News Coverage

October 17, 2024
Ben Parfitt
The Tyee 

Original article here.

The problem isn’t red tape; it’s a lack of trees. 

Conservative Party of BC Leader John Rustad has a long association with the forest industry in British Columbia. His family ran a sawmill in Prince George and Rustad headed his own forest consulting firm.

The Conservatives say the forest industry is central to the province’s economic well-being — and many rural communities in Rustad’s own riding of Nechako Lakes.

The huge riding west of Prince George includes Houston, Burns Lake, Vanderhoof and Fort St. James, mill towns where prodigious quantities of logs have for decades been turned into lumber in local sawmills.

On its website, the Conservative party calls the province’s forest industry “the envy of the world.” The party goes on to say that that industry “is 100 per cent sustainable and renewable and supports tens of thousands of high-paying jobs across the province.”

But the industry is in trouble because it can’t get enough trees to cut down.

Rustad blames government. Access to trees to log has become “a slow, complex and costly ordeal,” Rustad states on the BC Conservative website.

Rustad has hammered on the image of an industry crippled by bureaucratic red tape for some time.

“This BC NDP government’s inability to get forestry permits done is killing well-paid union jobs and independent jobs, all across British Columbia,” Rustad said more than a year ago. “They are just not issuing permits. BC Timber Sales is not putting wood out for tenure.”

It is a criticism that has caught the NDP’s attention.

The party says it intends to bring “efficiencies to the permitting process with a goal of granting faster access to timber processing.” The NDP singles out BC Timber Sales — a timber-auctioning program administered by the provincial Ministry of Forests where, on paper at least, about 20 per cent of the trees logged annually in B.C. originate — as the potential bottleneck. The NDP says it would address that by “completing a full review of BC Timber Sales to improve access to public timber.”

The boom

To unpack this, let’s start with the assertion that the province’s forest industry is the envy of the world. The actions of B.C.’s largest forest company, Canfor, suggest otherwise.

Twenty years ago, Canfor opened a refurbished sawmill in Houston, a manufacturing facility so technologically advanced that it could produce 25 per cent more lumber than the until-then world’s largest sawmill in Germany.

A two-hour drive to the southeast of Houston, the Plateau sawmill is also operated by Canfor and lies a short distance from the community of Vanderhoof.

Between them, the two mills in Rustad’s riding churned through millions of logs annually at a time when, throughout B.C.’s vast Interior, logging rates were soaring to levels never before seen.

The logging spike of 20 years ago was a response to an “eruptive” mountain pine beetle outbreak spurred on by climate change, with the provincial Ministry of Forests giving Canfor and other companies the green light to cut down as many of the beetle-attacked and now dead trees as they could before they lost their value as sources of high-quality wood fibre.

The ensuing logging would see tens of millions of additional trees logged, many of them attacked by beetles, many of them not.

The bust

It was well understood by both the forest companies and the Ministry of Forests that regulated them that the upswing in logging could not be sustained. A future course correction was inevitable and would see logging rates come down sharply.

That course correction is now well advanced, likely not over, and happening everywhere, including in Rustad’s backyard.

Logging rates are falling because there simply aren’t the good trees to cut down that there once were. What forests remain unlogged are far enough away from the mills that companies are reluctant to or refuse to log them because of the high costs.

A growing amount of forest is also undesirable to log because of the extensive wildfires in recent years and the inventory of older, beetle-attacked forests that companies simply aren’t logging.

It would take less than 20 years for Canfor’s super-mill in Houston to run so short of logs that the company’s executives decided to pull the plug, announcing in January 2023 that they would close the facility early that spring.

Then, last month, Canfor announced that its Plateau sawmill would soon join the burgeoning number of mills closed by the company in recent years, including pulp mills in Prince George and Taylor, wood pellet mills in Prince George, Chetwynd and Fort St. John, and sawmills in Fort St. John and Bear Lake.

BC drains as US gains

For the thousands of workers to lose their jobs in those mills in recent years, news that they work in an industry that is the envy of the world is a surprise at best and an insult at worst.

Yes, an impressive 40,000 or so workers are still employed in that industry. But when Canfor and other companies went into logging and milling overdrive 20 years ago, there were more than 90,000 direct jobs in the industry. It is no coincidence that roughly twice as much was logged then as now.

