuttled.

Then-provincial forest critic and MLA for Prince Rupert, Dan Miller, called it “privatization on a massive scale” and warned: “Never before in the history of the province has this kind of giveaway been contemplated.”

The policy as then envisioned is precisely the one now being contemplated by the government. Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Steve Thomson indicated so in a letter last September to Steve Zika, CEO of Hampton Affiliates, which owns the destroyed Burns Lake mill.

If the new legislation passes, the provincial cabinet could grant forest companies the rights to roll over numerous volume-based forest licences into area-based Tree Farm Licences. TFLs bestow by far the most secure rights of access to publicly owned trees of any arrangement with the provincial government. The new legislation could massively expand their use, beyond the limited number now issued.

TFL lands still remain publicly owned and the government still collects timber-cutting or stumpage fees from the companies logging them — although distressingly few such fees in recent years. But once a TFL is granted, a company has something that is very difficult for the province to take back without triggering prohibitively expensive compensation payouts.

Worse, TFLs become tradable or sellable assets. If the right corporate suitor comes along, say a pension fund that has zero interest in maintaining sawmills, let alone building desperately needed value-added facilities like furniture plants, so be it.

Forest-company executives routinely trot out the trope that TFLs provide them the security they need to invest in renewing forests. But such claims are not credible. Companies have historically made the minimal reforestation investments required by law, regardless of the licensing arrangement with the government.

The “security” argument is a smokescreen, then, designed to draw attention away from the real reason companies covet TFLs — their asset value.

The government will no doubt argue that by granting Hampton a TFL it gives the company the assurance it needs to build a new mill in Burns Lake. But in making the offer to all other forest companies, the government opens the door to a rapid escalation in corporate control of public forestlands. With the change, some of the biggest forest companies in the province — Canfor, West Fraser and Tolko — could gain unprecedented sway over public forestlands, without having to make any investments along the lines of what Hampton proposes.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of such a fundamental change on the eve of a provincial election is that the government leaves unaddressed the most evident problems.

Our forests face the gravest health crisis in modern history.

Communities that have for decades depended on our forests for their social and economic well-being, face equally daunting challenges.

Yet there is a way out. Policies that would end rampant wood waste, policies that would earmark certain forested areas as available to log in exchange for company commitments to make minimal investments in new or modernized mills, policies that would result in greater, more effective reforestation efforts, are all within our grasp.

In their absence, giving what remains of our forests away is lunacy. A responsible government would delay implementing such contentious legislation and give the public time to digest the implications of such a move. Or the Opposition could signal now that should such a bill pass it would be immediately repealed upon a change in government.

Ben Parfitt is a resource-policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Link to online article: https://blogs.theprovince.com/2013/01/27/ben-parfitt-sneaky-liberals-are-planning-a-b-c-forest-giveaway/