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Ecological emergency: call to save remaining West Coast old growth forest

Jul 23 2016/in News Coverage

Environmental groups are sounding an urgent alarm over logging of ancient trees, the “old growth” forest, throughout Canada’s Pacific coast province of British Columbia.

The Sierra Club of B.C., in a press release said, 2,430 sq.km of rainforest were logged on Vancouver Island between 2004 and 2015, and of that 1,000 sq km. were “old growth” forests.

The Sierra club says even as the amount of remaining old growth forest is cut down, the logging process is speeding up.

The environmental group says from 2007 to 2011, about 76 sq km of ancient trees were cut annually, but that increased in the following years to 90 sq.km being cut every year.

Richard Hebda, the Royal B.C. Museum’s curator of botany and earth history says the old forests weave together a complex interconnected system of hydrology, soil formation, nutrient cycling and so on.

Loggin removes not only the trees, but also breaks up the living fabric holding those systems together.

Quoted in the Globe and Mail news, he says, ““We need a hard-nosed investigation of what we want these forests to be doing: Do we want to protect biodiversity? Do we want them to be very good at storing carbon? Then we can decide how much forest we actually need”. He adds, “I think the answer will be a much higher percentage than we now have.”

Heading for collapse

Jens Weiting, Sierra Club BC’s forest and climate campaigner, says,

“It is only a matter of time before the logging industry runs out of old-growth trees and fully transitions to second-growth,” said Wieting. “But despite shrinking revenue and jobs from logging, and despite the increasing value of endangered old-growth for species, a diverse economy, climate action, and clean air and water, thousands of hectares of old-growth rainforest are still being cut every year.”

He adds, ““We are urging the B.C. government to take immediate action to protect and restore the coastal rainforests on Vancouver Island”.

The environmentalists say, to continue to log old growth forest will irreparably damage existing ecosystems, and the economy of towns and cities dependent on logging.

They urge a move away from old growth, to second growth forests.

A deal for protection and limited sustainable logging on the mainland in the Great Bear Rainforest among logging companies, the B.C government, and First Nations aboriginal groups shows solutions are possible, according to the Sierra Club.

They quickly add that south of the agreement area overcutting and lack of protection has resulted in rain forest areas along the coast in “a state of ecological emergency”.

Old growth, big trees are good for business. it makes more sense to bring the tourists in than to take the logs out”.

Preserving the old growth forests with their giant trees, and natural surrounding has caught the attention of the BC Chamber of Commerce.

They have begun to realize there is more economic value in promoting the area as an ecological tourist destination, than a logging resource.

Dan Hager, president of the Port Renfrew BC Chamber of Commerce quoted in the CBC says, “People love history and people love this idea of environmental tourism. Old growth, big trees are good for business. it makes more sense to bring the tourists in than to take the logs out”.

Weiting and others say logging infrastructure is currently geared towards logging the ancient trees. A government official noted that 70 percent of logging on Vancouver Island is old growth.

Weiting again points out that if the will is there on all parts, solutions like the Great Bear Rainforest deal are possible to transition the logging industry to second growth forest, respect First Nations interests, save the diverse ecosystems flourishing in the old growth forests, develop new industry like tourism, and all the while reduce carbon emissions.

‘Generational amnesia’ softens fight for forests

Jul 22 2016/in News Coverage

Maybe if they scattered Pokémon Go characters among Vancouver Island’s forests, people would notice the loss of old-growth trees.

Or maybe our treehugger stereotype is outdated.

Or maybe we’re so over-stimulated by a steady diet of daily crises — terror attacks, drunken airline pilots, doping at the Olympics, Melania Trump’s plagiarism, the Taylor-Kanye feud — that it’s hard to get worked up about stories that take longer than a day or two to sort out. Maintaining a constant state of social media-driven self-righteous outrage can be exhausting. We’re built for sprints now, no longer have the stamina for marathons.

Which is what came to mind the other day when the Sierra Club of B.C. warned that “high and increasing old-growth logging rates on Vancouver Island will lead to an ecological and economic collapse unless the B.C. government changes course.”

The environmental group wants the provincial government to phase out the cutting of ancient trees and speed the transition to what it calls sustainable, value-added, second-growth logging.

This sort of story used to send Islanders flying to the barricades (to which they would then chain themselves). Carmanah, Walbran, Meares Island, the Texada lands on Salt Spring — the names of logging protests fall off the tongue like those of Second World War battlefields.

The future of the forests was once seen as being inextricably linked with the identity, economy and culture of the Island, and the resulting tugs-of-war were big news, not just here but abroad. In 1993, the legendary War in the Woods, the massive campaign against Clayoquot Sound logging, drew international attention as 850 protesters were charged. Activist rockers Midnight Oil —whose big, bald singer, Peter Garrett, later became Australia’s environment minister — played a concert at the protesters’ camp. Environmental lawyer Robert Kennedy, Jr. (another kind of rock star) waded into the fray. International pressure, the threat of boycott, eventually contributed to B.C. forestry reform.

It would be wrong to drag out some “if a tree falls in the forest” metaphor and say nobody cares about this stuff anymore. They do — and in the mainstream, too. In May the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, hardly a bastion of hemp-hatted hippies, called on the province to expand protection of old-growth forests in areas where they have, or are likely to have, greater economic value if left standing.

