Originally published on the Discovery Islander

Mosaic Forest Management Corporation is responsible for forestry operations on TimberWest’s Tree Farm Licence 47 on Quadra Island. The letter below was written by Sierra Quadra to Mosaic on October 14, 2021, after the extraordinary “heat dome” of June-July, but before the unusually cold weather of December, and before the “atmospheric rivers” that deluged southwestern BC with record rainfalls, flooding the Fraser Valley and washing out Greater Vancouver’s crucial road and rail links. 

The Mosaic/TimberWest Forest Stewardship Plan is now available for comment until February 10, 2022. Their draft FSP indicates no meaningful response to the global climate crisis identified in Sierra Quadra’s prescient letter. 

Dear Mr. Domenico Iannidinardo, Chief Forester:

This year was not the same as last year. Despite the economically constraining effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, global atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continued to rise, and with it came the climate effects of an increase in temperature of at least 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels. Glaciers in Antarctica, Greenland and around the world will melt at accelerating and unstoppable rates, inevitably inundating coastal cities everywhere. The incredible floods in Germany were being replicated elsewhere as a 7% rise in humidity translates to a 14% rise in precipitation. This was accompanied by heat, droughts and unprecedented fires that engulfed parts of Italy, Greece, Spain, France, Israel,Turkey, Algeria, Siberia, and California.

British Columbia was not spared, as a protracted and extraordinary drought brought massive forest fires—the third highest area of 8,680 square kilometres were only exceeded in 2017 by 12,160 and in 2018 by 13,542 square kilometres. The “heat dome” that hovered over the province from June 25 to July 1 shattered temperature records, not by single degrees but by nearly 5°C—Lytton at 49.6°C, which was hotter than Las Vegas, burned to the ground the following day. An estimated 570 people in the Vancouver area died as the thermometer hovered around 40°C. Drought gripped Western Ontario, the Prairie Provinces and British Columbia. Everyone but the most numb has been traumatized by the terror of this heat and these fires.

Then in August came the Sixth Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Its assessment of our situation is “red alert”, “the alarm bells are screaming”. Civilization as we know it is at risk if all of us do not do absolutely everything within our power to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions and radically reform our relationship with nature. 

On Quadra, we waited in apprehension as our tinder-dry forests readied for some stroke of nature or inadvertent act of human stupidity to ignite a maelstrom that would reduce our Island and our homes to ashes. We cowered in our houses to avoid the scorching heat. We watched our gardens cook, our berries scald, our beloved trees struggle, and our salmon streams go dry. 

This fear was instigated by a sample of what is to come if we don’t fundamentally alter our values, our behaviour, our economic system, and the way we inhabit our planet. And this is the protracted psychological and sociological condition in which anxiety erupts as fear, creates volatility, and collides with the interests of Mosaic. 

Quadra is an island of trees, a place where massive amounts of carbon are safely stored in our forests. Maintaining this storage is our best and most helpful contribution to addressing the climate crisis. This has been recognized in the province’s Old Growth Strategic Review, which acknowledges the value of stored carbon and the irreplaceable value of old growth forest ecologies in preserving biodiversity and moderating climate. It also recognizes that we must prioritize the value of all forest ecologies above our demands upon them. The status quo is dysfunctional and fatal.

Yes, we know that lumber is at irresistibly high prices now. And yes, we know that Mosaic has the legal right to log our trees, even in places where the damage to salmon-bearing watersheds is possible or almost certain. And we also know that the provincial government has shifted responsibility for the management of our public forests to the holders of the Tree Farm Licences, a problem that is fraught with immense potential for abuse. But we also know that if we continue as individuals and corporations to conduct ourselves as we have in previous years—to pretend that nothing has changed on our planet—then this intransigence can only be deemed suicidal. 

If a “sea change” in consciousness has not occurred in Mosaic, it has occurred on Quadra. A growing proportion of Islanders are no longer willing to accede to the corporate imperative of meeting profit quotas at the expense of compromising the quality of our lifestyle, of scarring our image as an Island paradise, of impairing our watersheds, of damaging our ecologies, and of subverting our principled efforts to maintain the habitability of our planet. The escalating threat has progressed from future generations to those presently alive today. Although we alone cannot save the planet, we can contribute to the solution as best we can. And the urgency of the situation requires that we all do our share—both as individuals and corporations. Nature, as we are sadly learning, does not understand excuses. 

Political and technical issues could be the subject of our discussions with Mosaic. The issue of a First Nations’ land claim settlement is becoming increasingly relevant. So, too, is the seemingly overlooked designation of a significant portion of Quadra Island as a Special Management Zone by the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan. However, the 1990s were decades ago, and the related environmental matters are now  more pressing, sobering and ominous. Indeed, if they didn’t register then, we now know they are existential.

This urgency is being felt acutely on Quadra Island where the community is beginning to brace for the stresses of climate change, to adapt to the inevitable, and to take steps to avoid the worst of a fate that will only become increasingly obvious. Some of this action will undoubtedly affect Mosaic’s logging intentions on our island. 

Under the circumstances, we expect that permanent deferrals are appropriate for any Operating Plans in the Hyacinthe Creek watershed. And furthermore, that all future logging on Quadra Island by Mosaic be commensurate with cultivating the existing mature stands to the healthy old growth forests so imperative for ameliorating the unfolding threats of both an ecological and a climate crisis. Indeed, the provincial government’s Old Growth Strategic Review mentions the importance of carbon sequestration, and of its five primary recommendations, number two stipulates the “conservation of ecosystem health and biodiversity of British Columbia’s forests as an overarching priority…”.

Mosaic should be clearly aware that this year was not the same as last year, and the current emergency imparts obligations on us all. 

Sincerely, 

Ray Grigg, for the Executive Members of Sierra Quadra  

Letters of concern can be sent to:

• Jennifer Peschke RPF, 
• Area Forester, Mosaic Forest Management,
• Box 2800 Campbell River, B.C., V9W 5C5
• or: e-mail jennifer.peschke@mosaicforests.com

Top image credit: Forest coverage loss in the Johnstone Strait portion of Tree License #47 – adapted from Global Forest Change by Roy L Hales