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Media Release: Canada’s Finest Cedar Grove Marked for Logging

Aug 29 2012/in Media Release

The Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) is bracing for a potential, major escalation in BC’s “War in the Woods” as survey tape marking the “falling boundary” for logging has been recently discovered in the finest, unprotected stand of monumental old-growth western redcedar trees in Canada:the “Castle Grove” in the unprotected Upper Walbran Valley west of Lake Cowichan on southern Vancouver Island. The Castle Grove is an extensive stand of densely-packed enormous redcedars, including the “Castle Giant”, a 16 foot (5 meter) diameter cedar that is one of the largest trees in Canada.

See new, spectacular PHOTOS of the Castle Grove and the“falling boundary” survey tape at: https://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/photos.php?gID=21#1

See a beautiful photogallery of the Walbran Valley at: https://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/photos.php?gID=7

The Ministry of Forests has so far failed to confirm whether the logging licensee, Teal-Jones, has applied for an application for a cutting permit in the Upper Castle Grove, although the survey tape clearly denotes the company’s interest in potentially logging the grove. The Upper Castle Grove sits on unprotected Crown (public) lands within Tree Farm License 46.Unfortunately it is not protected within the nearby Carmanah-Walbran Provincial Park nor in any forest reserve designations such as Old-Growth Management Areas, Ungulate Winter Ranges or Wildlife Habitat Areas.

The Victoria-based conservation organization, the Ancient Forest Alliance, is calling on the BC Liberal government to protect the area using a long-promised (but as yet unrealized) “legal tool” to protect BC’s largest trees and monumental groves. A letter has been sent to all BC Liberal MLA’s on Vancouver Island and to various cabinet ministers requesting the protection of the Castle Grove through the promised legal designation.

See the BC government’s announcement in February, 2011, about creating a new legal tool to protect BC’s largest trees and groves: Vancouver Sun and Times Colonist: “B.C. looking for new ways to protect ancient trees” (Feb.16, 2011) https://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/b-c-looking-for-new-ways-to-protect-ancient-trees/

The Castle Grove (Lower and Upper) is the most impressive stand of unprotected monumental ancient redcedars in Canada. The Grove has been featured in numerous media reports on BC’s old-growth forests for over two decades, including the front pages of the Victoria “Times Colonist” and in the “Vancouver Sun”. The Walbran Valley in which the Castle Grove is found was the focus of early protests against old-growth logging in 1991 and 1992, playing an important role in the build-up towards the massive Clayoquot Sound protests near Tofino on Vancouver Island in 1993.

“The Castle Grove in the Walbran Valley is ‘Ground Zero’for the ancient forest movement on southern Vancouver Island – both historically and today. Because it’s Canada’s finest stand of endangered old-growth redcedars, it has been the focal area for ancient forest campaigns for decades. To try log it will only escalate the ‘War in the Woods’ to a whole new level,”stated Ken Wu, the executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “We’ve waited for over a year and a half for the BC Liberal government to implement their promised ‘legal tool’ to protect BC’s largest trees and monumental groves and so far we’ve still seen nothing. Of all places, the Castle Grove is THE place where such a legal designation would make most sense. Otherwise the BC Liberals’ rhetoric has been as empty as a clearcut.”

In February, 2011, former Minister of Forests Pat Bell promised that the BC Liberal government would implement a new legal tool to protect the largest trees and associated groves after a Forest Practices Board report that investigated the logging of an exceptionally grand stand of ancient redcedars near Port Renfrew showed a deficiency in protection levels for productive stands over 400 years in age. To date, the BC Liberal government under the new Minister of Forests Steve Thomson has not publicly followed through with this promise, although sources within the ministry have indicated that the BC government is now looking at using existing legal tools, namely provincial Recreation Sites and Old-Growth Management Areas, to fulfill this function.

“We don’t care if the BC Liberal government uses new or old tools to protect our endangered ancient groves like the Castle Grove. The main thing is they need to actually start identifying and designating such areas for protection, otherwise it was simply an empty promise for PR purposes at the time, and hollow promises like that won’t go unnoticed by the conservation movement during this pre-election period,” stated Wu. “More importantly, the BC Liberal government needs to implement a much more comprehensive Provincial Old-Growth Strategy to protect old-growth ecosystems on a much larger scale across BC.”

Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner TJ Watt found flagging tape marked “Falling Boundary” in the Upper Castle Grove earlier this month, less than 50 meters from the “Castle Giant”, one of the largest western redcedars in the world at over 16 feet (5 meters) in diameter. The Castle Giant has graced the front page of many BC newspapers and grows on the adjacent flats in the Lower Castle Grove.

“We’ve been waiting for several weeks now to get an answer from the Ministry of Forests on whether the company has applied for a cutting permit yet in the Upper Castle Grove,” stated TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner and photographer. “Perhaps they haven’t yet, in which case the Castle Grove is simply an ‘area of interest’ for the company which they’re contemplating to log, as indicated by their flagging tape. But if they’ve already applied for the cutting permit, then it looks like we may be headed for a major conflict.”

Ecological surveys done in the Castle Grove have revealed the presence of threatened marbled murrelets, screech owls, Queen Charlotte goshawks, red- legged frogs, cougars, black bears, and black-tailed deer in the Upper Castle Grove, while steelhead and coho salmon spawn in the Walbran River below the Castle Grove.