Since then, under BC Liberal and NDP governments alike, numerous mills have been shuttered with gut-wrenching consequences for workers, their families and suddenly cash-strapped municipal governments that face drastic declines in industrial property tax revenues.

In lockstep with the steady closure of mills here, Canfor and other B.C. companies have acquired one mill after another in the southeast United States, where intensively managed tree farms produce enough wood fibre in 20 years to make lumber, which is twice as fast as it takes in B.C.

A website devoted to job opportunities with Canfor includes a map of openings at Canfor’s North American mills. As of early October, the map showed a total of 15 job opportunities in B.C. versus 33 in operations in the southern U.S.

A lack of permits or a lack of wood?

As for Rustad’s assertion that the provincial government’s approval of logging permits has bogged down and that companies face unacceptably long waiting times between when they apply for such permits and when their applications are approved, The Tyee looked at how much logging rates have actually declined under the auspices of BC Timber Sales.

The Conservatives assert and the NDP acknowledge that there is a problem here. The program is a vital source of logs for some companies that don’t hold secure government licences granting them exclusive rights of access to publicly owned timber. (About 94 per cent of B.C. is “Crown” or publicly owned land that is overlaid by the territories of numerous First Nations.)

“A company like Nechako Lumber [in Vanderhoof] needs to have hundreds of thousands of metres of BC Timber Sales every year because they don’t have that licence themselves,” Rustad has said. “When government isn’t issuing any timber sales the company is in dire straits.”

Figures available through a publicly accessible database known as the Harvest Billing System show that the volume of timber logged under the BC Timber Sales program has dropped precipitously, falling from more than 11 million cubic metres logged in 2014 to just shy of four million cubic metres logged last year.

Since the Ministry of Forests directly issues allotments of timber for sale under the program, it is clear that far less of such timber is being put up for auction or that what is being advertised for sale is not being bid on.

Whether this is because there are no longer enough trees to cut down, or the costs of cutting those trees down is much higher due to their remoteness, or consultations with affected First Nations have bogged down, or there are more hoops that ministry personnel have to jump through before issuing cutting permits cannot be gleaned from the data.

And the ministry will not entertain questions on the decline during the election period.

Canfor’s logging plummets

Unlike Nechako Lumber, Canfor holds a great deal of its own logging licences, granted by the provincial government and giving the company exclusive rights of access to vast tracts of forest. The most secure of those licences are tree farm licences, or TFLs, that cover defined areas of publicly owned forest and grant the holder exclusive logging rights within them.

The other significant licence is a forest licence, which grants the holder a set volume of timber to log within a timber supply area where a number of other companies may also hold such licences.

Because a company like Canfor has both TFLs and forest licences, it effectively has its own timber to log. But it too must still get government approval to log tracts of forest covered by those licences.

The Tyee again used the Harvest Billing System to analyze what has happened with Canfor’s logging activities during the past decade and found that much the same pattern prevailed on its most secure TFLs and forest licences as was the case with BC Timber Sales.

The data reveals that in 2014 Canfor logged more than 7.8 million cubic metres of timber. By 2023, that number fell to 3.29 million cubic metres, marking a 57 per cent decline in 10 years.

The gap between what the government says was Canfor’s approved allowable annual cut — the maximum the company is legally entitled to log under those licences — and what it actually did log was enormous, with Canfor logging just 51 per cent of its entitlement last year.

The Tyee asked Canfor what its position was on government approvals of logging permit applications. In an emailed response to questions, the company said that the issuance of those permits has slowed dramatically, and that logging rates overall are now 60 per cent below the allowable annual cut set by the Ministry of Forests’ chief forester.

“While some of this decline is the result of natural disturbance, beetle infestations and wildfire particularly, it is also a result of the pace and scale of policy change and regulatory complexity that has been introduced over the last few years,” Canfor told The Tyee. “Today we find ourselves waiting 3.2 years in the Peace and over two years in the Prince George region to achieve harvesting permits, where in 2016 it would take about seven months.”

Last year, in response to concerns raised about the length of time it takes companies to obtain logging approvals in the Merritt area, the Merritt Herald reported that the Forests Ministry said “that a vast majority of local permits” were being granted in 45 days and that local logging companies believed those permits that were taking longer were the result of delays associated with government consultations with First Nations.

