Tag Archives: Forestry on Quadra

Forests

Once A Major Source of Employment

The number of jobs provided by cutting island forests is no longer a key concern of either tenure holders or government

Originally published by the Discovery Islands Forest Conservation Project

By David Broadland

Ministry of Forests’ records suggest 80 to 90 percent of the cut on Quadra Island is exported as raw logs by Mosaic Forest Management—all to support government employee pensions.

At one time in BC, the damage done by logging forests was considered an acceptable cost for the jobs provided. In 1965, for example, for each 1000 cubic metres of wood harvested, there were 1.69 people employed in logging, milling and allied industries.

But by 2019, that number had fallen to less than a full job—.79 person per 1000 cubic metres. That’s less than half of what it was in 1965. Ouch.

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Forests

The Quadra Project – The Log Exporting Business

In response to Quadra Islanders’ concerns about the amount of our Island’s logs that are exported internationally rather than being processed in British Columbia, Mosaic sent an explanatory website link (https://www.mosaicforests.com/about-our-business#servinglocal). This link attempts to justify the exports, but it also reveals the wider social and economic strategy that guides Mosaic’s behaviour and its logging practices on both Quadra and elsewhere. It makes informative reading.

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Arts, History, Indigenous Nations History

Robert Bringhurst on local history, science, poetry, the ridge where he lives and much more

On Saturday Robert Bringhurst (RB) brings his own brand of literature, local history, science and humour to the stage of the Quadra Community Centre. He just gave Cortes Currents a taste in a rambling conversation that at one point went off topic to include remarks about Cortes Island, Campbell River and Whistler. Bringhurst started out by describing his intentions in the epic description of ‘the Ridge’ on Quadra Island where he lives.    

RB: “I wanted to make good poetry out of, among other things, good science. I wanted  to walk the ridge and relish it as one does without any thought of scientific measurement or accuracy, but I also wanted to think about it as a real place in historical time and to look at the species in relation to other species on the planet, and at the rocks in relation to other rocks. I began to wonder how much biology, geology, astronomy and climatology I could put in this poem without sinking it. The answer turned out to be quite a bit.” 

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Forests

The Quadra Project – Logging’s Carbon – Part 2

Click here to access part one

Loggers on Quadra Island are confronted with a dilemma. Whether they cut trees from TFL 47 or from any of the 11 licenced woodlots, the carbon stored in the forests is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, thereby contributing to the climate crisis. But loggers are required by law, as operators of their tenures, to cut an annual amount of merchantable wood—measured as cubic metres—to earn royalties, called stumpage, for government revenue. Because most logged wood becomes the raw material used for making paper, packaging and many other disposable products, most of the cut wood is quickly consumed or discarded, and its stored carbon is released into the atmosphere as CO2 within the first year following logging—only about 20% of the cubic metres measured as forest product is sequestered up to a century as lumber for buildings or as kept objects such as furniture.

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Uncategorized

The Quadra Project: Protecting Old Forests

At least 1,000 people, representing more than 220 diverse organizations and First Nations from British Columbia, attended the United for Old Growth March & Rally in Victoria on February 25. They marched from City Hall to the BC Legislature, demanding the implementation of the Old Growth Strategic Review, a comprehensive 2020 study that recommended the immediate protection of the remnant old growth forests in the province. Not one of its 14 recommendations has yet been implemented.

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