Vancouver Sun: Languishing ‘in the doldrums’: Conservation groups demand action on B.C.’s old-growth logging review

The 88 groups released a letter that was sent earlier this year to Randene Neill, B.C.’s minister of water, land and resource stewardship. It sounds the alarm about the province’s lack of progress on recommendation No. 2: enacting a new law for biodiversity and ecosystem health.

Lawyers with West Coast Environmental Law say B.C.’s recent decision to fast track resource projects goes against this recommendation.

TJ Watt, campaign director with the Ancient Forest Alliance who is also known for taking before and after photos of ancient trees that have been chopped down in B.C., said the government needs to treat old-growth protection like other provincial emergencies and channel the resources needed to secure a sustainable future for ecosystems and forest industry.

Jessica Clogg, executive director and senior counsel at West Coast Environmental Law, said a law to protect biodiversity in B.C.’s forests would provide an essential environmental guardrail for projects to proceed in a way everyone can support.

Instead, she said B.C. rammed through the bills “raising concerns that environmental safeguards will be circumvented to fast-track projects, while their promise to develop a biodiversity and ecosystem health law languishes in the doldrums.”

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said fast-tracking resource projects without delivering on its commitment to co-develop a biodiversity and ecosystem health law with First Nations was unacceptable.

“This approach is not consistent with the government’s stated commitment to align B.C.’s laws with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” he said in a statement.

The groups are calling on B.C. to draft a biodiversity and ecosystem health law as soon as possible to ensure projects are built while also protecting sensitive forest ecosystems.

Neill was not available for comment. Forests Minister Ravi Parmar told Postmedia earlier this summer that the government is performing a balancing act between conservation and forestry.

He said decisions related to harvesting trees and road building are informed by experts, including professional foresters, hydrologists, biologists, and geotechnical engineers.

The B.C. government says co-ordination between First Nations and forests companies has resulted in about logging has been deferred or banned on 24,000 square kilometres of old-growth forests since November 2021. The government says there’s more than 110,000 square kilometres of old-growth forest on B.C.

According to Sierra Club B.C., the area of old-growth forest logged annually across the province is more than 1,400 square kilometres — an area twice the size of Greater Victoria.

Ken Wu, executive director of Endangered Ecosystems Alliance, says B.C. shouldn’t be logging any trees that are hundreds of years old.

Wu said the government promised an ecological paradigm shift in its system of old-growth forest management, but five years later, it has stalled policy.

“Logging the last stands of forest giants today is like coming across groups of elephants or great whales and slaughtering them all. It’s both unethical and unnecessary, given the second-growth alternative.”

Old-growth forests have locked up huge amounts of carbon and clearcutting them releases massive amounts of carbon back into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change, according to Sierra.

A sprawling old-growth clearcut, nearly 40 hectares in size, logged by Teal-Jones in the Caycuse Valley in Ditidaht territory on Vancouver Island, BC. Hundreds of ancient cedars, some measuring more than 10 feet (3 metres) wide, were logged here