Link to The Tyee online article
The British Columbia government says it is acting on a series of recommendations to help the province’s forest industry in the wake of the mountain pine beetle epidemic. Critics say it’s a weak response to the issue that shows the government hasn’t learned from the collapse of other natural resource industries.
“The action plan represents the next phase in our decade-long battle against the mountain pine beetle,” said Steve Thomson, the minister of forests, lands and natural resource operations, talking to reporters on a conference call.
The 16-page plan is a response to an August report from the legislature’s special committee on timber supply that held hearings throughout the province last spring and into the early summer.
It sets out nine actions it describes as “sustained” and 11 that it characterizes as “new.” As the plan puts it, “The key elements of the action plan focus on reforestation, forest inventory, fuel management and intensive and innovative silviculture.”
The plan includes a promise of legislation to move to area-based licenses from volume-based, and to create licenses to allow companies to harvest wood that is not sawlog quality but that could be burned for energy.
Thomson said there is $100 million in the 2013-2014 budget for reforestation, and the ministry will seek further funding through the budget process to pay for the rest of the plan.
He defended the decision in the past to drop doing forest inventory and planning for reforestation during the worst of the beetle epidemic. “The rapidly changing situation in our forests dictated that we hold off on updating our inventory and reforestation plans until it stabilized, and now we can proceed,” he said.
Beetle like a hurricane
John Rustad, who is the parliamentary secretary for forestry and who chaired the timber supply committee, compared it to coping with other natural disasters. “If you’re planning to do some work on your house, and there’s a hurricane approaching, you’re not going to undertake the work on your house until you’ve seen what happened with the hurricane,” he said. “The same thing is what happened with the mountain pine beetle epidemic.”
However, the New Democratic Party’s forestry critic, Norm Macdonald, said it was “ridiculous” to stop doing inventory during the worst of the crisis.
The auditor general, the forest practices board and the Association of B.C. Forest Professionals have all criticized the government’s failure to keep forest inventory up to date, he said.
“They were making cut determinations based on data that’s 30 years old,” he said. “They’re setting cuts. Forestry doesn’t stop.”
The government has taken a hands-off approach to the industry and is responsible for the consequences, said Macdonald. “They’re trying to rationalize what they’ve done, which is to step away from the responsibility to manage the forests properly.”
In general, the plan offers little to help the forest industry, he said. “It is a predictably weak response from this government that’s shown no interest in looking after the land over the last 10 years,” he said. “It’s basically business as usual … There’s no new money. As far as I can see, it’s just not there.”
Jobs today, consequences later
If there’s going to be a shift to area-based tenures, which would set the number of hectares to be harvested each year and give the industry flexibility on how much volume it harvests each year, it needs to be done very carefully and with an eye on the public benefit, said Macdonald.
“It’s a complicated thing to do properly,” he said. While the switch might help, he said, “There really isn’t the proof you necessarily get benefits.”
The government is trying to keep the status quo in the forest industry, even though it’s obvious the province’s forests cannot keep the industry going at the rate it has in the past, said Bob Simpson, the MLA for Cariboo North and a former forest company executive.
“You’ve got an eleventh hour panicked response to something the government’s had a long time to prepare for,” he said. “We’ve seen this movie play out since humanity settled down in one location and wiped out the natural resources around them. It always ends badly.”
Simpson compares the state of B.C.’s forest industry to what happened with the Atlantic cod fishery two decades ago. Despite warnings from non-government scientists, the stocks were allowed to be exploited at an unsustainable rate to feed processing plants in places that identified as fishing communities all along the coast, he said.
“None of those communities can describe themselves as fishing communities anymore,” he said. “That’s what we’re doing here.”
The government should allow cut level to come down and let the industry “rationalize” so there isn’t so much overcapacity for milling, he said. “What the government’s doing is preventing any rationalization whatsoever.”
Fully depleting the resource might delay going over the cliff, but it will make that cliff even bigger when the time comes, he said. “We’re always extinguishing the resources for today’s jobs and today’s economy, and eventually you lose those two as well.”
The government would be wiser to put its efforts into climate change adaptation and mitigation, he said, as well as helping communities that have been dependent on forestry to transition into other ways of surviving.
*ACTION ALERT* Save Echo Lake’s Ancient Forest! Globally significant bald eagle habitat
/in Take ActionSaturday: Cortes Youth Champion Bill M211; The Species At Risk Protection Act
/in AnnouncementsYouth from Cortes Island, BC are hosting an educational rally on the legislative grounds in Victoria this coming Saturday, October 13 from 11 am – 4 pm.
Cortes youth are championing Bill M211, the Species At Risk Protection Act that has been proposed by the NDP, achieved first reading and is presently tabled.
