Twenty years after clash at Clayoquot Sound, activists see new wave of unrest on the horizon

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Twenty years after a protest led to massive arrests on logging roads in Clayoquot Sound the organizers say a lot has changed – but a lot hasn’t, and they predict a new generation of activists may soon be on the barricades again.

The issue next time could be pipeline development or, once again, logging.

Where or when remains unpredictable, as was the Clayoquot rally. That summer thousands of people flocked to camp out in the Black Hole, just outside Tofino on Vancouver Island, and to stand in ranks across logging roads despite threats of arrest by the RCMP.

Hundreds were dragged away. But the Australian band Midnight Oil rocked through the night and the next day people got up and defied the law again.

The event threw the NDP government into shock – and led to a negotiated compromise. Clear-cut logging, then a practice favoured by industry and government, would be ended and a scientific panel would guide logging in the area.

It was a dramatic victory – but it didn’t end the environmental problems in B.C. Clayoquot Sound is still being logged and a mine is proposed in the area. B.C.’s Interior forests are currently being logged at a rate many say is unsustainable. Old-growth trees, some more than 1,000 years old, are routinely cut down. The Port of Metro Vancouver is pushing for increased coal shipments – and two separate oil pipeline projects are being proposed in B.C., despite widespread public concern.

“People have asked me many times, is there going to be another Clayoquot? Is this the next Clayoquot? Is that the next Clayoquot?” said Valerie Langer, a key organizer of the 1993 protest who was then with Friends of Clayoquot Sound.

“But I don’t think you manufacture things like Clayoquot ’93,” she said. “That was a factor of a broad provincewide tension about forestry, a good place to focus that [concern] – and a group that was ready to fly with it.”

However, all those factors could easily come together again in B.C., said Ms. Langer, who is now with the environmental group, ForestEthics Solutions.

“I do feel that kind of happening with the tar sands/pipeline campaign,” she said, referring to the movement to stop Enbridge Inc. from building its proposed project across B.C.

Ms. Langer said the Clayoquot protest seemed to come out of nowhere, but the mood that drove it had actually been building for years, as the government allowed industry to clear cut the forests of B.C., despite growing public objections.

She senses that same “kind of desperate feeling” simmering in the public now over the prospect of a pipeline snaking across the province to feed a parade of oil tankers plying the waters of the Great Bear Rainforest.

“I don’t think the federal and provincial governments have really cottoned on to that [public unrest] yet,” said Ms. Langer. “But this is something that builds and then there is a moment – and you never know exactly where and exactly when that will be – when it explodes.”

Vicky Husband, who was head of the Sierra Club in B.C. in 1993, said one of the reasons the Clayoquot protest got so big so fast was because people could easily drive to the area to see for themselves what environmentalists were complaining about.

The highway from Port Alberni to Tofino cut right through an active logging area, including the Black Hole, where the old-growth forest had been stripped, and then the landscape burned.

“Clayoquot Sound and Tofino were at the end of the only paved road to the open Pacific. And that’s critical. People could get there. They could see the horror show of what was going on with the logging,” she said.

Ms. Husband said she’s alarmed at the level of logging now taking place in B.C., and at government plans to privatize public forest lands. She’s horrified by the prospect of oil pipelines crossing B.C.

Do you think, she was asked, that we need another big environmental protest in B.C?

“Yes, I do,” she said, “because I don’t think we have a government that understands.”

Read more: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/mass-arrests-during-war-in-the-woods-20-years-ago-prompted-lasting-change/article13703844/

Then Burnaby NDP MP Svend Robinson (second from right) joins in anti-logging protest on the Kennedy Lake bridge in Clayoquot Sound in 1993.

Clayoquot protest 20 years ago transformed face of environmentalism

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It’s hard to believe, for me at any rate, that Friday marked the 20th anniversary of the mass arrests at Clayoquot Sound, an event that transformed the face of environmentalism and forced governments and corporations to start taking such concerns seriously.

The protests at Clayoquot Sound, which lies just off Tofino on Vancouver Island’s outer coast of pristine beaches, rugged coastlines, islets, inlets and tranquil sheltered coves, represented the coalescing of public objections to clearcut logging plans by corporations who were following government policy in majestic old-growth forests.

There had been sporadic protests from Haida Gwaii to Meares Island involving First Nations activists and environmentalists, but they were considered a radical fringe by government and routinely dismissed by media as nutty extremists, “tree huggers” and flakes.

However, at Clayoquot Sound, the protest went big and it went mainstream. People came from all over the country and beyond. Teachers, artists, musicians, university students and their professors, working folk, soccer moms, dentists, doctors and First Nations elders descended on the West Coast to put a stop to clearcutting by blockading a road.

What followed was the largest mass arrest for civil disobedience in the province’s history.

