News Coverage


Representatives from major forest industry unions and environmental organizations along with local elected officials and First Nations marched today, July 22, in Port Alberni to rally for sustainable forestry.

The Public and Private Workers of Canada (PPWC), Unifor, Wilderness Committee and Ancient Forest Alliance are calling on the BC government to end raw-log exports and to prioritize the transition to sustainable second-growth forestry

Scott Fraser, MLA for Alberni-Pacific Rim, as well as local First Nations representatives spoke at the rally at Victoria Quay.

“Raw log exports and other unsustainable practices have resulted in thousands of lost jobs in the coastal forest industry, and it’s got to stop,” said Arnold Bercov, President of the PPWC in a July 22 press release. “If we don’t turn this around these policies will be a death knell for the workers we represent.”

Annually, the BC government permits over six million cubic metres of raw logs to be exported without processing – enough logs to fill over 200,000 logging trucks or when milled to build more than 100,000 homes, states the press release.

The BC coast has lost more than half its mills since the 90’s and has the worst jobs-per-unit-of-timber-harvested ratio in Canada.

The labour and environmental groups plan to work together to advocate for improved policies that protect local jobs and endangered forest ecosystems.

Read more: https://www.albernivalleynews.com/news/environmentalists-rally-for-forests-and-jobs-in-alberni/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heading for collapse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more: https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2016/07/19/ecological-emergency-call-to-save-remaining-west-coast-old-growth-forest/

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

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

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

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

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

New partners in conservation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The business of old growth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Government leadership

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

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

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

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

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

But Wieting is hopeful.

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

[CBC article no longer available.] 

Here’s a new Focus magazine article by Briony Penn about Vancouver Island’s old-growth forests, featuring forest ecologist Dr. Andy MacKinnon, Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce president Dan Hager, Jens Wieting of the Sierra Club, AFA, Ahousaht and Tofino councils, and the growing support among businesses, chambers of commerce, and municipal councils for protecting BC’s old-growth forests.

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WHEN THE BC CHAMBER OF COMMERCE and the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities (AVICC) recently came out championing the protection of old-growth forests on Vancouver Island, it was hailed as a historic and tectonic shift by environmentalists. Yet it’s probably more accurately described in earthquake terms as “fault creep”—the “slow, more or less continuous movement occurring on faults due to ongoing tectonic deformation.”

Political and business associations have finally caught up with the economic reality, climate change, public attitudes, business opportunities, and scientific data—and not a moment too soon.

In typical island fashion, it takes a poster boy from elsewhere with home-spun prairie logic to signal that shift. Handsome Dan Hager, the head of the Port Renfrew Chamber and business owner of Handsome Dan’s Wild Coast Cottages, looked in his guest books one day and noticed that his guests were coming year round to visit old trees at the Avatar Grove. Since then, with just a handsome Saskatchewan smile and anecdotal stories of full beds and full-time staff, he’s managed to convince the entire BC Chamber of Commerce of the value of leaving old growth close to towns.

This likely amuses botanist and Metchosin Councillor Andy Mackinnon. His 30 years of collecting compelling scientific data on the value of old growth on Vancouver Island is not as “hot” on the current media radar, although he’s being effective in other ways. With his own moniker the “fun guy” (pun on fungi, his research specialty), Mackinnon has spread his own charismatic mycelia alongside Hager’s in the slow and continuous movement towards improving Vancouver Island land use planning.

Mackinnon, a forest researcher with the provincial government, has recently retired from public service and jumped into political life. He won a seat on Metchosin council in 2014 and has been looking for ways to get science back into policy and planning ever since. Mackinnon managed to get a resolution asking for a moratorium on the logging of old growth on Vancouver Island passed by his Metchosin Council, and then Colwood’s, this spring. That was subsequently endorsed at AVICC’s AGM in April. His advocacy was triggered by his frustrations as a government scientist. He says, “You felt you were gathering a lot of good information that wasn’t being incorporated into policy and management.” Mackinnon’s first priority was to stop the old-growth logging while Vancouver Island still had some left to save.

