News Coverage

November 27, 2022
The Canadian Press
By Brenna Owen

British Columbia has asked First Nations if they want old-growth forests set aside from logging, allowing time for long-term planning of conservation and sustainable development, but it has yet to fund the process on a large scale, advocates say.

In the meantime, some of the biggest and oldest trees are being cut down.

Several years before the BC government launched the process last November to defer logging in old-growth forests at risk of permanent biodiversity loss, Ahousaht First Nation was developing the land-use vision for its territory on Vancouver Island.

It was with careful analysis that Ahousaht decided how to balance environmental and economic outcomes, said Tyson Atleo, a hereditary leader of the nation whose territory spans Clayoquot Sound, a globally recognized biosphere reserve.

Ahousaht has largely done the work without major public funding, he said. Instead, the nation has secured grants and support from organizations including Nature United, the charity where Atleo works as natural climate solutions program director.

“This is long and hard work that is a part of nation building,” Atleo said.

“You need to have a vision, and in order to have a vision, you need to have the resources, and in order to implement the vision you need to have partnerships with Crown governments, likely corporations, as well as supporting (non-governmental) partners, and you need to have a vision for your economic future,” he said.

The neighbouring Hesquiaht and Tla-o-qui-aht nations were working on similar plans in the fall of 2020, when the BC government issued an order to defer logging across more than 170,000 hectares of old-growth forests around Clayoquot Sound, while it works with the nations to establish permanently protected areas.

Ahousaht was in favour of deferral because the nation believes “very strongly (in) preservation of old-growth systems … not just for the potential economic benefits of protection, but for the ecological and cultural benefits,” Atleo added.

A year ago, BC announced that an expert panel had mapped 2.6 million hectares of old-growth forests identified as “rare, at-risk, and irreplaceable.”

At the same time, the province asked 204 First Nations to decide whether they supported the deferral of logging in those areas for an initial two-year period, allowing time for the province to develop “a new approach to sustainable forest management that prioritizes ecosystem health and community resiliency.”

However, it has yet to announce significant funding to support the complex process for nations to consider how to preserve old growth while developing alternative sources of revenue and economic opportunities aligned with stewardship goals.

Conservation comes with economic costs, said Atleo, especially in communities that depend on forestry revenues. It must be paired with some kind of compensation or support for sustainable economic diversification, he said.

“The philanthropic community is stepping up and offering a stewardship endowment in the case of (Clayoquot Sound) because of the high biological diversity in the region, but it’s a model that we should be looking at publicly,” he said.

“The government might not have a long-term vision, which for me means there’s space for nations to step up and define what that vision might be,” he added.

In its most recent public update on deferral areas provided nearly eight months ago, the Forests Ministry said the province had received responses from 75 First Nations in support of deferrals across 1.05 million hectares of at-risk forests, while 60 had requested more time and seven had indicated they didn’t support the plan.

In response to a request for the total area set aside in the first year of the deferral process, the ministry said it’s working toward an update in the near future.

Unless a First Nation expresses support for deferrals in its territory, the areas remain open to potential logging and applications for new logging permits.

About 9,300 hectares of the proposed deferrals — an area 23 times the size of Vancouver’s Stanley Park — have been logged over the last year, the ministry said.

The deferral areas contain some of the largest and most ecologically important old-growth forests left in BC, said TJ Watt, a photographer whose images of ancient trees before and after logging first captured global attention in 2020.

Watt’s photos from the Caycuse watershed on southwestern Vancouver Island show massive trees, then their stumps after they were cut. Some were logged a few months before they were identified as part of the deferral process, he said.

About 15,000 hectares of the proposed deferral areas had already been logged in the year leading up to the announcement last November, the Forests Ministry said.

Another area in the Caycuse was logged a couple of months after the start of the deferral process, said Watt,who uses GPS, geo-tagging on his photos, publicly available data and satellite images to confirm the location and status of cut blocks.

The province’s publicly available mapping shows cut blocks overlapping with proposed old-growth deferral areas in the Caycuse and other areas across BC.

The Caycuse watershed is located in Ditidaht First Nation territory.

Reached by phone, Ditidaht Chief Councillor Brian Tate said he had a full schedule and couldn’t comment on old-growth logging in the nation’s territory.