Forest lands on Cortes Island threatened by industrial logging prompted the youth to research out what protection, if any, was afforded the numerous species at risk making these forest lands their home.
The youth discovered that BC has no species at risk protection legislation in place; together with Alberta, the only 2 Canadian provinces without legal protection for species at risk.
The youth further learned that polls show 85% of British Columbians are in favour of protection for the 1900 species at risk in BC.
So… they made the decision to champion Bill M211!!!!!!!!!
Over the past 6 months Cortes youth and their friends in Victoria have created original artwork depicting 8 of the species at risk occurring in the forest lands threatened on Cortes Island.
They have had buttons made from this artwork and will be handing these out to the public in downtown Victoria (by donation) in conjunction with their educational rally on the front steps of the legislature.
Their strategy is that buttons travel far on public lapels and disseminate the information widely!!!!!!!
Fairahn Reid and Eira-Shay Barker Hart have taken the lead in this youth initiative, with the support of fellow Cortes students and new friends made while attending school in Victoria. Show them your support on Saturday if you are in Victoria or sign on to the petition to bring in legal protection for species at risk in BC at www.protectbiodiversity.ca/action
Kudos to our youth for speaking out for the protection of species at risk!!
Group aims to protect eagles’ night roost
/in News CoverageLink to Globe and Mail online article
A small grove of timber in the Fraser Valley used as a night roost by flocks of eagles has long been a secret known only to a few people in British Columbia.
But now an environmental group, the Ancient Forest Alliance, and a landowner who has property adjacent to the roosting trees are working together to publicize the area, in the hopes of saving it from logging.
“I would say between 25 and 50 hectares has to be protected – which is not a huge amount to save what is a natural wonder of the world,” said Stephen Ben-Oliel, who first learned of the eagle roost when he bought land at Echo Lake 17 years ago.
In the late fall, thousands of eagles gather along the nearby Harrison and Chehalis rivers to feast on spawning salmon, a major ecotourism draw and focus of the annual Fraser Valley Bald Eagle Festival, which this year is held Nov. 17 and 18.
But while boat and hiking tours have long allowed people to see the eagles feeding along the rivers, few knew where the birds went when darkness fell.
Mr. Ben-Oliel says they come by the hundreds, just at dusk, to settle in the big trees cupped in the small valley that holds Echo Lake, east of Mission.
“They are like a secret and that little valley is like a secret,” he said. “People living in the Fraser Valley often don’t know there’s a lake there because it’s surrounded by mountains. It’s a hidden valley, with this secret of the eagles.”
Mr. Ben-Oliel said a Ministry of Forests land use plan under study for the Fraser Valley sets aside part of the old-growth timber around Echo Lake, but would allow a swath of trees that the eagles perch in at night to be logged.
“The outside of this valley has all been hammered by logging. Why not save this little place.…Why not leave this as the place they sleep?” he asked.
Mr. Ben-Oliel said the birds don’t come in large numbers every year, but when they do it is a major wildlife event.
“Some years it’s like you are in the middle of a National Geographic shot and then, for reasons I don’t understand, in other years there aren’t many,” he said. “They come in singly just at dusk, from the end of November through December and into January. There are certain points, about an hour before the sun sets, when the sky is not empty of them. Sometimes they are circling one of the two small mountains, in groups of 15 to 20, but then they start to stack up in the trees. It’s not something that is easily photographed because it’s twilight, but you see their white heads sticking up like golf balls around the lake.”
Ken Wu, executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance, said the provincial land use plan sets aside trees on one shore of Echo Lake, but not the other. “It all needs to be saved,” he said, arguing the government needs to double its plan to save 45 hectares.
Mr. Wu said his organization, which searches for the last remaining patches of old growth around the province, then lobbies to save them, became aware of Echo Lake in 2007, when the area was first slated for logging.
Protests at that time persuaded the government to hold off, he said, but now a detailed land use plan for the Fraser Valley is being finalized, which would allow a portion of the Echo Lake timber to be cut. Mr. Wu said he has been unable to find any comparable old growth anywhere in the Lower Mainland. The trees are 300 to 600 years old.
“I mean, it is exceedingly scarce. It’s like coming across a Sasquatch these days, to find valley bottom, low elevation old growth in the Lower Mainland.”
In an e-mail, Vivian Thomas, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Forests, said the government is now accepting public comment on Fraser Valley land use plans, and concerns about Echo Lake will be considered in that process. She also said the government is looking at a proposal to designate 1,500 hectares in the Harrison and Chehalis area for wildlife management, which could protect winter feeding areas for eagles.