A good example of where the ground has shifted dramatically in relations between First Nations and the provincial government is in the Peace region that Canfor has now effectively abandoned. In 2021, a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of British Columbia found that the province had failed to consider how the cumulative effects of multiple resource industry operations would violate the treaty-protected rights of the Blueberry River First Nations.

Those industrial activities included, of course, industrial logging. The decision has had and will continue to have significant impacts not just in the traditional territories of the Blueberry River First Nations, but for all First Nations in BC.

Another example of where the government has committed to consult with First Nations is on the issue of further protection of lands, including forest lands, with a stated goal of protecting 30 per cent of the provincial land base by 2030 — something that Rustad said he is unequivocally opposed to and would axe should the Conservatives form government.

In Canfor’s backyard

Mike Morris, who is the outgoing MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie and was once Rustad’s caucus colleague before Rustad was dropped from the BC Liberal caucus for questioning climate change, told The Tyee that he thinks the lack of timely issuance of logging permits is a red herring.

Canfor and other companies aren’t getting the timber they once did “because it’s not there,” Morris said. He went on to say that when companies like Canfor tell him that a lack of permits, not a lack of forests, is the problem, he asks them to “take me to where all this wood is. They pooh-pooh me and never get back to me.”

What’s far more significant to Canfor and others, Morris believes, is that what forests remain to be logged are generally much farther away from the mill towns and therefore far more expensive to extract and transport.

This, probably more than anything else, explains the so-called “timber supply crisis” that Canfor and others find themselves in. They’ve run out of the cheapest to get and most profitable to log forests. When you add to that low commodity prices (lumber is currently selling far below the record levels of a few years ago) and a crushing near doubling in the duties B.C. lumber producers pay on the lumber they ship to the United States, mill closures are inevitable.

Recent decisions by the chief forester setting out new and much lower approved logging rates throughout the province bear this out. This includes the massive Prince George timber supply area.

Prince George is also the community where much of Canfor’s remaining mills in the north-central region of the province are located.

In 2017, B.C.’s then-chief forester, Diane Nicholls, set a new allowable annual cut for the TSA, dropping it from 12.3 million cubic metres per year to 8.4 million cubic metres. The 33 per cent drop would hold for five years before Nicholls imposed a further drop to 7.4 million cubic metres, meaning that in 2022 the maximum that companies like Canfor would be able to log in the TSA was 40 per cent below what was available in 2017.

Nicholls would go on to note in her decision that much of the historic logging in the Prince George area had occurred in the southern and central reaches of the TSA, meaning that the most economically desirable forests — those closest to the mills —had been hit unduly hard, leaving much of what remained a lot farther away and therefore more expensive to get.

Much the same situation of logging companies bleeding away the best and easiest to access timber and leaving what remains much farther away prevails in the Mackenzie area, as detailed in a recent report in The Tyee.

All of this, Morris says, underscores that it is not bureaucratic red tape that has dragged the industry down but an acute shortage of reasonably accessible forests that can be logged at profit.

“If it was a matter of policy preventing access to fibre, why would industry be selling assets and abandoning B.C. rather than wait for that stroke of the political pen to change policy. They know there’s nothing left,” Morris said in an email to The Tyee.

The bleeding isn’t over

Compounding problems, Nicholls noted, what commercially desirable forests remained in the TSA also contained some of the highest remaining concentrations of wildlife and biological diversity.

“Supply blocks A and B are areas of the TSA with low existing [logging] disturbance, and therefore are important to values such as caribou and biodiversity. Shifting too much of the harvest to those areas would overly increase risks to those values,” Nicholls warned.

To allow Canfor and others to now log those areas as intensely as they did elsewhere would be a mistake, Nicholls said then, recommending that a cap be put on how intensively the TSA’s remaining and remote forests should be logged.

All of this helps explains why Canfor, a once formidable presence in B.C., is now a shadow of its former self.

And the bleeding is likely not over.

As the company said in response to questions from The Tyee:

“Our operations in the central and Peace regions of B.C. are not currently profitable and have been contributing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses annually. In 2023, our annual report shows an operating loss of $532 million in 2023 as a result of the challenges in British Columbia. Over the same period, our U.S., European operations showed positive earnings.”