His resolution for a moratorium was borrowed from the Ahousat chiefs—also known as the Hawiih of Clayoquot Sound— who had announced their own moratorium on industrial logging of old-growth forests in October last year. It hasn’t gone unnoticed by Mackinnon that the Ahousat have been slowly, more or less continuously, suggesting to Western governments the values of old growth. Their data goes back several thousand years. Their resolution included a community “Land Use Visioning” process intended to protect a traditional way of life while diversifying livelihoods.

The mayor of Tofino shared this resolution with Mackinnon and he fashioned a similar moratorium for Metchosin with a request to the provincial government to revise the old Vancouver Island Land Use Plan. The resolution’s preamble states that old-growth forest is increasingly rare on Vancouver Island and has significant values as wildlife habitat, a tourism resource, a carbon sink and much more. It also noted that current plans on provincial Crown land call for logging the remaining old-growth forest outside of protected areas, Old-Growth Management Areas (OGMAs), and similar reserves, over the next 10-20 years.

Mackinnon is not new to the science of why it is important to protect old growth. He was on the scientific team that wrote the provincial Old Growth Strategy (OGS) starting in 1989. At the time, the OGS was cutting-edge policy. The 1992 report began with the acknowledgement that old-growth forests “represent a wide range of spiritual, ecological, economic and social values” and outlined the framework to plan for conserving old growth. It was the time of the “war in the woods”—from Clayoquot Sound to Carmanah—and logging still constituted the dominant industry in parts of northern Vancouver Island. The same year, the NDP created the Commission on Resources and Environment to provide independent land use recommendations to cabinet for Vancouver Island, and the OGS was folded into this new Vancouver Island Land Use Plan (VILUP) and the Forest Practices Code. (Clayoquot Sound was excluded from VILUP because it came under a separate scientific commission.)

According to Mackinnon, “those were exciting times with the opportunity to do broad land use planning and establish new protected areas.” Before 1992, only 6 percent of Vancouver Island had any protected status and what was protected was mostly rocks and ice at the top of mountains. By the end of the planning process in 2000, the protected areas reached 12 percent of Vancouver Island with a slightly better representation of diverse lowland ecosystems. That included some of the big, old trees in valley bottoms known as “productive lowland old-growth forests.” The VILUP decisions established the upper Carmanah Valley, the lower Walbran Valley, Tashish Kwoi and Brooks Nasparti Provincial Parks as large protected areas.

The target of protecting 12 percent of the land base had come from the international Bruntland Commission and its landmark report Our Common Future. The report called for doubling the area of protected areas globally—which, at that time, also sat around 6 percent.

Mackinnon supported the plan then because it at least doubled the protection and was achievable politically, but it fell short in many regards. Many scientists had recommended quadrupling the area protected to take in forest stand and ecosystem diversity, and climate change wasn’t being factored in yet. The compromise was partly addressed in a series of special management zones created to maintain areas of old growth and high biodiversity within forest tenures on Crown land.

In 2001, with a change in provincial government from NDP to Liberal, the Old Growth Strategy and VILUP were sent to the shredders, special management zones were cancelled, and the Forest Practices Code was gutted. Since then, apart from a handful of tiny isolated groves, like Avatar Grove, being designated OGMAs or Land Use Objective areas, no ancient forests have been set aside in protected areas on Vancouver Island.

In the absence of any provincial leadership on island old growth, the Sierra Club has taken the lead role in mapping island forests. Mackinnon says, “When people asked my ministry how much old growth there was left, I would have to say: ‘Go talk to the Sierra Club.’” Jens Wieting of the Sierra Club of British Columbia notes that, as of 2012, less than 10 percent of the productive lowland old-growth forests remain. These are the forests that businesses like Handsome Dan’s benefit from, not the older, scrubby trees in the mountain tops that the provincial government still includes in their tally of old growth.

According to Wieting, the state of old growth on Vancouver Island is now an ecological emergency. Of that 10 percent that remains, only 4 percent has been set aside in parks or OGMAs and 6 percent is up for grabs. The Sierra Club’s recent Google Map press release visually shows how that remaining unprotected old growth is at risk.

This situation has brought a return of the wars in the woods, with conflicts over Walbran, Klaskish and East Creek. The battle is being led by the Ancient Forest Alliance, Western Canada Wilderness Committee and others. These last watersheds of remaining unprotected old-growth lowland forest are where the greatest value are for all stakeholders. The stakes are even higher with an increased understanding of the value of these forests for sequestering carbon.