Campaign Launched to Protect Rare Lowland Old-Growth Rainforest and Internationally Significant Eagle Roosting Area east of Vancouver
/in Media ReleaseFor Immediate Release
October 11, 2012
Campaign Launched to Protect Rare Lowland Old-Growth Rainforest and Internationally Significant Eagle Roosting Area east of Vancouver
Between Mission and Agassiz, Echo Lake’s old-growth Douglas fir and redcedars are home to hundreds of roosting bald eagles during the fall salmon run. A new BC government proposal would protect some of the area but is still missing key old-growth groves, with public input ending on Nov.5
See SPECTACULAR photos of Echo Lake’s ancient forest at: https://ancientforestalliance.org/photos-media/echo-lake/
Conservationists with the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) have launched a new campaign to fully protect one the last endangered lowland old-growth forests left in the Lower Mainland at Echo Lake east of Mission, as part of the organization’s larger campaign to lobby the BC government for a new Provincial Old-Growth Strategy to save endangered old-growth forests across the province. The campaign to protect the Echo Lake Ancient Forest coincides with the onset of a 60 day public input period launched last month by the Ministry of Forests, ending on November 5, in regards to proposed new Old-Growth Management Areas in the Chilliwack Forest District.
The Echo Lake Ancient Forest is a spectacular, monumental stand of enormous mossy redcedars and extremely rare old-growth Douglas firs (99% of which have already been logged on BC’s coast) found on the shores and lower slopes around the lake. The area is within the traditional, unceded territory of the Sts’ailes First Nations band (formerly the Chehalis Indian Band). The BC government’s newly proposed Old-Growth Management Area (OGMA) for Echo Lake excludes some of the area’s finest old-growth trees.
“This is really an extremely rare gem of lowland ancient rainforest in a sea of second-growth forests, clearcuts, and high altitude old-growth patches. It’s like a little slice of the Carmanah-Walbran, but in the Lower Mainland. To still have an unprotected lowland ancient forest like this left near Vancouver is like finding a Sasquatch. But on top of that, during the fall salmon run the region is home to one of the largest concentrations of raptors on Earth – that is, thousands of fishing and roosting bald eagles,” stated Ken Wu, executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “The BC government’s proposed new Old-Growth Management Area for Echo Lake excludes some of its most spectacular old-growth trees. It’s sort of like serving a burger without the patty, or a lobster without the tail meat. All of the old-growth forests around Echo Lake must be protected.”
In September, the BC Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations launched a 60 day public review ending on Nov.5 of proposed Old-Growth Management Areas that prohibit logging as part of the process to complete the land use planning process in the Chilliwack Forest District. See:[Original article no longer available]
Echo Lake is found within the Hatzic Landscape Unit, one of 6 landscape units under review in the plan. Unfortunately, while the boundaries of a proposed Old-Growth Management Area (OGMA) for Echo Lake encompasses the old-growth forests on the south side of the lake, some of the finest old-growth redcedars and Douglas firs on the west and north sides of the lake are still excluded from the proposed boundaries, as are mature forests that buffer these groves and provide scenery and additional wildlife habitat.
The Harrison and Chehalis Rivers area is home to one of the largest concentrations of bald eagles on Earth. Thousands of eagles come in the fall to eat spawning salmon in the rivers and hundreds roost in the old-growth trees at night around Echo Lake. It is also home to a large array of biodiversity including bears, cougars, bobcats, deer, mountain goats, and osprey, and until recent times would have been populated by the critically endangered northern spotted owl.
Virtually all low elevation old-growth forests in the region have been now been logged, with most remaining old-growth stands consisting of smaller mountain hemlocks, amabilis firs, and yellow cedars at higher altitudes on steep slopes.
The vigilance of local landowners on the east side of Echo Lake, whose private lands restrict public access to the old-growth forests on the Crown lands on the west side of the lake, have held-off industrial logging from the lake’s old-growth forests for decades. Across the southern coast of BC, about 80% of the original, productive old-growth forests have already been logged.
“A professor from Oxford University did a study in the 1980’s on the eagles that roost every fall in the old growth trees surrounding Echo Lake. He said that this small valley has offered sanctuary to these majestic birds for over eight thousand years. When you see them come in at sunset by the hundreds, you quickly realize this valley should be theirs in perpetuity,” stated Stephen Ben-Oliel, the landowner whose private property at Echo Lake abuts the Crown lands covered in old-growth forests.
“Considering the exceptional importance of Echo Lake for bald eagles and the scarcity of these lowland ancient forests in the Lower Mainland, it really should be a no-brainer that all of the old-growth and mature forests around the lake should be protected,” stated TJ Watt, campaigner and photographer with the Ancient Forest Alliance. “But that also goes for all of the remaining endangered old-growth forests now throughout the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island, and elsewhere in BC where logging has greatly depleted these ancient ecosystems.”