July 8, 2024
By Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood
The Narwhal

Original article here.

The Ahousaht and Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations will now manage 760 square kilometres of old-growth conservancies with the help of philanthropic funding

The forests of Clayoquot Sound became world famous as the battlegrounds of the decades-long “war in the woods” — and now, a vast swath of the rich old-growth trees are permanently protected.

In June, Ahousaht and Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations and the BC government announced 760 square kilometres of old-growth forests in the ecologically rich region on Vancouver Island are now safeguarded in ten new conservancies.

In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, First Nations and non-Indigenous advocates joined forces to blockade industrial logging in Clayoquot Sound, home to trees about a thousand years old. The blockades culminated in the 1993 arrests of more than 850 people, drew support from thousands of activists and garnered global media attention.

The ten new conservancies encompass some of the last-standing old-growth forests on Vancouver Island. Map: Province of British Columbia

The new conservancies, to be managed by Ahousaht and Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations, will nearly double how much old growth is protected in Clayoquot Sound to a total 1,639 square kilometres, or about 62 per cent of the area. New protections include parts of Meares Island near Tofino, where Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation declared a tribal park on part of the island in 1984.

“For 40 years, there’s been rent being paid on the tree farm licences that are on Meares Island. Every year, it still remained under threat of deforestation. Now, the first phase of protecting portions of Meares Island is done,” Saya Masso, Tla-o-qui-aht natural resources manager, said in an interview.

“That’s 40 years of trying to get our rights implemented. … It’s a monumental occasion.”

Conservation charity Nature United provided $40 million to help Tla-o-qui-aht and Ahousaht pay compensation to the forestry-tenure holder, Mamook Natural Resources, which they share ownership of, along with the other three central Nuu-chah-nulth nations. The remaining 560 square kilometres is mostly second growth and remains under the tenure of Mamook Natural Resources.

Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation natural resources manager Saya Masso, pictured on the Big Tree Trail on Meares Island, called the conservancies a “monumental” achievement. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal

Tyson Atleo, hereditary representative for Ahousaht and natural climate solutions program director for Nature United, said the announcement builds on “generations of effort by the Ahousaht to ensure that our rights and interests are upheld.”

“While this is a milestone, this is by no means the conclusion of the work,” Atleo told The Narwhal. “This is just a step in a new direction that is going to require a significant amount of effort and resources to sustain.”

Ahousaht Guardian Byron Charlie released juvenile salmon into the Bedwell River in the Clayoquot Sound. Salmon enrich forest soil and feed other animals, while forests retain water and provide shade that salmon depend on. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal

Clayoquot Sound: From the fiery heart of conflict to collaboration

Mike Reid, BC program director for Nature United, said Clayoquot Sound has become a symbol of the “conflict between the environment and the economy,” making the announcement of the conservancies all the more momentous.

“This is in the heart of the largest intact temperate rainforest on Earth. Clayoquot Sound is a carbon storage and sequestration powerhouse, containing some of the last remaining old-growth stands on Vancouver Island,” he said.

An old-growth red cedar stands within Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation traditional territory. Some trees in Clayoquot Sound are estimated to be more than 1,000 years old. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal

Creating the conservancies required consensus from all five nations who jointly own Mamook Natural Resources. It also took years of fundraising and negotiations as each nation created and pursued their own vision for stewarding their lands and waters.

Reid hopes the decision can serve as a model for other nations and communities looking to improve forestry practices as available old growth dwindles.

“Clayoquot Sound demonstrates that there’s alternatives out there,” Reid said, pointing to carbon credits and tourism as examples of economic shifts away from old-growth logging. “Looking at alternative revenue sources and other kinds of economic development is critical for the nations who are advancing these changes.”

Protecting old-growth forests that have been ‘mismanaged’ for decades

According to Sierra Club BC, more than a third of old-growth trees have been logged on Vancouver Island since 1993, the year the “war in the woods” reached its peak with a summer of high-profile protests.