Sierra’s data shows around 9400 hectares of Island old growth being logged annually and 17,000 hectares of second growth, some of it highly endangered ecosystems. Second-growth forests eventually become old-growth forests so we need to pay attention to these as well. Only saving old-growth forests is like only looking after elders and not nurturing the young. For forest ecologists, this is a compelling rationale for reopening the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan and reconsidering the mix of different forests and age classes of stands. This would entail planning for future reserves of old growth in forest types where there is hardly any old growth left, like the Douglas-fir forests of Vancouver Island where old growth has been reduced to 1 percent of the remaining stand.

Wieting’s argument is that “with every new clearcut, more biodiversity of the original ecosystem disappears.” That’s the ecological argument for a new target of quadrupling protected areas—nature needs half. But what about the economic argument?

The 1992 VILUP included a careful economic analysis with projections to 2012. What is most interesting is how accurate those projections were. They predicted continuing declines in the resource sectors and continuing increases in importance of tourism and other service industries like high tech and filmmaking, light manufacturing and pension and investment incomes. The plan states, “These shifts in economic structure will be reinforced by the in-migration of retirees to the Island, the aging of the resident population, increasing demand for and scarcity of wilderness recreation opportunities, technological change, and resource depletion.”

According to the VILUP, back in 1992 forestry and logging provided 10,565 jobs (3.6 percent) on Vancouver Island. By 2012, StatsCan numbers show, that had declined to 4700. Pulp and paper mills employed 12,900 people in 1992, but by 2012 that had fallen to one-half of that.

Compare that to 4800 jobs in the “information and cultural industries,” 9800 in the “arts, entertainment and recreation industries” and 5800 in the mysterious-sounding “personal and laundry services.” The largest employers—by far—on Vancouver Island are in the service industries with 20,000 to 50,000-plus jobs, per sector, in health, education, professional services, high tech, trade and tourism (accommodation and food services). Even the recent Vancouver Island State of the Economy report by the Vancouver Island Economic Alliance, in a curiously conservative analysis, points out the only fast growth areas are in the professional, scientific and high tech sectors—the people who fill up Handsome Dan’s Wild Coast Cottages.

The age-old problem for northern Vancouver Island rural communities of boom and bust resource-based economies was pinpointed accurately in the 1992 plan, with various recommendations for diversification.

In the ensuing years, though, there was minimal action taken to diversifiy. There was little public investment in a number of critical areas: infrastructure for making value-added wood products, transportation systems, an old-growth strategy, marketing of tourism to these areas, and creating value for ecosystem services. The BC Liberals weren’t, apparently, paying heed to the shifting economic landscape. New Zealand, with roughly comparable economic forecasts, land base and population, looked at its data back then and brought in a moratorium on old-growth logging while investing heavily in ecotourism infrastructure and marketing. Total tourism expenditure today in New Zealand is $29.8 billion, increasing at 10 percent per year. Vancouver Island tourism generates $2.2 billion annually.

Better late than never, Mackinnon’s resolution will now go to the Union of BC Municipalities AGM in September. So far the provincial government hasn’t responded to his request for a meeting. With Hager working the business community on a modified resolution specifically referring to old growth close to settlements, both Mackinnon and Hager argue that it will be hard for the provincial government to ignore both local governments and the business sector.

Once a moratorium is in place, Mackinnon would like to see innovative planning—with a foundation based on scientific principles—adapted for Vancouver Island. He points to the land use plans for Clayoquot Sound and the Great Bear Rainforest, both of which he participated in and which were spearheaded by First Nations. The Great Bear Rainforest Agreements in particular incorporated First Nations concerns, economic realities that included real conservation financing, and carbon credit projects for First Nations.

As Jens Wieting suggests, “We have a lot to learn from what went on in both these regions—and fast, because climate change means that we have even less time to save rainforest as we know it.”

As for Handsome Dan, he says, “I’m no treehugger and I don’t need to rely on any science. I just see the logic because the economics are black and white. The trees left standing are good for my business.” Hardly earthshaking, but a welcome tectonic nudge to an island that has so much natural capital to offer its inhabitants and the world.

[Original article no longer available]