Teal-Jones, the forestry company that holds the rights for cut blocks in the Caycuse watershed, said in a statement it is not harvesting in areas that have been deferred.

Watt said he feels BC is putting First Nations in an unfair position by asking them to choose between generating forestry revenue and pausing logging without compensation or support for sustainable economic and ecological development.

Conservation financing is the key element that enabled the large-scale protection of old-growth forests in the Great Bear Rainforest, said Watt, a National Geographic explorer whose work was funded by the Royal Canadian Geographic Society.

It could mean developing eco-tourism or sustainable fisheries, or expanding Indigenous Guardian programs, which support a variety of land-based jobs.

“None of this can happen for free,” Watt said.

“It takes some leadership from the province to say, ‘We’ve taken from you for more than a century, now we’re asking you to protect these forests because it’s an ecological emergency, here is how we’re going to help make thatpossible’,” said Watt, who works with the Ancient Forest Alliance, a BC-based advocacy group.

In an email, the Forests Ministry said BC is currently working to establish a new conservation financing mechanism to support permanent old-growth protection.

The BC government began sharing forestry revenues with First Nations in the early 2000s. Last spring, it more than doubled the amount it shares with eligible nations, leading to an estimated increase of $63 million this year, the ministry said.

In response to a series of questions, the ministry said the increase would “more than offset” any short-term revenue impacts arising from old-growth deferrals.

The province has not received any direct requests from First Nations for compensation as a condition for supporting the temporary deferrals, it said.

BC provided just shy of $12.7 million over three years to support First Nations through the deferral process, amounting to about $20,000 per year for each nation.

At the time, Grand Chief Steward Phillip with the BC Union of Indian Chiefs called that funding “totally insufficient to undertake the work.”

The province’s 2022 budget earmarked $185 million over three years to support the forest industry, its workers, and First Nations through the deferrals.

Watt noted the federal government committed up to $55.1 million over three years to establish a BC “Old Growth Nature Fund” in its budget earlier this year.

The money would be available in 2022-2023, but it’s conditional — the BC government must match the federal investment in order to establish the fund.

BC’s Ministry of Land, Water and Resource Stewardship did not answer a question about whether the province plans to match Ottawa’s pledge.

Dallas Smith, a member of Tlowitsis Nation on the east coast of Vancouver Island who helped negotiate the Great Bear Rainforest protection agreement, said the lack of funding is a gap in the deferral process, and BC has yet to communicate a clear plan to help First Nations with long-term planning.

“Even if nations wanted to protect more, (the province) didn’t have capacity to sit down and deal with all those nations and actually have a planning process,” said Smith.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 27, 2022.

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November 21, 2022
Vancouver Sun
By Rochelle Baker 

Federal government is willing to spend millions to reach its international commitments to products natural areas

Businesses are urging the BC government to capitalize on Ottawa’s offer to spend hundreds of millions to save threatened ecosystems in the run-up to the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal next month.

A total of 250 businesses are backing a resolution urging BC’s new Premier David Eby to stave off the extinction and climate crisis by backing the federal government’s 30×30 promise — to protect 30 per cent of the country’s land and waters by 2030.

Canada hopes to secure similar commitments from other global leaders at the UN conference, also known as COP15, where countries from around the world will negotiate a biodiversity framework to slow the human-caused mass extinction event that risks wiping out a million species.

Of all provinces and territories, BC is the most biodiverse, but it also has the greatest number of species at threat of extinction. As many as 278 species — including the burrowing owl, southern mountain caribou, American wolverine, and western tiger salamander — are at risk.

The businesses are partnering with the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance and Nature Canada to push for permanent protections in the most endangered areas, such as the southern Interior grasslands, the coastal Douglas fir zone on eastern Vancouver Island, and the province’s iconic coastal old-growth forests.

There’s a range of small- to medium-size companies involved, representing the tourism, hospitality and food sectors as well as marketing, tech, design and consulting firms, said Ken Wu, executive director for the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance.

Canada’s business sector and other societal groups outside the environmental movement are increasingly aware that safeguarding biodiversity is critical to protect human health and to foster a more diverse, resilient and prosperous economy, Wu said.

That understanding isn’t limited to Canada. The World Economic Forum’s 2022 Global Risks Report warns biodiversity loss is one of the top three threats facing humanity in the next decade, in tandem with climate action failure and extreme weather.