Twenty years on, perhaps it’s worth remembering what launched the protests — and what the protests launched.

For one thing, they represented a new approach to public protest over environmental issues.

Five months earlier, a couple of Tofino-based activists, Garth Lenz and Valerie Langer, took the principle of thinking globally while acting locally to heart. They got on a plane and flew to Europe to persuade international organizations in Britain, Germany, Austria and other countries that protecting at least a remnant of B.C.’s ancient rainforest was important.

And they next took their campaign into the marketplace itself, urging organizations to pressure major buyers to cancel contracts with B.C. suppliers of paper and paper products on moral grounds.

As history shows, it was a stroke of strategic genius. Major environmental organizations like Greenpeace International came on board. The Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council and its high profile spokesman Bobby Kennedy Jr. took up the cause. The Australian rock band Midnight Oil flew in to put on a concert for the protesters.

Langer and other campaigners adroitly got the campaign branded the “War in the Woods,” polarizing debate into those who favoured mowing down the forests for industry and those who wanted to save an ecosystem from corporate greed.

Whether one agrees with this perception or not — and many in resource communities didn’t — it proved a defining wedge issue that made it easy for people to choose sides.

Eventually, the NDP government struck a special science panel to address the environmental concerns in Clayoquot Sound and, in 1995, all of its unanimous recommendations for resource and ecosystem management were adopted by the province.

Five years later, the entire Clayoquot Sound was designated as a global biosphere reserve by UNESCO.

But the tremors from the Clayoquot protests and the campaigns that emerged from them continue to shape our political landscape.

Fallout from the Clayoquot campaign continues to conflict the provincial NDP, which in 1993 had to choose between its blue-collar labour union roots and a new generation of young people concerned about green issues. The resulting rupture and subsequent migration of the disaffected to the Green party continues to plague it today.

Many of those who went to Clayoquot Sound as teenagers or students are now at the forefront of campaigns that seek to shape environmental policy on Alberta’ oilsands, pipelines across B.C., Canada and the U.S., tanker traffic, fish farms, mining ventures and protection for the boreal forest.

The market campaign strategies formulated to pressure government and business with respect to old-growth forests in Clayoquot Sound led to the campaign to protect the so-called “Great Bear Rainforest” on B.C.’s mid-coast, another example of shrewd branding.

The commercial salmon farming industry was forced to treat environmental concerns seriously when market campaigns were launched in the U.S. differentiating wild from farmed product.

And today there’s a pantheon of environmental organizations that are household names — Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, Dogwood Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council, Living Oceans Society, Friends of Clayoquot Sound — which employ similar market-based campaigns from Brazil to the United Kingdom over everything from biofuels to logging of tropical hardwoods.

Among the individuals who emerged from the Clayoquot protests to take leading roles in helping shape and influence environmental policy at the international, national and provincial level:

• Tzeporah Berman, one of those arrested and jailed in 1993, went on to an international role with Greenpeace. She helped found ForestEthics and, in 2009, was appointed by B.C.’s premier to the Green Energy Task Force and granted an honorary doctorate from UBC this spring.

• Ken Wu, leads the Ancient Forest Alliance in seeking protection for B.C.’s biggest, oldest and most significant forests, an end to raw log exports in order to guarantee supply for B.C. mills and a re-tooling of those mills to shift their resource base from old growth to second growth.

• Chris Genovali is executive-director of Raincoast Conservation Foundation, which enables scientific research that supports conservation and protection of waters, wildlife and lands in coastal B.C. Its campaigns include ending the trophy hunting of grizzly bears, mapping marine bird distribution and abundance and protecting resident killer whales.

• And, of course, Langer, who’s now with the Canadian arm of ForestEthics, ForestEthics Solutions and still campaigns tirelessly to protect the boreal forest and the mid-coast rainforest and Lenz, who’s had a distinguished career as a wildlife and conservation photographer with an international reputation.

Agree with them or not, the graduates of Clayoquot Sound care about the world they live in. They were prepared to fight for it then — and they are still fighting now — and that has made Canada a better place.

Avatar Grove: the Extraordinary and the Ordinary

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A scant 10 minute walk off a logging road near the BC’s West Coast town of Port Renfrew is Avatar Grove, a stand of old cedars so majestic, powerful and gnarled that T. F. Watt said he and his colleagues from the Ancient Forest Alliance “were running around like kids in a candy story” when they found it in 2009. (Globe & Mail, July 23/11).

Watt, along with the co-founder of the Ancient Forest Alliance, Ken Wu, had been searching for just such an iconic stand of trees, one that would dramatize and catalyze enough awareness of old-growth forests to prevent further logging of the tiny remnant that still exists on southern Vancouver Island. Avatar Grove, as this stand was named, just might accomplish such an ambitious feat. Indeed, the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce, the BC Ministry of Forests and the company that had the right to log Avatar Grove, Teal Cedar Products Ltd, all concurred that the stand was so sensational that it should be protected.