Also, the recent agreement over the future of logging on the central coast — what the romanticists like to call the Great Bear Rainforest — shows the maturation of the process, demonstrates what can be done when the players choose collaboration and negotiation over confrontation.

Still, the sense of urgency, the buzz that once pushed the issue to the front of the public’s consciousness, is absent.

The Sierra Club’s Jens Wieting cites a couple of potential factors. First, the subset of people who might usually be expected to bang the drum are invested elsewhere, often in issues related to climate change: LNG, oil pipelines, the Site C dam.

Yet the preservation of ancient trees, which serve as a carbon sink, is key to that issue, he argues. A 2009 Sierra Club report estimated Vancouver Island old-growth logging has cost almost six times as much carbon as B.C. puts out in a year.

“We need the forests in the fight against climate change,” Wieting says.

He also talks about what B.C. writer J.B. MacKinnon called the 10 Per Cent World, one in which people are used to having just a fraction of the natural diversity and abundance as they had before. We suffer from “generational amnesia,” forgetting what was in the past and accepting what we see today as normal. Remember that a century ago the Island was covered in old growth, Wieting says.

A Sierra Club analysis found that between 2004 and 2015, a total of about 100,000 hectares of old growth were cut, leaving only about 384,000 hectares of “relatively productive, unprotected old-growth rainforest ecosystems.” At that rate, it won’t take long to run out, robbing the Island of biodiversity, clean air and water, and long-term forestry jobs, it argues.

Sounds dramatic. Not Pokémon Go dramatic, but still …

Vancouver Island old growth on brink of collapse, environmental group claims

Jul 20 2016/in News Coverage

Vancouver Island’s forests are on pace for an ecological and economic collapse, according to new data collected by the Sierra Club of B.C.

The environmental advocacy group is calling on the B.C. government to help phase out old growth logging in favour of younger second growth trees.

“It’s urgent to enter this period of transition now and help industry move towards second growth logging in just a few years,” said the Sierra Club’s Jens Wieting.

“Then we have a possibility to have old growth forest for tourism, as a carbon sink and for our children to enjoy in 50 or 100 years.”

But the B.C. government is leery of sudden changes that might negatively affect the industry — one that contributes $2.5 billion to three levels of government and employs nearly 150,000 people.

New partners in conservation

Port Renfrew is one of many Vancouver Island communities searching for a future after logging.

At one time, logging trucks would dominate Highway 14 — the two hour coastal drive from Victoria to Port Renfrew.

“We have to acknowledge that the logging industry is responsible for the town being there in the first place,” said Dan Hager, president of the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce.

But what was once a logging community with a seasonal influx of anglers, has now exploded into a year round tourist destination.

About five years ago, the Ancient Rainforest Alliance successfully lobbied the B.C. government to protect Avatar Grove, a cluster of 80 metre-tall old growth Douglas fir and western red cedar thought to have sprung up 800 years ago — the same year Genghis Khan captured and burnt Beijing to the ground.

That’s when Hager really started to notice some changes.

“People love history and people love this idea of environmental tourism,” he said.

“Old growth, big trees are good for business.”

The business of old growth

This spring, the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce pitched a bold policy to the 36,000 businesses that make up the B.C. Chamber of Commerce (BCCC).

Its bottom line: old growth forests have greater economic value as a tourism attraction than as logs.

“We raised the flag and said,’Hey, it makes more sense to bring the tourists in than to take the logs out,'” said Hager.

The policy was overwhelmingly supported by members of the BCCC, and this week, management will individually write each of B.C.’s ministries outlining their new policies.

“Membership is open to the idea of how we can use old growth to promote tourism,” said Dan Baxter of the BCCC, “but at the same time we want to be careful that we balance the needs of the forest industry.”

Atmo Prasad — who manages and analyzes data for the province — is also wary of any sudden changes. He said shifting the logging industry to second growth trees is not practical right now.

“If they don’t have old growth, the amount of harvesting on the island will decrease quite dramatically,” Prasad said.

He crunched the numbers in 2013 and found that old growth logging made up 70 per cent of the island’s logging industry.

“I think market forces will dictate how much that happens,” said Prasad, referring to the potential long-term shift towards second growth forestry.

But for Wieting and the Sierra Club, that’s not fast enough.

Government leadership

“Right now, we only have very superficial information from the B.C. government,” said Wieting, highlighting how the lack of a common, comprehensive data set discourages transitioning to second growth logging.

The government lumps together what remains of old growth forest with high-elevation forest and wetlands, where only small old growth trees can grow, according to Wieting.

“It’s the productive, big tree type of ecosystem that we are most worried about,” said Wieting. “That’s the most endangered trees now — trees that can grow as tall as a skyscraper.”

Another roadblock is re-purposing and re-tooling the existing infrastructure.

“Several of these mills were designed and built for large diameter logs,” said Gary Bull, professor of forest resource management at UBC, “They’ve already run into a shortage of logs either because of export or because of the second-growth logs.”

But Wieting is hopeful.

“We’ve seen government leadership in the Great Bear Rainforest,” he said. “We know that solutions are possible.”

[CBC article no longer available.]

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