Old growth supports ecosystem health by providing water retention, shade, carbon storage and fire resilience, since older and more diverse forests are less likely to burn. It’s also integral to cultural practices like building canoes, totem poles and longhouses. The number of quality logs has plummeted, Tla-o-qui-aht Elder Tutakwisnapšiƛ (Joe Martin) previously told The Narwhal. For trees to grow strong, straight and large, they require the entire ecosystem to be functioning, he said — right down to the salmon in the streams, whose carcasses nourish the soil.

First Nations were pushed out of their stewardship roles and confined to reserves, he said in an interview, adding forests have since “been totally mismanaged by the governments.”

“They thought the ‘savages’ were just not using it. But we were actually taking care of it.”

Master carver and Tla-o-qui-aht Elder Joe Martin said his ancestors would only harvest trees in the fall and winter to avoid disturbing nesting birds, and would avoid disrupting wolf or bear dens in order to prioritize the health of the whole forest. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal

Nuu-chah-nulth culture “can’t survive on second growth,” Masso said. Keeping old forests alive is integral to the Tla-o-qui-aht land use vision and the new conservancies are just the first phase of the nation’s plan. They want to begin selling carbon credits, build up their Guardians program, protect water sources and close mineral tenures and other industrial land uses that for now the conservancy boundaries must wind around.

Masso said most old growth in Tla-o-qui-aht territory is now protected in the conservancies. The nation will develop a sustainable forestry plan for logging in Kennedy Flats, a second-growth forest area.

“It’s flat land, roadside harvest. The highest-return logging is being set up to be our grandchildren’s forestry tenure,” Masso said, explaining flat land is less costly to log than mountainous terrain. “So, I think it’s a win for everybody. We get to keep the forestry industry alive somewhat with a woodlot.”

“It’s always been an expressed interest to keep our foresters active, keep the ability to move big logs around, keep the machinery, keep the knowledge … while also protecting our culture, our drinking water, our fisheries and our access to monumental cedar.”

A step in the right direction, but ‘where to from here?’

The Ahousaht land use vision also includes addressing mineral tenures, getting into carbon credits and strengthening the nation’s Guardians program, according to Atleo. The next phase in their plan is to transition the rest of the tree farm licence into new forest licences and use the land to benefit community members.

While the conservancies are a monumental achievement, they still have a way to go in realizing their vision, Atleo said. He pointed out the conservancies are still considered Crown land by the province, and he wants to see the nation’s Indigenous Title recognized.

Ahousaht Guardian Byron Charlie (left) and Kaylyn Kwasnecha, Central Westcoast Forest Society research and monitoring coordinator, record the size a juvenile salmon. Tyson Atleo said many species the First Nation relies on have been decimated and conservancies are just one step towards restoring the land. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal

Although Ahousaht is taking on more responsibility for managing lands after decades of being pushed to the sidelines, “We are not seeing an increase of support from the Crown to fund those responsibilities,” he said, noting philanthropic funding made the conservancies possible. Nature United provided Tla-o-qui-aht and Ahousaht some funding to manage the land, but the conservancies cover a huge area the nations will manage indefinitely. “It’s not enough,” he said.

“We’re stretched to make some of these things a reality. We’re taking on the responsibilities of an entire industry sector to improve on behalf of Crown governments.”

“This is a step in the right direction, unequivocally, but where to from here?”

He said Ahousaht is trying to reverse a century of policies that devastated the environment they rely on.

“It’s not our perfect scenario, right? Historically, we would not have had to make a decision to protect anything, because we would have managed the whole of the ecosystem in a much more effective way.”

He knows it will take time to get there, but for Atleo, a perfect scenario would be implementation of Ahousaht title, decision-making powers in their territory and allowing his people to benefit from the rich land and local economy “in a way reflective of our values.”

BC had quieter than usual announcement

Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation hosted a celebration in Tofino in June, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Meares Island Tribal Park declaration as well as the announcement of the new conservancies. B Minister of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation Josie Osborne, who is also MLA for the Mid Island-Pacific Rim riding that includes Clayoquot Sound, attended the gathering and celebrated the announcement online. “Gratitude for thousands of years of stewardship by the Nuu-chah-nulth people … and today’s phenomenal announcement,” she wrote.

Environmental groups also lauded the protections as historic and momentous. Endangered Ecosystems Alliance called it the “biggest old growth protected areas victory in years.”