But it nearly wasn’t. Watt and Wu found a cluster of 20 huge stumps nearby that had been logged the year before. These 900 yearold cedars may have been even more spectacular than the standing trees that were saved. “This would have surpassed Avatar Grove in grandeur – had we found it in time,” said Wu. And shortly after Watt found Avatar Grove, timber cruisers surveyed it for logging, hanging the ominous ribbons of plastic tape that marked a cutting boundary. After 1,000 years of growing, Avatar Grove came within a hair’s breadth of the chainsaw’s bite.

Given the awesome character of Avatar Grove, who cut down the neighbouring trees? What were the fallers thinking as the teeth of their chainsaws bit into millennium-old wood? What thoughts were passing through the minds of the timber cruisers who flagged Avatar Grove for a similar fate? Are “pieces of silver” so numbing of perception and so corrupting of judgment that people simply do not notice or recognize the miraculous when it is manifest? In another time under different circumstances the only appropriate answer to these questions would have been, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Because the trees in Avatar Grove awaken in us the sense of sacred that we do not usually possess, the work of environmentalists such as T.J. Watt and Ken Wu should qualify them as modern-day saints – a status they would probably reject. With their seeing and their conviction, with their dedication and passion, they open the eyes of the blind, bringing illuminating light into a place of dull darkness. They reveal the evident, proclaim the unmistakable, connect us to a wondrous obvious of which we were previously ignorant. What else explains why some trees are felled and others are saved? Whether or not a crucifixion occurs merely depends on the difference between recognizing or not recognizing, between awareness and unawareness.

Show people and they will see. The tourists who now flock to gaze at the massive trees of Avatar Grove are not so much tourists as pilgrims coming to enter the awe of something bigger and older than themselves, something that communes with the slow passage of eon and transcends the limits of self. These pilgrims are doing the same when they flock to such revered places as Banff, Jasper, the wild trails of Strathcona, or to any seashore, lake, mountain, river, valley or forest. Something primal and timeless lures them out of themselves and connects them to a mystery that is greater than anything they can possess, control or understand.

Saints awaken us to such awareness. They make pilgrims of us all. They show us the extraordinary so we will find it in the ordinary. If we are perceptive enough, we can learn to find the miraculous in any tree, any fish, any frog or any blade of grass. The ordinary is no less amazing than the extraordinary. If we are attentive enough, if we are open and receptive enough, every part of nature becomes a wonder that will reduce the greatest of our explanations to an awestruck silence.

No one can understand the utter magic pervading any of the living things that surround us. They are profound because they give context, companionship and meaning to our very existence – the outside of us that enters the inside of us through the miracle of awareness. Then a special stand of trees may infuse us with a moment by-moment sense of magic.

But a pilgrimage does not have to be a physical journey to Avatar Grove. Every time we watch a nature documentary we are paying vicarious homage to the life forces that permeate our planet. Such programs amaze us with the living vigour of reefs, tundra, grasslands, plains, jungles, and all the plants and creatures than enliven them with incredible and diverse vitality – a living planet that we are despoiling and diminishing with an astonishingly blind enthusiasm.

As the Canadian media guru, Marshall McLuhan, so wisely noted, we move through the present looking through a rear-view mirror at what is behind us – we don’t see what is, we only see what is past, where we have been and what we are losing. This principle applies with profound irony when we consider our current fascination with all the myriad wonders of nature that we revere through documentaries and pilgrimages. Just as we are celebrating and learning of nature’s incredible complexity and intricacy, our industrial exploitation is destroying them with alarming zeal.

This is why Avatar Grove is so important, why Watt and Wu were so invigorated by hope. This small stand of glorious trees is a signal, an icon, a symbol, a sign of what remains that we must not lose. It is a warning announcing that innumerable treasures are slipping into an irretrievable past. But Avatar Grove is also a promise and an awakening, if we can understand its deeper meaning. By honouring the extraordinary, perhaps we can learn to protect the ordinary.

Re-printed in the Island Courier:  https://www.courierislander.com/news/avatar-grove-the-extraordinary-and-the-ordinary-1.133466

Master stylist

Salon cuts hair in support of endangered forests

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Time for a haircut?

If you can stave it off until Sunday (Aug. 4), you can get a cut from noted Vancouver master stylist Champ Waterhouse at the Spirit of the Sea Festival – and help protect endangered old-growth forests in B.C. in the bargain.

‘Haircuts – Not Clearcuts’ will be the theme of a special booth on White Rock’s East Beach; the latest event organized by Crescent Beach’s arts, environment and community-friendly Seventh Heaven Bio Salon.