On southern Vancouver Island south of Barkley Sound and Port Alberni, satellite photos show that over 87% of the original, productive old-growth forests have already been logged (the rest mainly being second-growth forests now and some urban/agricultural areas). See maps and stats at: htt p://15.222.255.145//old-growth-maps.php

The Ancient Forest Alliance is calling on the BC Liberal government and the NDP Opposition to commit to implementing a BC Old-Growth Strategy that will inventory and protect old-growth forests wherever they are scarce (such as on Vancouver Island, in the Lower Mainland, in the BC Interior, etc.). The AFA is also calling on the BC Liberal government to ensure the sustainable logging of second-growth forests, which constitute most of the forests in southern BC, and to ensure a guaranteed log supply for BC mills and value-added wood manufacturers by ending the export of raw logs to foreign mills.

Old-growth forests are vital to sustain endangered species, the climate, tourism, clean water, wild salmon, and the cultures of many First Nations.

Ben Parfitt and Anthony Britneff: B.C. MLAs take wrong approach to timber supply crisis

Aug 27 2012/in News Coverage

Ever since mid May, when a special committee of the provincial legislature was appointed to address a looming “timber supply” crisis, questions have arisen about what the committee would say about one community in particular.

That community is Burns Lake where, in January, a violent explosion and fire leveled the local sawmill—the village’s major employer—killing two mill workers and doing another 250 out of their jobs.

Well the wait is over, and if the unanimous recommendations of the committee’s Liberal and NDP MLAs are an indication, our forests and many rural communities are headed for even harder times than previously thought.

Here’s why. Rather than focusing on the core issue (how many trees are left, and what the future holds for our forests) committee members allowed themselves to be swayed by dramatic yet unrelated events.

The evidence is overwhelmingly clear. We are on the cusp of a monumental shift in our interior forests. After a decade-plus attack by mountain pine beetles and other pests, a spate of intense wildfires and years of unsustainable logging, our forests are largely depleted of commercially desirable trees.

To their credit, members of the Special Committee on Timber Supply acknowledge this. They conclude that the projected drop in logging rates places eight sawmills in danger. This is probably an underestimate. Either way, when mill capacity outstrips what our forests can provide, mills must close. There are only so many trees to go around.

Yet having acknowledged that existing sawmills have an appetite for wood that grossly exceeds what our forests can provide, committee members then turn around and suggest that we should build another mill first and find the timber later.

To entice the owner of the destroyed Burns Lake mill to do so, the committee chooses to go down the same tired road that gave rise to the present timber supply crisis: push the boundaries of what can be harvested to the extreme. This is essentially the approach applied in the East Coast cod fishery and we all know how that worked out.

The committee astonishingly suggested that there are actually twice as many trees to log in the forests around Burns Lake than what senior forest professionals in government estimated just last year (one million instead of 500,000 cubic metres of wood a year).

How did the committee magically double timber supply? With three key recommendations. First, that more “marginally economic” forests be logged. Second, that the government underwrite a massive fertilization program to boost tree growth. And third—here committee members use weasel words to mask the true intent of what they propose—to increase the logging of remnant old-growth forests that were previously ruled off-limits to logging.

It is far from clear that this will produce enough wood to supply a rebuilt mill.

First, “marginal” forests are marginal for a reason. They are generally of inferior quality, further from mills, and more costly to log. And they are often found in places where trees grow less vigorously, for example at higher elevations. Hence, they are risky to log, both economically and environmentally.

Second, with government having drastically curtailed its investments in growing trees, no one should assume there is appetite for big spending increases on fertilization. Never mind the ecological impacts of repeated applications of tree fertilizers on shallow soils and on our waterways, fish populations and other plant life in our forests.

And third, perceived increases in old-growth logging could prove a nightmare in international markets where the B.C. government and forest companies alike have worked judiciously to have forestry operations independently certified as sustainably managed.

But if the government embraces the committee’s recommendations for Burns Lake, expect the same unsustainable logging practices to be applied provincewide, and with devastating consequences.

The real tragedy in the committee members’ recommendations is that they are well aware of where the real challenges lie. The committee acknowledges the essential importance of improved forest inventories—looking at how many healthy trees we have. Why isn’t this the first order of business? B.C. needs an expedited, thorough assessment now, before we have committed to even more unsustainable logging rates.

To proceed with logging increases before such work is done is irresponsible and an insult to forest-dependent communities across the province.

Anthony Britneff recently retired from a 40-year career as a professional forester with the B.C. Forest Service where he held senior positions in inventory, silviculture and forest health. Ben Parfitt is a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Environmentalist bristles over report urging more logging

Aug 16 2012/in News Coverage

A government report looking at the pine beetle’s impact in B.C.’s central interior has taken the wrong approach in urging more logging, says the executive director of Ancient Forest Alliance.

Ken Wu says the report’s recommendation to increase the timber supply and value of pine-beetle wood could allow for logging in protected forests.

“There’s different ways to do more with less, to be more efficient. Instead they’re looking at opening up our last protected areas and that’s totally the wrong approach. Rewarding unsustainable behaviour with more unsustainable behaviour is what has pushed this whole planet to the ecological brink.”

Wu says these protected areas include old growth forest, wildlife habitats, scenery, and recreational spots. Grants For College

Link to article: https://www.cknw.com/news/vancouver/story.aspx/Story.aspx?ID=1757152