Tofino is famous for surfing, whale watching and outdoor sports, and brings thousands of visitors to Ahousaht and Tla-o-qui-aht territory. However, the nations don’t profit from the tourism to the same degree as private businesses. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal

However, the BC government was more subdued in its announcement of the conservancies than it has been with other similar conservation agreements in the past, and did not hold a news conference. An emailed statement from the Ministry of Forests said the parties involved in the Clayoquot conservancies had “hoped to host an event to celebrate this achievement” but that “time constraints did not allow the parties to come together before the agreement was finalized.”

“I support the creation of these conservancies,” Minister of Forests Bruce Ralston said in a news release. “Collaborative work with First Nations is a cornerstone of our vision for old growth in this province. At the same time, the clarity that these conservancies will bring to the area will give our industry partners confidence in the future of forestry.”

Timeline: from the war in the woods to the biggest permanent old growth protection in decades

The First Nations have been working with Nature United to establish the conservancies for about a decade, but the roots of the conservancies go much deeper in history. Here’s a condensed timeline:

1,000 years ago: Some of the oldest trees in Clayoquot Sound standing today begin to grow.

1950s: Forestry companies build the first logging road to Tofino. The forests are logged intensively over the following decades.

1971: Pacific Rim National Park Reserve is created, raising concerns more of the surrounding forest will be logged.

1982: Canada enacts its sovereign constitution, recognizing and affirming Aboriginal and Treaty Rights.

1984: Tla-o-qui-aht, Ahousaht and non-Indigenous protesters blockade Meares Island, where logging company MacMillan Bloedel plans to log old-growth forest in an area supplying Tofino’s drinking water.

On April 21, Tla-o-qui-aht leadership declares the Meares Island (Wanachus-Hilthuu’is) Tribal Park. While they continue to patrol and steward the area, the province doesn’t formally recognize it as protected.

1980-90s: A series of blockades takes place in Clayoquot Sound that become known as the war in the woods. The Ahousaht, Tla-o-qui-aht and Hesquiaht demand better logging practices from companies and more meaningful consultation from government. Thousands of activists journey to the remote area. The war in the woods peaks in the summer of 1993 when more than 800 people are arrested — 300 in a single day.

1997: BC hands over Tree Farm Licence 54 (which encompasses Clayoquot Sound) to the five nations that make up the Central Region First Nations of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council: the Tla-o-qui-aht, Ahousaht, Hesquiaht, Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ (Ucluelet) and Toquaht First Nations. In 1997, the nations create Mamook Natural Resources, a partnership among the five nations. They are now obliged to pay the province rent for the licence.

The company works with environmental organizations to improve its forestry practices, but balancing financial needs with a desire to slow down old-growth logging isn’t easy, Masso says.

2000s: The Tla-o-qui-aht declare three more tribal parks that encompass all of the nation’s territory. The Ahousaht and Tla-o-qui-aht each develop individual land use visions and Guardians programs. In 2011, they begin to work with Nature United to buy up the tree farm licence and convert the woods to protected areas.

2020: BC announces a two-year deferral on old-growth logging in nine areas around the province, including in Clayoquot Sound. The next year, old-growth logging takes over headlines again during the Fairy Creek blockades.

2021: In November, BC launches a wider deferral plan to temporarily pause old-growth logging. The program faces criticism for putting an unfair burden on First Nations. Old growth is still being logged in deferral areas and critics say protected old growth is poorly counted.

2023: BC commits to protecting 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030, in line with Canada’s international commitments to curb biodiversity loss.

2024: Ahousaht, Tla-o-qui-aht and the province announce the conservancies on June 18. They come into effect on June 26.

— With files from Shannon Waters

June 18, 2024
By: Ainslie Cruickshank and Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood
The Narwhal

See the original article.

The greatly expanded Klinse-Za / Twin Sisters Park will protect nearly 200,000 hectares of habitat for endangered caribou in BC’s northeast

A significant stretch of endangered caribou habitat in northeast BC has been permanently protected in the newly expanded Klinse-Za / Twin Sisters Park, First Nations and the BC and federal governments announced today.