Owner Chloe Scarf said it’s a chance to make an environmental statement and be introduced to the the latest member of her team, the cowboy-hat-wearing, six-shooter blow-dryer-wielding Waterhouse.

Half the proceeds of the regularly-priced cuts will be donated to the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA), an environmental non-profit working not only to protect old-growth forests but to ensure sustainable forestry in the province.

Scarf said it will the salon’s second consecutive year participating in the festival’s celebratory atmosphere, while also helping people learn something about protecting old-growth forests. The AFA’s Hannah Carpendale will also be on site to hand out information and answer questions, she added.

Extra entertainment value will be added by Waterhouse’s sense of style and fun, she said.

“Champ’s a really, really skilled haircutter,” she commented, noting that he joined forces with Seventh Heaven about a month ago, a serendipitous alignment that coincided with Waterhouse’s desire for a change of pace following years of working at high-end Vancouver salons.

“We worked together for years on Commercial Drive,” she said. “It’s very hard to find his calibre of stylist.”

Scarf said the pseudo-cowboy outfit was Waterhouse’s own idea, shortly after he came on board at Seventh Heaven.

“Don’t ask me where he got the 1800s pistol blow dryer from,” she said, laughing. “He’s a true creative and a technician – and he’s really a character.”

“I’m totally excited about Haircuts Not Clearcuts,” Waterhouse said. “I’ve done lots of things like this in the past for different causes.”

He said he has been enjoying getting to know the White Rock and South Surrey clientele over the last month.

“It’s totally different from working in Vancouver – much more laid back,” he said.

Although ‘Haircuts Not Clearcuts’ makes an eye-catching hook, Carpendale said the organization is about more than fighting clearcuts in endangered old-growth forests, such as those on Vancouver Island, in the southwest mainland and in the southern interior.

“There is so little old-growth left at this point in some areas that any commercial practice of logging endangered old-growth (whether clearcut or other) will have a huge ecological impact…protecting (the forests) could also include restrictions on other logging practices than just clearcuts,” she said.

The organization is also working to ensure that second-growth forests are logged at a sustainable rate, she said.

Read more: https://www.peacearchnews.com/community/salon-cuts-hair-in-support-of-endangered-forests/

 

Cougar den may have been lost to logging, Port Alberni man says

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An avid, amateur cougar enthusiast in Port Alberni fears that logging on the Alberni Hump has destroyed a cougar den used by generations of the big cats.

“Island Timberlands has built a road right up to it, and there’s flagging tape right at the entrance,” said Ray McLellan, who has tracked and watched cougars at the small cave since he was growing up in Port Alberni in the 1970s.

“Now the last little section on top of the hump has been logged. They could have left a nice buffer around it,” said McLellan, whose father was a cougar hunter.

The area was logged last summer, but McLellan hoped the cougars would return to their traditional safe cave — a cut in the rocks that goes back six metres and is about 45 centimetres high.

However, there has been no sign of them, McLellan said. Before the logging started, he had bought a trail camera that he planned to hang in front of the den.

“They won’t put up with this amount of disturbance. They need peace and quiet,” McLellan said.

“These animals would usually take refuge in the Cameron River canyon, but that has been clearcut too. These cougars are now displaced,” he said.

One fear is that the animals could cut along Roger Creek and Dry Creek Park and head into Port Alberni, he said.

“And bad things happen when they hang around town too much.”

Island Timberlands spokeswoman Morgan Kennah said the company was not aware that there was a cougar den in the area.

“If a noticeable den was discovered in timber at any stage of our planning, we would map the location and plan activities around the area accordingly,” she said.

“We have a bear den identified in this area which was protected with adjacent tree retention.”

Usually cougars den in escarpments and rock bluffs that are not conducive to harvesting trees, Kennah said,

No more logging is planned around the Alberni Hump for now, she said.

“Our near-term harvest plans in this area were complete this past winter.”

A Forests Ministry spokesman said Island Timberlands has to abide by the Private Managed Forest Land Act and protect critical wildlife habitat, but cougars are not considered a species at risk.

The provincial government estimates, from a 2010 survey, that there are between 400 and 600 cougars on Vancouver Island and the population is on the upswing.

The cougar population estimate provincewide is between 5,100 and 7,000 animals.

McLellan said it is likely the den had been used by cougars for hundreds of years.

“There have been five generations of animals since I found it in the mid-’70s,” he said.

“When one lot disappears, their place is almost invariably taken by a big male, and that tells me it is prime habitat,” he said.

Read more: https://www.timescolonist.com/cougar-den-may-have-been-lost-to-logging-port-alberni-man-says-1.565546

Province has until Thursday to buy Quadra Island park land with community-raised funds

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Years of planning and fundraising for a new Quadra Island provincial park could be lost Thursday if the B.C. government fails to hit a deadline to purchase the private land.