Local conservationists are also interested in stronger conservation measures for the massive bald eagle population in the area, including stronger protections for salmon habitat, water quality, and forests. The protection of the Echo Lake Ancient Forest where the eagles roost at night would be a vital part of such a plan. For example, near Squamish at another major eagle congregating region, the Brackendale Eagles Provincial Park protects over 700 hectares of forests on the west side of the Squamish River. The local Sts’ailes First Nations band have a particular interest in protecting the salmon habitat and water quality in the region that supports the eagles.
While the Ancient Forest Alliance is calling for the full protection of Echo Lake’s forests, the organization is primarily calling for a larger provincial plan to protect the remaining endangered old-growth forests across BC while ensuring sustainable second-growth forestry jobs. In particular, some of the key policy shifts the organization is calling for include:
“How many jurisdictions on Earth still have trees that grow as wide as living rooms and as tall as downtown skyscrapers? And how many jurisdictions still consider it okay to turn such trees in giant stumps and tree plantations? What we have here in BC is something exceptional, the likes of which won’t be seen again for a long, long time if they are logged,” stated Wu. “More than ever we need the BC government to have the wisdom and courage to move ahead with a provincial plan that will protect our endangered old-growth forests, ensures the sustainable logging of second-growth forests, and ends the export of raw logs to foreign mills”.
Province urged to protect Harrison Eagles
/in News CoverageLink to Vancouver Sun online article
David Hancock says he has personally counted more than 7,000 bald eagles in one day on the Harrison and Chehalis rivers – a world record and almost twice the best tally of Brack-endale Eagles Provincial Park near Squamish.
Today, as the eagles arrive again to feast on the area’s annual salmon runs, Hancock is counting on the B.C. government to do the right thing and increase protection for one of the planet’s great avian spectacles.
“At the moment, we don’t really have any legally defined protection,” said Hancock, a trustee with the American Bald Eagle Foundation and chair of the Surrey-based Hancock Wildlife Foundation.
Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance is also calling for increased protection of the eagles by putting an end to clearcutting of their prime roosting habitat on Crown forest land.
He said the province has proposed an old-growth management area of about 45 hectares at Echo Lake – critical eagle habitat just west of Harrison River and north of Highway 7 – but has excluded another 25 hectares. “Lowland old-growth of this quality in the Lower Mainland is as rare as a sasquatch now,” he said. “It should be a no-brainer that the whole thing must be included.”
What protection that does exist at Harrison/Chehalis applies mainly to the wetlands and is non-governmental: the Chehalis River Conservancy (192 hectares) is owned by the Nature Trust of B.C. and leased to the federal fisheries department; the Martin Property (7.5 hectares) is owned by the Nature Trust and Ducks Unlimited Canada.
In comparison, the Squamish River Valley has 755-hectare Brackendale Eagles Provincial Park.
Hancock said the Harrison-Chehalis area should be declared a provincial wildlife management area – at a minimum – to protect the eagles from uncontrolled human activities on the Chehalis flats.
“It only takes one person to walk out there when there are 5,000 eagles and they are all gone,” he said. “That makes no sense at all. They need that feeding and resting area.”
Brennan Clarke, spokesman for the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, said that the old-growth management area is “proposed specifically to overlap with the eagle roosting area” and that the ministry is “working on a more comprehensive wildlife plan for this general area. It’s currently in very preliminary stages.”
Hancock agreed that eagles are especially drawn to Echo Lake to roost in a “cirque of big old trees around that lake” and that the entire forest there should be fully protected, since much of the area has been “hammered” by clearcutting.
“It’s the last chunk of old-growth,” he said. “It’s just one of those old traditional social gathering sites. When you get hundreds and hundreds of eagles nesting in a few trees it’s obviously an important part of their being.”
Stephen Ben-Oliel, who owns a 16-hectare property bordering Echo Lake, also supports protection of the area. “They roost here because it’s one of the last places with old-growth trees,” he confirmed.
Brackendale Eagles Provincial Park was created to protect floodplain habitat, including “critical perching, roosting and feeding” areas for bald eagles arriving to forage on spawning salmon, says the BC Parks management plan for the site, noting it recorded a “world record” of 3,769 eagles during a 1994 count.
Hancock said he observed 7,362 eagles at Harrison-Chehalis on Dec. 11, 2010, along a two-kilometre distance.
“These are absolute counts, not estimates,” he noted.” It’s a small area. I stand there with the telescope and walk around in a circle and someone writes them down as I count them. These won’t be disputed.”