The announcement comes more than four years after West Moberly First Nations, Saulteau First Nations and the provincial and federal governments agreed to work together to recover caribou herds teetering on the brink of extinction. The deal included a commitment to create a park to protect crucial caribou habitat in the mountainous area northeast of Mackenzie and west of Hudson’s Hope and Chetwynd, in the heavily industrialized Peace region.

“We’re showing that when we work together collaboratively — not just say we’re going to work together, but we actually sit down and start applying the principles of working together — we can do some amazing things,” Chief Roland Willson of West Moberly First Nations told The Narwhal.

West Moberly First Nations, Saulteau First Nations and the provincial and federal governments have announced an expansion of the Klinse-Za / Twin Sisters Park, protecting key habitat for endangered caribou herds. Photo: Photo: David Moskowitz / Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative

Klinse-Za Park (pronounced Klin-see’-za) was just 2,700 hectares — about seven times the size of Vancouver’s Stanley Park — in 2020 when the deal was forged. Over the next two years, the park was expanded to 30,000 hectares. Today’s announcement extends the park to nearly 200,000 hectares, making it almost two-and-a-half times the size of E.C. Manning Provincial Park in the Cascade Mountains in the province’s southwest.

Alongside vital caribou habitat, the park also protects the Twin Sisters, two mountains of cultural importance to Treaty 8 First Nations.

In contrast to other recent conservation announcements — including the $1 billion nature agreement announced late last year — the BC government shared news of the Klinse-Za / Twin Sisters park quietly in a press release Friday morning with comparatively little fanfare, even though the provincial park is the largest established in BC in a decade.

The greatly expanded BC park makes a noteworthy contribution to the provincial government’s pledge to protect 30 per cent of provincial land by 2030, in keeping with global commitments to protect nature at a time when close to one million species are at risk of extinction, many within decades.

The new provincial park protects habitat vitally important for endangered caribou. Photo: David Moskowitz / Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative

“This announcement is a good thing for everybody,” Willson said. “We’re trying to bring balance back. Maybe it’s not just all take. We gotta give some back, or we’re going to wind up in this situation where we have nothing left — truly nothing.”

In a press release, BC Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy George Heyman said, “The decline of caribou is a complex problem, and we continue our work to stabilize populations. Providing a large area that protects caribou and their habitat from development is a critically important step forward that is consistent with the agreements we first announced in 2020.”

Protected area gives caribou calves ‘a landscape that will support them’

Tim Burkhart, director of landscape protection at the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, called the announcement a “really important milestone” for Indigenous-led caribou recovery.

Caribou populations in the Peace region have suffered dramatic declines due to the combined pressures of hydro dam development, oil and gas production and extensive logging and road-building. In the last century, caribou have declined by 55 per cent in BC, according to the BC government news release.

The Klinse-Za herd declined from about 250 caribou in the 1990s to just 38 in 2013, according to a 2022 study in the journal Ecological Applications.

Since 2014, West Moberly First Nations and Saulteau First Nations have led a successful, though costly, maternity pen project.

Each year pregnant caribou and, later, their calves are kept in maternity pens, safe from natural predators such as wolves and under the watchful eye of Indigenous Guardians until the calves are strong enough to have a better chance of surviving outside the pen.

First Nations-operated maternity pens protect caribou calves until they have a chance at surviving in the wild. Penning, combined with predator reduction, has helped increase the population of the Klinse-Za herd from 38 to 138 caribou over the past decade. Photo: David Moskowitz / Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative

A herd “within months of being extirpated” has tripled in size, Willson pointed out. Though the Klinse-Za herd remains at risk of extinction, the population had recovered to 138 caribou by 2023, aided by the maternity pen and wolf culls.

Two existing maternity pens will now fall within the boundary of the expanded park, according to the BC government.

“Our sacred Klinse-za / Twin Sisters area will now be protected for our people forever,” Chief Rudy Paquette of Saulteau First Nations said in the press release. “This is another step in the process by which we are proving that we can recover endangered species and protect the sacred lands of First Nations people, while also providing for healthy ecosystems and diverse economies.”

Burkhart lauded the success of the maternity pen program. “Folks working on orca, salmon and other species across the world should really look to the leadership of West Moberly and Saulteau and how they brought a local herd back from the brink,” he said.