The government has until 3 p.m. Thursday to submit a bid to buy 395 hectares of waterfront property for sale by forest company Merrill & Ring, based in Washington state.

Quadra Island’s roughly 3,000 full-time residents have led a charge to raise more than $200,000, to try to push the province into action to save the property from logging or development.

The pristine land links Octopus Islands and Small Inlet provincial parks on the north end of Quadra Island, east of Campbell River. It’s a popular location for eco-tourism and has been targeted for a park for more than 16 years.

The government entered into a conditional agreement with Merrill & Ring in 2012, which involved $6.15 million in cash and land transfers. But after a series of missed deadlines, the forest company said it has moved on to numerous other bidders.

“We’ve had good negotiations and conversations with the government,” said Norm Schaaf, vice-president of Merrill & Ring’s Timberlands branch.

“It was disappointing that we were unable to reach the completion of this deal, after several years of working on it and feeling we were pretty close. We were all disappointed, government and us. We don’t hold any ill feelings, that way. It’s just one of those things.”

It’s still possible the province could step in with a bid before Thursday, Schaaf said. After that, the forest company will work on completing purchase and sale agreements with another bidder, he said

Environment Minister Mary Polak said that despite delays, the government is “absolutely committed to doing it.”

The province needs to find roughly $2 million to afford the purchase, Polak said.

“We don’t want to see the opportunity slip through our fingers,” she said.

“To be able to make that connection between the two existing parks would be fantastic. But at the end of the day, these things still cost money, and we need to find ways to do that.

“There aren’t any ministries walking around with $2 million to spare.”

Polak admitted it’s unlikely the government will meet Thursday’s deadline.

“Not all hope is lost because the deadline passes,” she said. The province is “exploring other means” to close the deal, and Polak said she’s been inspired by the “amazing” fundraising efforts of the community.

Local residents and politicians remain worried the land could be sold to someone else.

“We’ve been keeping our fingers crossed for months and months,” said Susan Westren, of the Quadra Island Conservancy and Stewardship Society, which has spearheaded the Save the Heart of Quadra Parks fundraising campaign.

The Strathcona Regional District, which has pledged an additional $100,000 toward the park purchase, wrote Merrill & Ring to ask for an extension.

“It’s getting kind of panicky,” said Jim Abram, the Quadra Island regional director.

“I think it’d be kind of silly for Merrill & Ring to throw the deal out at this point. We’re very close.”

North Island NDP MLA Claire Trevena said the government should restore its annual parks acquisition budget, so it could accommodate purchases like this in the future.

Trevena said she’s hopeful the government can work out a deal.

“There’s been so much work, for so long, it would be extraordinarily sad for the community and the province if we lost it.”

Read more:  https://www.timescolonist.com/province-has-until-thursday-to-buy-quadra-island-park-land-with-community-raised-funds-1.565557


 

AFA's photographer TJ Watt takes a shot of "Canada's Gnarliest Tree" in the Upper Avatar Grove

Avatar Grove: Seeing the forest for the ancient trees

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From the logging road just outside Port Renfrew, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, there is no obvious sign that you are in the presence of megaflora.

But a small sign announcing the Avatar Grove trailhead and a few vehicles pulled over onto the dusty margin of the road make it clear this is the place to encounter ancient life.

The forest, with its thousand different shades of green, doesn’t look any different from others anywhere else on the West Coast – except for the grey spires you can see poking above the canopy. These are what are known as candelabra tops and they signify the presence of really old cedars.

It was those weathered tips that caught the attention of T.J. Watt, a member of the Ancient Forest Alliance, a few years ago as he was ending a search for old trees. He had been crisscrossing Vancouver Island without much luck – and didn’t expect to find it so close to a logging town.

“I didn’t think there could possibly be big trees that close to Port Renfrew,” he recalled.

But he pulled over to explore anyway, stopping pretty much in the same place that thousands of tourists now do. He didn’t go far off the road before he was forced to a halt, tilt back his head and say: “Wow.”

Along the Gordon River, in moist, hilly terrain, is a cluster of giant old fir and cedar trees that somehow escaped the woodsman’s axe during the past century of logging.

Shortly after that discovery, Mr. Watt and Ken Wu, the director of the Ancient Forest Alliance, started a campaign to save the trees, branding it Avatar Grove after the James Cameron science fiction movie, Avatar, that was then drawing huge crowds and which features a massive “Hometree” on the planet Pandora.

After a brief, intense campaign the environmental activists persuaded the provincial government to set the area aside from logging – and not long after that the first tree tourists started to arrive.

Mr. Wu said so many people have come that his group, together with the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce, has now started to build a boardwalk system to protect the tree roots and make hiking around the trees easier.