Dick Cannings, a noted birder, biologist, and author living in the Okanagan Valley, said that “if the 7,000-plus figure is accurate – and I have no reason to doubt that – the Harrison-Chehalis area can lay some claim to be the Bald Eagle capital of the world.”
Hancock estimated more than 10,000 eagles were present in a larger 10-square-kilometre wintering area.
Kyle Elliott, a bird biologist who has studied the lower Fraser River, said that in December 2010, the average temperature in Juneau, Alaska, was 22 degrees Fahrenheit – five degrees below the average of 27 degrees.
Those colder temperatures along with the collapse of the chum salmon run at Squamish and ” ideal water levels at Chehalis flats” made for the exceptional year for eagles, he said.
Hancock, who is known for putting live video webcams at eagle nesting and feeding sites, added that increased commercial fishing of chum salmon – a species traditionally of little value – in northern waters over the years is another factor in the eagles coming further south to feed, especially on late runs at Harrison-Chehalis.
Even in a non-record year, it is not unusual to see more than 1,000 eagles congregate at Harrison-Chehalis.
The Fraser Valley Bald Eagle Festival takes place Nov. 17-18 on the Harrison River.
Campaign sprouts up to save Echo Lake old-growth forest
/in News CoverageMetro News online article
Echo Lake, between Mission and Agassiz, has become the focal point behind a new campaign aimed at protecting old-growth forests and eagle roosting areas around the province.
Conservationists with the Ancient Forest Alliance are calling for the provincial government to protect Echo Lake’s forest.
Areas containing some of the lake’s old-growth trees would be excluded from the province’s proposed Old-Growth Management Area.
“This is really an extremely rare gem of lowland ancient rainforest in a sea of second-growth forests, clearcuts and high altitude old-growth patches,” said Ken Wu, executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “To still have an unprotected lowland ancient forest like this left near Vancouver is like finding a Sasquatch. How many jurisdictions on earth still have trees that grow as wide as living rooms and as tall as downtown skyscrapers. What we have here in B.C. is something exceptional.”
The government is currently in the midst of a 60-day public input process into their proposed management plan.
The alliance hopes enough public engagement would help protect the entire old-growth forest at Echo Lake.
Media Release: BC Liberals open the back door to log protected forests under the guise of "science" and "local communities"
/in Media ReleaseFor immediate release,
October 10, 2012.
BC Liberal Government opens back door to potentially log protected old-growth forests in BC’s Central Interior under the guise of “science” and “local communities”.
VICTORIA, BC – The BC Liberal Government announced yesterday a new forestry action plan for BC’s Central Interior that would open the “back door” for logging in currently protected forests. By the spring of 2013 the BC government plans to create frameworks for a “science-based review” and “community-engagement” process to potentially open up forest reserves that currently protect old-growth forests, scenery for tourism, species at risk, and wildlife in the Central Interior. Conservationists are calling the government’s invoking of “science” and “local community input” as Trojan horses for logging companies to access protected forests. The government’s action plan is detailed in a new report, “Beyond the Beetle: A Mid-Term Timber Supply Action Plan” at: https://www2.news.gov.bc.ca/news_releases_2009-2013/2012FOR0193-001516.htm
“The BC Liberals are using weasel-words and sneaky manoeuvres to open the back door for the logging industry to get into these currently protected forests under the guise of ‘science’ and the politically correct phrase of ‘local community input’ – despite the fact that a majority of people have already clearly said ‘no’ to logging in protected forest reserves during the public input process and that a true science-based review would show the need to protect more forests to slow the decline of endangered species and wildlife, not to log their few protected reserves,” stated Ken Wu, executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “What I predict is that the BC government will set-up a ‘rigged-game’ for the science review with an overarching constraint that the existing unsustainable levels of timber harvest must be maintained – meaning that science will be used as a tool to determine which protected areas should be logged, not whether or not they should remain protected or be expanded as needed by endangered species, wildlife, tourism, and wild salmon. In addition, having local logging industry reps sit at local committees to decide whether to log these areas certainly won’t hinder the BC Liberals’ logging goals.”
The rationale for opening up protected forest reserves is that an impending shortfall in available timber supplies to support Central Interior sawmills will soon take effect, known as the “falldown effect”. This shortfall in timber supplies in relation to an overcapacity in the forest industry is the result of the loss of mature forests from the pine beetle infestation (caused by climate change and forest fire suppression) and a massive forest industry expansion in the Interior in recent years to take advantage of the infestation, as well as a decades-long history of overcutting the best stands at lower elevations resulting in diminishing returns as the standing timber declines in volume and value and becomes more expensive to access.