Joining forces with non-traditional allies such as businesses, unions, faith groups and non-profits has a much greater effect in securing conservation goals and the government’s ear, Wu said.

“Businesses exert a disproportionate amount of influence on all governments for the simple reason that they generate a lot of tax revenues, provide jobs and act as a foundation of the economy,” he said.

“So governments tend to listen to the business lobby a lot more attentively than they do the average environmental protester.”

British Columbia has yet to commit to Canada’s targets for protected areas.

The province reports having protected nearly 20 per cent of its land base, but the figure is the result of creative accounting — with only 15.5 per cent truly under robust protection in parks or actual nature conservation areas, Wu said, pointing to a 2022 study by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s BC chapter.

Flouting international standards for conservation designation, BC is reporting an additional four per cent of “protected” land included in old-growth management areas, wildlife habitat areas and wildland zones, CPAWS BC found.

Though the designations include some protective measures, they are not permanent and can be quietly adjusted by the government, Wu said. Most alarmingly, they often allow for industrial activity such as clearcut logging, oil and gas, and road building in at-risk ecosystems like valley bottom old-growth forests.

Another crack in the province’s conservation effort is that areas featuring some of the highest biodiversity values are underrepresented in the BC Parks system, while alpine or high-elevation areas with lower biodiversity and less competing demand from industry or development are better protected.

The province and the federal government are currently negotiating a joint Nature Agreement to strengthen conservation in the province in partnership with Indigenous peoples.

Ottawa has set aside $2.3 billion for the protection of terrestrial ecosystems across Canada, of which BC’s share could be between $200 million to $400 million — or more — if it steps up and creates new protected areas, especially those stewarded by First Nations, Wu said. The federal government has also committed $55 million specifically for protecting at-risk old-growth forests. But B.C needs to invest in biodiversity and provide matching funding, he added.

Wu hopes with COP15 around the corner and a new premier in place, the BC government will shake off its lacklustre commitment to the environment.

Eby has pledged to block new infrastructure for oil and gas and speed up protections of old-growth forests, but details are still scarce.

Governments may be wary about losing industrial revenue and jobs if they create parks or protected areas, Wu said, but studies show protected, biodiverse areas can generate sustainable local economies and jobs in the tourism, real estate, recreation and hospitality sectors.

“When you protect nature, you have a better environmental quality of life, and it attracts skilled labour to those regions,” Wu said.

Scott Sinclair, a signatory to the business resolution, agreed, saying BC’s biodiversity hot spots draw people from all over the world to live and work.

“Protecting our endangered ecosystems is a huge priority that benefits our company, our staff and our economy,” said Sinclair, CEO of SES Consulting, a firm specializing in improving buildings’ energy efficiency.

Rochelle Baker is a reporter with Canada’s National Observer

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Read Endangered Ecosystems Alliance’s media release

October 18, 2022
Victoria Buzz
By Curtis Blandy

A new series of photos has been released by the Ancient Forest Alliance to call for conservation of old-growth forests that are being affected by logging.

The series was captured between 2020 and 2022 by photographer TJ Watt near Lake Cowichan and on the Ditidaht First Nation’s land on southern Vancouver Island.

Watt’s work was funded by a grant partnership awarded by the National Geographic Society and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in order to provide Canadian explorers, scientists, photographers, geographers and educators with funding on a preservation storytelling basis.

“Capturing these before and after images is quite a difficult process–both technically and emotionally–but I’m committed to exposing the ongoing threats ancient forests face until legislated protection can be achieved for them,” said Watt.

“Only when seeing a side-by-side comparison can one truly grasp the scale of loss and devastation from old-growth logging. Once cut down, not even our great, great-grandchildren will have the chance to see a forest like that there again.”

The provincial government accepted a 2021 recommendation from an independent science panel to defer logging on 2.6 million hectares of at-risk old-growth forests in BC.

The deferrals were to be obtained pending local First Nations approval, however the land in question has not been fully secured for deferral at this time.

The Ancient Forest Alliance is calling attention to the areas included in this deferral that continue to be logged to this day.

They claim that this is due to the fact that the province has yet to provide local First Nations with the financing to enable these deferrals.

Lots of the trees photographed by Watt have been identified as ‘big tree’ old-growth groves that met the criteria for deferral.