The expanded protected area was “designed specifically to create habitat that is abundant enough to bring the herd to a self-sustaining level,” Burkhart said. “So we know now that when the baby caribou are released from that maternal pen, they have a place to stand and a landscape that will support them going forward.”

The expanded Klinse-Za / Twin Sisters Park is the largest provincial park created in BC in a decade. Map: Province of BC

The two First Nations, BC government and other partners will work together to develop a management plan for the park to protect Treaty Rights and Indigenous cultural values, restore forestry roads and logged areas to natural habitat and manage recreation sustainably, the release said, noting snowmobiling has been restricted in most areas of the park since 2021 to protect caribou.

Industrial activity has also been restricted in the park for several years. The federal government has provided $46 million to compensate industry and tenure holders affected by the implementation of the 2020 partnership agreement, as well as $10 million to support a regional economic diversification trust for the region, according to the news release.

Conserving habitat is essential for endangered caribou recovery

Habitat protection is crucial to the long-term survival of at-risk caribou herds. Although forestry and other resource activities may be allowed in areas adjacent to the BC.park, Burkhart noted the 2020 agreement prioritizes caribou recovery when such activities are planned.

While the Klinse-Za herd has seen remarkable growth, the population is a long way from being large enough to allow West Moberly and Saulteau First Nations to once again harvest caribou for food. In a 2023 study, the nations worked with scientists to estimate “meaningful abundance”: how plentiful the Klinse-Za herd would have to be to harvest enough caribou for 15 meals for every family in their nations over one winter, without harming the herd’s stability. They found the herd would need 3,000 animals — meaning it would need to increase by at least 20 times.

The Klinse-Za / Twin Sisters Park also offers habitat for three dozen other at-risk species, including grizzly bear, wolverine, fisher and numerous plant and insect species.

Willson said the Klinse-Za mountains are sacred to the Dena-za people and were once a place of refuge.

“In times of need, we would go to the mountains, and they would take care of us,” he said. “There were lots of caribou, lots of sheep, lots of goats, lots of moose. The waters were clean. The fish were good to eat. There was an abundance in the mountains.”

Today, Willson said, there are hardly any caribou or mountain goats left and the fish and waters are contaminated. But the nations are working to restore habitat where they can.

BC park announcement brings province closer to 2030 protection goals

Willson said it took more than 20 years to bring the Klinse-Za park to fruition. The process, which began under the BC NDP government in the 1990s, was halted when the BC Liberals (now called BC United) came to power in 2001 and only resumed after the BC NDP returned to power 16 years later.

Countries around the world, including Canada, have agreed to protect 30 per cent of their land and waters by 2030 as part of a global effort to address the growing biodiversity crisis. According to the World Economic Forum, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse represent one of the largest risks the world faces over the next decade, with dire consequences for the environment, humankind and economic activity if not addressed.

But scientists warn nature may require far more protections. Up to 50 per cent of lands and waters globally may need to be conserved to maintain biodiversity, according to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

According to the Canadian Protected and Conserved Areas Database, BC is leading the provinces in meeting targets. As of December 2023, BC had conserved 19.7 per cent of its land. The expanded 2,000-square-kilometre Klinse-Za park covers approximately 0.2 per cent of the province.

But some groups question the BC government’s accounting.

Earlier this year, the BC chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society published a report that raised concerns BC inflated its progress by counting fragmented stretches of forest that may not have permanent protection toward its conservation targets.

At the time, the BC government said it was working on a new approach to assessing conserved areas.

Expanding the Kinse-Za provincial park is a small step toward meeting BC and federal government commitments to conserve 30 per cent of land and waters by 2030, as part of global efforts to stem the loss of nature. Photo: David Moskowitz / Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative

“It is a bold vision, but there is a path to meeting 30-by-30 through Indigenous-led conservation,” Burkhart said.

“This is the scale of new protected areas that we want to see,” he said of the newly expanded park. “We need a lot of pieces like that to make it work.”

Willson pointed out caribou need vast swaths of land and it’s still uncertain if the expanded park will be enough. He said the nations will have to monitor the impacts and continue to restore habitat. “We’ve got to do what we can, where we can,” he said.

“Our future generations are going to know that the caribou are still here because of the work that we’ve done today.”