“Rewarding unsustainable behaviour with more unsustainable behaviour is wrong and foolish. The Interior timber industry’s unsustainable expansion and overcutting of beetle-affected wood and vast areas of living trees should not be rewarded with more of the same inside of our protected forest reserves now – that’s the worst, most myopic course of action possible and it’s precisely the type of mindset that has brought this planet to the ecological brink,” stated Wu. “Instead the BC Liberal government should diversify rural economies, reduce overcutting while supporting the creation of more higher-end value-added wood manufacturing jobs, ensure sustainable second-growth forestry, end wood waste in clearcuts, end raw log exports to foreign mills, retrain forestry workers, and expand forest protections for wildlife, tourism, recreation, and wild fisheries.
The move to log protected forest reserves and Old-Growth Management Areas is based on the false notion that because there are many beetle-killed trees, that the entire ecosystem is not ‘living’ and therefore clearcutting and punching roads into vast swaths of protected forests – which are a mix of living and dead trees that are part of very vibrant, alive, and continually growing ecosystems – does little environmental damage.
Pine beetle-affected forests include living, unaffected trees of various species, younger regenerating trees, and intact understory vegetation and soil structures, while the dead trees and woody debris provide homes for much wildlife. The extent of the pine beetle infestation is unnatural, caused by anthropogenic climate change and decades of wildfire suppression by the forest industry – however, further clearcutting of these living, dynamic forest ecosystems by removing all the living and dead trees and punching road networks throughout them, leading to soil erosion, vastly increases the environmental damage and removes vital wildlife habitat.
Forest reserve designations in the BC Interior include:
– Old-Growth Management Areas (that protect representative tracts of scarce old-growth forests)
– Riparian Management Areas (that protect fish habitat and water quality)
– Ungulate Winter Ranges (wintering habitat for mountain caribou, mountain goats, etc.)
– Wildlife Habitat Areas (that protect species at risk such as grizzlies and other wildlife)
– Visual Quality Objectives (that protect scenery for tourism)
– Recreation Areas (campsites, hiking areas, etc.)
The proposed environmental deregulation would take place in four Timber Supply Areas (TSA’s): the Prince George, Quesnel, Williams Lake, and Lakes (Burns Lake area) TSA’s.
A true science-based framework without the constraint of needing to maintain unsustainable harvest levels, and that focuses on what it will take to sustain species at risk, biodiversity, water quality and scenery (ie. that focuses on the original land-use plan goals without new, added logging goals) would almost certainly recommend the expansion of Old-Growth Management Areas and other forest reserves, given the advancement of landscape ecology and conservation biology over the past two decades in recognizing the destructiveness of habitat loss and fragmentation on species at risk and fish-bearing streams. A true science-based review without unsustainable timber constraints would almost certainly reveal the inadequacy of the existing land-use plans and their system of protected forest reserves to stem the decline of species at risk, to sustain old-growth ecosystems, to support scenery for tourism, and to protect fish habitat – it would lead to an expansion of forest protections.
“More overcutting and opening up protected forest reserves to try to prop-up an unsustainable industry a bit longer is like burning up parts of your house for firewood after depleting all your other wood sources. In the end, you’re a lot worse off,” stated Wu. “Logging protected forests in this province is a no-go in terms of public opinion. For the BC Liberals to hang this albatross around their neck in the months leading up to BC election is both wrong and unwise – they need to start correcting their course, fast.”
NDP Sets Fire to Libs’ Forest Industry Fix
/in News CoverageLink to The Tyee online article
The British Columbia government says it is acting on a series of recommendations to help the province’s forest industry in the wake of the mountain pine beetle epidemic. Critics say it’s a weak response to the issue that shows the government hasn’t learned from the collapse of other natural resource industries.
“The action plan represents the next phase in our decade-long battle against the mountain pine beetle,” said Steve Thomson, the minister of forests, lands and natural resource operations, talking to reporters on a conference call.
The 16-page plan is a response to an August report from the legislature’s special committee on timber supply that held hearings throughout the province last spring and into the early summer.
It sets out nine actions it describes as “sustained” and 11 that it characterizes as “new.” As the plan puts it, “The key elements of the action plan focus on reforestation, forest inventory, fuel management and intensive and innovative silviculture.”
The plan includes a promise of legislation to move to area-based licenses from volume-based, and to create licenses to allow companies to harvest wood that is not sawlog quality but that could be burned for energy.
Thomson said there is $100 million in the 2013-2014 budget for reforestation, and the ministry will seek further funding through the budget process to pay for the rest of the plan.
He defended the decision in the past to drop doing forest inventory and planning for reforestation during the worst of the beetle epidemic. “The rapidly changing situation in our forests dictated that we hold off on updating our inventory and reforestation plans until it stabilized, and now we can proceed,” he said.