Many were logged just months before the recommendation came into effect and some were logged before deferrals could be secured by the local First Nations and old-growth activists.

The photos taken by Watt for the Ancient Forest Alliance have been added to their online database of trees and their stumps.

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October 10, 2022
The Globe And Mail 
By Justine Hunter 

Battered by climate disasters, community at Kanaka Bar looks to protect old growth forest and restore ecosystems in a way that supports the First Nation’s self-sufficiency initiatives and sustainable economic development.

Overhanging a riverbank in the Fraser Canyon, an ancient Western redcedar shows signs of harvesting by past generations of the T’eqt’’aqtn’mux people. The gnarled tree is growing in one of the rarest and most endangered old-growth forests in British Columbia, and a newly sealed land deal has secured its protection. But for the surrounding forest, there is no certainty.

The Kanaka Bar Indian Band – also known as the T’eqt’’aqtn’mux – is proposing an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area to preserve its ancient connection to these lands, and to protect a rich pocket of biodiversity for the planet. In the southern canyon, along the Fraser River, the province’s wet coastal and dry interior zones meet, allowing an unusual variety of species to mingle.

While logging companies have cleared large swaths of old growth in the traditional territories of the T’eqt’’aqtn’mux, evidence of this First Nation’s sustainable harvesting practices is still found in living trees that did not fall to commercial logging: Researchers have confirmed that branches and bark strips have been harvested here from select cedar trees since the early 18th century, or even before then.

But the protected area plan awaits the support of Ottawa and Victoria – approval that is caught in a protracted negotiation between the two levels of government over old-growth protection.

The objective of the proposed Indigenous protected area fits into a larger aim shared by the federal government.

Canada has made international commitments to protect 30 per cent of its lands and waters by 2030, and a recent report from World Wildlife Fund Canada says Indigenous-managed conservation will be key to achieving those targets.

Montreal will host a UN conference on biodiversity later this year and heading into that event, the Justin Trudeau government will be pressed to show how it intends to almost double the country’s existing protected areas by 2025 to meet its interim targets.

British Columbia, which boasts the greatest amount of biodiversity in the country, also has interests that align with the Kanaka Bar proposal: The provincial government has pledged to suspend logging in one-third of BC’s remaining’s old-growth forests to protect irreplaceable ecosystems that are disappearing under intensive forestry – but to do that with Indigenous consent, which has been slow to garner.

The Kanaka Bar proposals would hit the sweet spot for both governments: Kanaka Bar intends to protect and restore rare ecosystems in a way that supports the First Nation’s self-sufficiency initiatives and sustainable economic development.

The community’s impetus for conservation has been shaped by commercial logging – 15 per cent of the forests in its proposed conservation area has been logged since the 1960s – mostly in the rich valley bottoms where the greatest old growth is found.

The federal and BC governments are in protracted negotiations to reach a nature agreement that would include permanent old-growth protection.

However, the two sides remain at odds over funding, and which forests would be set aside. The federal government has offered $50-million specifically for BC old growth, a figure that the province dismissed as far too little. Ottawa, meanwhile, is awaiting the matching commitment from the province.

Steven Guilbeault, the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change, toured an old-growth forest in BC on Sept. 1, using the visit as a backdrop to press the provincial government to reach an accord. “We will continue collaborating with the province to get a good deal to protect BC’s beloved nature,” he said in a statement at that time.

Patrick Michell, former chief of the Kanaka Bar Indian Band, was instrumental in launching the proposed T’eqt’aqtn Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area, and he said neither level of government has responded to the invitation to participate. But the plan will move forward anyway: “When we need to do something, we just do it,” he said in an interview.

His community has been buying up private lands when they become available, rather than waiting for the Crown to give them their land back. Their vision for climate resiliency does not include commercial logging of old growth.

“We want to keep the old growth, keep the carbon in the ground,” he said. “For us to have an economy for the next 100 years, we need to invest in something more sustainable and resilient.” Economic development is possible, but within a framework that supports Kanaka Bar’s goals. “We want to work with Canadian corporations. We want to work with the existing transportation industries. But there’s going to be a few new rules. You cannot exacerbate climate change.”

The only firm commitment to the Kanaka Bar conservation plan to date has come from a fledgling environmental non-profit, which bought a piece of private land to gift to the community.