“There’s a steady stream of tourists going in there,” said a delighted Mr. Wu recently. “Actually a lot of them are coming from around the world now … It’s become the second Cathedral Grove of British Columbia,” he said.

Cathedral Grove, on the road to Port Alberni, was made into a park in 1944, at a time when there were still substantial amounts of old-growth forest left on the island.

By the time Mr. Watt laid eyes on Avatar Grove, about 90 per cent of Vancouver Island’s old growth had been logged.

Mr. Wu said he’s not surprised the increasingly rare old-growth trees have become a major tourist attraction for Port Renfrew.

“There’s so little of this lowland, monumental forest left,” said Mr. Wu. “Luckily, as a result of massive public pressure, this area was saved. It’s one of the finest groves of old growth in B.C. … and it is generating hundreds of thousands of dollars for the local economy each year.”

Jon Cash, a director of Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce and owner of Soule Creek Lodge, said the economic impact of the trees isn’t something environmentalists have dreamed up.

“It’s definitely boosted tourism,” he said. “There’s been thousands and thousands of people going there.”

Mr. Cash said Port Renfrew is a tough town to market because it is a long way off the beaten tourism path that runs through Victoria.

But he said word of Avatar Grove has spread around the world.

“I’ve probably realized tens of thousands of dollars of overnight stays just from people coming up to see the trees,” he said.

A rough trail winds through the grove and although it is a short walk, it probably should be rated as an “intermediate” rather than an easy hike.

But it’s worth it – if you want to be in a grove of trees that was standing there long before Captain Cook sailed along what is now the coast of B.C.

Globe and Mail online article: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/avatar-grove-seeing-the-forest-for-the-ancient-trees/article13214516/

Activists decry planned logging of old-growth forest on Vancouver Island

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A Vancouver Island company is preparing to log a chunk of old-growth forest near Port Alberni that was once protected as winter range for deer, according to conservation groups.

Island Timberlands, based in Nanaimo, recently began building a road into the area and is moving “full-throttle” to log the site, says the Victoria-based Ancient Forest Alliance.

The contested area, covering about 20 hectares, is about a one-hour drive from Port Alberni in an area some conservationists refer to as Juniper Ridge.

“It’s not a big deal except when you’re talking about the last of that type of area,” Jane Morden, a spokeswoman for Watershed Forest Alliance, said Monday. The two groups are working together on conservation issues.

The area contains Douglas Fir, lichen-covered outcrops and juniper shrubs growing on thin soils that would take centuries to recover after logging. It is part of a group of sites that had previously been protected as a winter feeding range for species including deer and elk, Ms. Morden said.

Representatives from Island Timberlands did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Headquartered in Nanaimo, the privately held company controls about 254,000 hectares of forest lands, making it one of the major players in the industry on Vancouver Island.

The area now in question is part of a bigger patchwork of lands – about 2,400 hectares – that were protected as wildlife range until the province removed a total of 74,000 hectares from Tree Farm Licence 44 in 2004, Ms. Morden said.

A TFL is one way the B.C. government grants forestry operators rights to harvest timber on Crown land. Removing land from a TFL makes it subject to less onerous regulations and can free it up for sale or development.

A follow-up deal between the government and the former licence holder was supposed to extend protection for the 2,400 hectares that had been previously set aside but that agreement did not come about, Ms. Morden said. Since 2004, about 1,500 of the 2,400 protected hectares have been logged.

Conservation groups now want the government to buy or protect the 2,400 hectares, which are among lands now operated by Island Timberlands.

“The government removed the environmental protections on these lands – now they need to protect them,” Ms. Morden said.

In an e-mail, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Forests said the province has “no plans to buy these private lands.”
Wildlife management plans are part of certification standards implemented by Island Timberlands, the spokeswoman said, adding that there are about 10,000 hectares designated as winter feeding ranges on public forest land on southern Vancouver Island.

Watershed Forest Alliance and other conservation groups have proposed a $40-million-a-year, 10-year Parks Acquisition Fund, saying such a fund is needed to buy old-growth forests and other lands that are at risk of logging or development.

Read more:  https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/activists-decry-planned-logging-of-old-growth-forest-on-vancouver-island/article13083813/
 

Island Timberlands to log contentious old-growth forests on Vancouver Island

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Island Timberlands is moving to log some of their most contentious old-growth forest lands near Port Alberni, including “Juniper Ridge”, a formerly protected Ungulate Winter Range, and Labour Day Lake, the headwaters of Cathedral Grove’s Cameron River.

Juniper Ridge is an increasingly rare tract of old-growth forest filled with endangered old-growth Douglas-fir trees, sensitive ecosystems of brittle reindeer lichens growing on open rocky outcrops, and an abundance of juniper shrubs. The roughly 20-hectare area is a one hour drive from the town of Port Alberni and is located between Ash and Turnbull Lakes.