Beetle like a hurricane
John Rustad, who is the parliamentary secretary for forestry and who chaired the timber supply committee, compared it to coping with other natural disasters. “If you’re planning to do some work on your house, and there’s a hurricane approaching, you’re not going to undertake the work on your house until you’ve seen what happened with the hurricane,” he said. “The same thing is what happened with the mountain pine beetle epidemic.”
However, the New Democratic Party’s forestry critic, Norm Macdonald, said it was “ridiculous” to stop doing inventory during the worst of the crisis.
The auditor general, the forest practices board and the Association of B.C. Forest Professionals have all criticized the government’s failure to keep forest inventory up to date, he said.
“They were making cut determinations based on data that’s 30 years old,” he said. “They’re setting cuts. Forestry doesn’t stop.”
The government has taken a hands-off approach to the industry and is responsible for the consequences, said Macdonald. “They’re trying to rationalize what they’ve done, which is to step away from the responsibility to manage the forests properly.”
In general, the plan offers little to help the forest industry, he said. “It is a predictably weak response from this government that’s shown no interest in looking after the land over the last 10 years,” he said. “It’s basically business as usual … There’s no new money. As far as I can see, it’s just not there.”
Jobs today, consequences later
If there’s going to be a shift to area-based tenures, which would set the number of hectares to be harvested each year and give the industry flexibility on how much volume it harvests each year, it needs to be done very carefully and with an eye on the public benefit, said Macdonald.
“It’s a complicated thing to do properly,” he said. While the switch might help, he said, “There really isn’t the proof you necessarily get benefits.”
The government is trying to keep the status quo in the forest industry, even though it’s obvious the province’s forests cannot keep the industry going at the rate it has in the past, said Bob Simpson, the MLA for Cariboo North and a former forest company executive.
“You’ve got an eleventh hour panicked response to something the government’s had a long time to prepare for,” he said. “We’ve seen this movie play out since humanity settled down in one location and wiped out the natural resources around them. It always ends badly.”
Simpson compares the state of B.C.’s forest industry to what happened with the Atlantic cod fishery two decades ago. Despite warnings from non-government scientists, the stocks were allowed to be exploited at an unsustainable rate to feed processing plants in places that identified as fishing communities all along the coast, he said.
“None of those communities can describe themselves as fishing communities anymore,” he said. “That’s what we’re doing here.”
The government should allow cut level to come down and let the industry “rationalize” so there isn’t so much overcapacity for milling, he said. “What the government’s doing is preventing any rationalization whatsoever.”
Fully depleting the resource might delay going over the cliff, but it will make that cliff even bigger when the time comes, he said. “We’re always extinguishing the resources for today’s jobs and today’s economy, and eventually you lose those two as well.”
The government would be wiser to put its efforts into climate change adaptation and mitigation, he said, as well as helping communities that have been dependent on forestry to transition into other ways of surviving.
Logging of old-growth forest mulled by B.C. government
/in News CoverageLink to online article
The B.C. government will examine the contentious possibility of opening old-growth forests to logging in parts of the province hardest hit by plummeting timber supplies.
It’s an idea that both proponents and opponents say would require chopping protective measures that took years to create.
The government is now constructing ground rules so that by early 2013 it can begin revisiting the designation of some sensitive areas, mainly in the north-central triangle between Burns Lake, Prince George and Quesnel.
But any decision to cut old-growth forests would be science-based and reached by consensus of all members of the community, said Forests Minister Steve Thomson.
“There may be limited opportunities to look at that, but only through a process,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.
“It’s important to recognize that this request came from the communities.”
The move comes as part of a larger strategy the government released on Tuesday aimed at boosting timber supply over the next five to 20 years. The list of actions comes in direct response to a special committee report that warned in August that measures must be taken to stave off an impending, dramatic drop in wood supply.
Pine beetle devastation
The plan is the final phase in the provincial government’s decade-long response to the infestation of the mountain pine beetle, which has decimated forests across the province.
The August report predicted the beetle would chew up to 70 per cent of the central Interior’s marketable timber by 2021 if nothing changes.
But environmental advocates say opening protected forests to logging would roll back years of “hard fought” legislation.
“This is blood sweat and tears, multi-stakeholder processes, consensus building. They took years, these land-use plans, to establish,” said Valerie Langer, director of Forest Ethics Solutions.
“It’s very frightening to all those people who put years of their life as volunteers into this.”
Potential pilot projects could eventually take place in Burns Lake and Quesnel, with the highest priority areas being assessed this coming spring and summer, Thomson said.
Doug Routledge, vice-president forestry with the Council of Forest Industries, welcomed the government’s “tangible” plans.