The property known locally as Old Man Jack’s is a tiny parcel, a little more than three hectares, which was scooped up for just under $100,000. It is dwarfed by the more ambitious Kanaka Bar proposal to set aside a large chunk of the southern Fraser Canyon in the First Nation’s traditional territories, including roughly 125 square kilometres of old-growth forests. But it is a concrete start.

Old Man Jack’s property, purchased by the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation, is a showcase for the region, with its unusual mix of coastal and interior species: Ponderosa pine, Interior Douglas fir, Western redcedar, Bigleaf maple, all growing together. “This is peak biodiversity – as multicultural as you can get in a BC forest,” said Ken Wu, co-founder of the foundation, as he pointed out one of the largest Interior Douglas firs in the country.

Mr. Wu started campaigning for BC’s old-growth forests more than two decades ago. The foundation was created last year to raise money to purchase endangered ecosystems, sidestepping the conflict that has marked many campaigns against old-growth logging.

“Protests are important at times,” Mr. Wu said, “but to actually save old-growth forests, it is vital to ensure First Nations have the financial resources in order to realize their conservation visions,” he said. Many First Nations rely on forestry for revenue and jobs – and he said the provincial and federal governments need to bring substantial funding to the table to create viable alternatives.

“There’s no path to actually protect old-growth forests on the ground in British Columbia by going around First Nations communities and leadership,” Mr. Wu said.

The Fraser Canyon was at the epicentre of the twin climate disasters of 2021 in BC The main Kanaka Bar reserve is roughly 14 kilometres south of Lytton, the town destroyed by wildfire in June of 2021, and many members lost their homes in that fire. A series of atmospheric rivers in November then wiped out more homes, highways and other infrastructure, causing millions of dollars of damage to the Kanaka Bar’s run-of-the-river hydro electric facility.

For the past decade, the Kanaka Bar nation has worked on a climate adaptation plan, which has aims to create a self-sufficient community that can withstand whatever climate change brings in the next century. About 70 of the band’s 240 members live on reserve, getting their electricity from solar power. The nation has purchased provincial water rights to ensure their clean water supply. And community gardens supplement the food they obtain from their lands.

The T’eqt’aqtn Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area would help the entire Fraser Canyon’s climate resiliency, said Sean O’Rourke, the Kanaka Bar lands manager, because healthy ecosystems are the region’s best defence against natural disasters.

But it also aims to protect the T’eqt’’aqtn’mux’s archeological sites. Mr. O’Rourke pointed across the Fraser River to the remains of a stone-constructed fishing weir, disrupted by placer miners looking for gold. The rainstorms last November uncovered a petroglyph that is believed to be at least 8,000 years old. It was damaged when treasure hunters removed a piece of it with a jackhammer.

“These connections to the past and connections to the old way of life, that’s a finite thing,” Mr. O’Rourke said. “Once you damage something like that, you’re never going to get it back.”

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June 27, 2022
City News
By Monika Gul

 

One of the widest trees in Canada was found in the Lynn Valley area of North Vancouver.

The tree, nicknamed “The North Shore Giant”, was located by Colin Spratt, a Vancouver big-tree hunter, and Ian Thomas of the Ancient Forest Alliance.

Thomas said he was completely awestruck when he came across the ancient western redcedar in the Lynn Headwaters Regional Park.

“It really resonates with you, for me, at least deeply spiritually to encounter one of the these ancient beings that has survived over the centuries,” says Thomas.

“It’s sort of a deep spiritual reverence, I would say, as well as a total kind of giddy excitement to be able to be in the presence of something like this.”

Thomas said the tree is measured at 5.8 metres (19.1 feet) and they are “very confident (it is) over 1000 years old.”

He added that the measurements are tentative, and an official measurement will be done in the future.

Thomas said while the North Shore Giant is in a safe place, redcedar all over BC are in danger without protection from being cut down.

“The lion’s share of my work is really looking for these unprotected groves and working to try and protect them.”

Thomas said they are calling for the government to invest around $300 million to help ensure the safety of the trees.

“They’re incredibly important for the climate, for the ecology of the wide variety of local species, as well as for tourism and culture. And so what’s really important is that the government invests in protecting these forests.”

According to the Ancient Forest Alliance, 90% of the high productivity old-growth forests with the biggest trees and over 80% of the medium productivity old-growth forests have been logged in BC.

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