“The old-growth forest and lichen-covered rocky outcrops on Juniper Ridge are endangered and sensitive ecosystems largely growing on extremely thin soils. It would take many centuries for the old-growth forest to fully recover here after logging. Unfortunately, with the trend of harvesting smaller sized trees with shorter logging rotations, these old growth Douglas- fir ecosystems will never have the chance to return,” Watershed-Forest Alliance coordinator Jane Morden said in a news release.

“This forest is heavily used by wintering deer, and was intended to be preserved for this purpose. This area is also a popular recreation destination for locals and tourists going hiking, fishing and boating.”
The Watershed-Forest Alliance, with support from Alberni-Pacific Rim MLA Scott Fraser, has reportedly met with and have asked Island Timberlands to stay out of all previously designated Ungulate Winter Range and Wildlife Habitat Areas.

The land was largely deregulated in 2004 due to its removal from Tree Farm Licence (TFL) 44. A subsequent agreement between the former licencee and the BC government was supposed to have resulted in the continued protection of these lands, but has not been pursued. Instead the company has chosen to simply log these high conservation value forests. Of the original 2400 hectares of designated lands, only about 900 hectares remain unlogged which amounts to just over 1 per cent of the total 74,000 hectares removed from TFL 44.

Recent logging that began in early June also threatens the old-growth subalpine forests at Labour Day Lake, but a popular recreation destination not far from Port Alberni.

The Ancient Forest Alliance has called on the provincial government to establish a BC Park Acquisition Fund of at least $40 million per year, raising $400 million over 10 years, to purchase old-growth forests and other endangered ecosystems on private lands across the province, such as Juniper Ridge and Labour Day Lake.

The fund would be similar to the park acquisition funds of various regional districts in BC which are augmented by the fundraising efforts of private citizens and land trusts.
Island Timberlands also plans or has been logging numerous other contentious forests, including:

  • The south side of Mt. Horne on the mountain above the world-famous Cathedral Grove
  • McLaughlin Ridge, a prime old-growth deer winter range and important habitat for the endangered Queen Charlotte Goshawk. With trees similar in size to Cathedral grove, McLaughlin Ridge helps to protect the China Creek Watershed which is the source of drinking water for the city of Port Alberni.
  • Cameron Valley Firebreak, a rare valley bottom-to-mountain top old-growth forest that the company has already logged large swaths of.
  • The west side of Father and Son Lake, a popular fishing area for local Port Alberni residents.
  • Pearl Lake, near Strathcona Provincial Park.
  • Stillwater Bluffs near Powell River.
  • Day Road Forest near Roberts Creek.
  • Old-growth and mature forests on Cortes Island.

Read more:  https://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/island-timberlands-log-contentious-old-growth-forests-vancouver-island

San Juan Sitka Spruce

Saving the biggest, oldest trees

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The scene was primordial. We were following a rickety moss-covered boardwalk through a rain forest of immense trees and wild growth.

Moss and fungi clung to fallen trees and logs. Huckleberry and thimbleberry bushes sprouted. Delicate sword ferns carpeted the forest floor. Moss hung from branches like beards. I half expected a Jurassic Park velociraptor to charge through the undergrowth.

“We're almost there,” said TJ Watt, 28, who calls himself a big-tree hunter. A photographer and founding member of the Ancient Forest Alliance, he has discovered many of the largest old-growth trees in southern Vancouver Island and works hard to protect them. Nimble and slim, he recently cut his dreadlocks and looks like a young executive

Suddenly, he stepped off the trail into a thicket of large skunk cabbages and pointed at the muddy ground. “Look, a cougar track.”

After photographing the paw print, we climbed over and ducked under large fallen trees along which plant life proliferated: moss, new trees sprouting, shelf fungi. Rays of sunlight angled through the high canopy. We stepped carefully over black-bear scat that lay on the trail like a blob of black porridge.

After an hour, Watt pointed to an immense red cedar, more than five metres (16 feet) across at its base. This was the Castle Giant, about a thousand years old and one of the largest trees in Canada. The behemoth has a weathered look and perhaps it should. It was already ancient when Columbus first set sail. Way up, immense spires branched out. We had walked past a lot of big cedars, but nothing like this one. It was a spiritual moment.

Logging threatens these giants

We crashed into the undergrowth where orange tapes were attached to trees. “These were placed by a timber company that plans to log here,” explained Watt. “This is the finest grove of old-growth cedars in the country. It must not be logged.” Only the rat-a-tat of a pileated woodpecker responded. Under the immense shadow of the Giant, I could not imagine wanting to cut it down.