“Cautiously and well-informed,” Routledge said of the proposed changes. “We’re not unhappy to see that the question about relaxing or deferring other constraints on the working forest land-base is still on the table.”
He explained the wood they’re looking to harvest would not include the most vulnerable areas, such as that protected as a critical habitat.
‘Crisis will be even worse’
Ben Parfitt, a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, has also followed the committee’s work closely.
He believes opening up an old-growth area is unrealistic, and suggested the biggest environmental threat was a part of the plan that will create new opportunities for logging by identifying marginally economic forests.
“We have a significant problem on our hands that is going to extend well beyond five to 20 years,” Parfitt said. “If the government chooses to try and address this problem by freeing up more trees to log today, I believe the crisis will be even worse than what it is now.”
But Thomson said the government believes the “greatest opportunity” to beef up timber supply lies in identifying those stands.
Plan to maintain timber supply widens land base.
/in News CoverageLink to online Vancovuer Sun article
The B.C. government announced plans on Tuesday to meet timber supply shortages in the B.C. Interior by reviewing current prohibitions on logging in environmentally sensitive areas and giving forest companies more power to manage the land base.
In releasing a plan titled “Beyond the Beetle,” Forests Minister Steve Thomson said the provincial government was moving toward the “next phase in our decade-long battle with the mountain pine beetle.”
But no new money has been committed to critically needed inventory work now that the beetle epidemic is winding down. The plan is the government’s response to a special legislative committee on the timber supply that tabled a report last month.
Critics called the plan vague, saying it doesn’t adequately address how much timber is actually left in B.C. forests. An update of the timber inventory is to begin in 2013, but the plan commits no new money to do the work.
Independent MLA Bob Simpson, whose Cariboo North constituency is ground zero in the beetle-damaged forest epidemic, called the plan a recipe for disaster.
“We are going down the same path as we did with the East Coast cod fishery,” Simpson said. “We are going to play with the rules, the regulations and change the tenure and access, to go and bleed the forests dry in order to keep the status quo.”
NDP forests critic Norm Macdonald said the plan was too vague on the issue of investing in an updated timber inventory. “It was clear there had to be serious investments in inventory. Over 72 per cent of the land has base data over 30 years old. You can’t expect proper forestry to be done with that sort of data.” However, Thomson said the ongoing deteriorating condition of beetle-hit forests dictated that the province delay inventory work until the infestation is over. Federal Student Loan Consolidation
“Now we can proceed,” he said. But he also acknowledged that he is restricted by budgetary constraints and that needed money has yet to be committed. Besides beginning on inventory work, the key elements of the plan include: . A commitment to move from volume-based timber tenures to area-based tenures, where forest companies would assume more management control.
. Increasing the timber inventory by including marginally economic stands that up until this point have been excluded.
. Developing a review of so-called “sensitive areas” that have been exempted from logging because of their wildlife or scenic values, and possibly reopening land-use plans.
Jens Wieting, a forest campaigner for the Sierra Club of B.C., said the province has done exactly what environmentalists feared – sacrificed other forest values to ensure a timber supply for Interior sawmills. He said the government is putting at risk not only environmental values but the forest industry’s reputation.
“To put these at risk for a short-term win is unbelievable. It is a level of ignorance that is hard to digest.”
Thomson said logging communities have asked for the review of restrictions on forest reserves. “It will be done very carefully, and only where there is consensus and agreement from the community,” he said.
The forest industry said Tuesday that it supports the government initiatives.
“We see the potential for some tangible improvements in the short-term and midterm timber supply by following the various courses of action,” said Doug Routledge of the B.C. Council of Forest Industries. “It’s a positive action plan. It provides some definitive timelines. We are a little concerned that there will be sufficient human and financial resources to accomplish what is in the action plan, but that is something that can be worked on over time.”
He said key components for the industry are the commitment to update the timber inventory and a commitment to monitor land-use plans that predate the beetle infestation. Routledge said many values may have changed as a result of the beetle. Current land-use plans leave broad areas out of bounds to logging when it is possible for wildlife conservation to be accomplished in more specific areas, he said.
Routledge said a very rough estimate shows 40 per cent more timber could be found if land-use plans were updated to optimize the allocation of resources and land.
The greatest gains in timber supply are likely to come from the inclusion of marginally economic timber stands.
The beetle is expected to knock 10 million cubic metres a year out of the timber supply. But, in Burns Lake alone, including marginal economic stands added 60 per cent of the volume back into the supply. An economic stand is one with more than 140 cubic metres of saw-logs per hectare. The new standard lowers that to 100 cubic metres.
“They are logging stands below 100 cubic metres per hectare at the moment at Williams Lake,” Routledge said.