We returned to Watt's four-wheel-drive van and bumped along a maze of washboard logging roads toward Port Renfrew, a cloud of dust following behind. The scenery, a rolling landscape with a continuous patchwork of scarred clearcuts, is a complete contrast to Castle Grove. The devastation is amazing. Even steep hillsides are razed. Huge piles of wood debris litter the sides of the roads. Numerous quarries, which provide the rocks and gravel for access roads, scar the countryside. In the glorious sunshine, it made me think of the devastation of World War I trench warfare. And it stretched on and on.

Port Renfrew courts “Tall Tree” tourists

In town, I spoke with Jon Cash, the former president of the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce and co-proprietor of Soule Creek Lodge. He explained that for about a century Port Renfrew was a lumber town, but when the main company in the area moved its centre of operations to Lake Cowichan in 1990 it caused economic difficulties. “We had to re-invent ourselves,” said Cash. “We've recently started promoting tall tree tourism, and it's working.”

Port Renfrew, known as the “Big Tree Capital of Canada,” is well positioned since many of the nation's largest trees are found in the area. But it's not easy, for the lumber industry covets old-growth trees, which are far more valuable than second-growth trees, and is quietly cutting down as many as possible.

Avatar Grove, the marquee tourist? attraction

TJ Watt discovered the Grove, near Port Renfrew, in 2009. In 2011, after a fight in which the Ancient Forest Alliance played a key role, the provincial government declared the 59-hectare (146-acre) area off limits to logging.

I hiked in alone, clambering over roots, logs and rich undergrowth as I followed orange tape tied to branches. Boardwalks and trails will be constructed here over the next year. An old stump, over a metre across, was festooned with dozens of neon-bright orange bracket fungi, as though it was a garish Christmas decoration.

Hiking higher and deeper into the Grove I reached a large red cedar with a distinctive knobby appearance due to the growth of large burls all around it about ten feet up. It's known as Canada's Gnarliest Tree.

I scrambled up and perched on a burl with my back against the old matriarch. Surrounded by tall trees soaring heavenward, it felt like I was in a cathedral. Trees like this are national treasures, I thought.

Poachers, sneak thieves, steal these huge trees

As I drove back to town, my mind turned to an incident that captured the media spotlight and illustrated both the dollar-value of the old trees and the difficulty of protecting them.

An 800-year-old cedar was stolen by a gang of tree poachers. The crime took place in Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park about 25 kilometres northwest of Port Renfrew.

The tree was secretly cut most of the way through in 2011 but left standing for unknown reasons. In June 2012, the parks service, worried that the tree might topple in a high wind, had it felled. Subsequently, poachers — presumably the same gang that had cut it in 2011 — carved up the fallen tree and removed most of it. The theft was possible only because of the remote location. Best guess is that the cedar was used for shakes, roof shingles, and netted the perpetrators as much as $15,000. The authorities have no suspects.

Torrance Coste of the Wilderness Committee was instrumental in breaking the tree-poaching story to the press, where it went viral. “This incident is deplorable,” he said. “British Columbia parks should be examples to the world. We need to expand parks and provide more protection to old growth habitat.” Locals told me that poaching is common and almost always goes unreported.

The old trees are worth thousands of dollars

Logging firms want the mammoth trees, and their appetite is immense. Ancient trees have fine straight grain and can yield larger timbers than smaller trees. As a result, logging companies are relentlessly transforming old forests into young, second-growth forests. According to the Ancient Forest Alliance, more than 90 percent of old-growth forests in southern Vancouver Island's valley bottoms, where the biggest trees are, have been logged.

“Come,” said Watt climbing into his van, “there's something you need to see.” We bumped along a labyrinth of logging roads, stopping at the largest stump I have ever seen, about 14 metres (45 feet) in circumference. Watt told me the cedar, over 1,000 years old, had been cut recently. The surrounding clear-cut contained many other enormous stumps. All the trees had been felled legally. They will never be replaced.

My next destination was the San Juan Sitka Spruce, Canada's largest spruce tree, about 40 minutes northeast of Port Renfrew. En route, I saw a Roosevelt elk with enormous antlers feeding in a meadow.

My jaw dropped when I saw the old-growth giant spruce: it surpassed magnificence. Towering to 63 metres (205 feet) and with a girth of 12 metres (38 feet), it presented well, as if in dignified old age. Sword fern grew from branch crooks, and deep green moss adorned its branches. It hosted an enormous shelf fungus about a metre across and secondary growth on branches in the canopy. In spite of a sign warning Overhead Danger I placed both hands against the tree and closed my eyes.

Watt had told me that when he brought a German group here, one started to cry and another, a musician, felt a symphony playing.

These gorgeous big trees will do that to you.

Article:  https://www.westmagazine.ca/spring2013/home/savingTrees