Tag Archives: Ministry of Forests

Cost of Climate Change

Talk is Cheap, Part 2: the worst possible choices

Evidence of climate destabilisation — aberrant weather — is now everyday news. “Record-breaking” has become a routine description of wind speeds, rainfall, flood levels, mudslides, wildfires, high temperatures and drought.

The drought which afflicts BC this October of 2022 is a record-breaker and a tragedy; near Bella Bella, tens of thousands of salmon have died trying to return to their breeding grounds in streams now too warm and shallow for them to survive in. Over the last few summers, BC has lost millions of hectares of forest and entire towns to wildfire; “fire season” and multi-day smoke palls are becoming business-as-usual in mid to late summer. In December last year, flooding destroyed livestock and crops in the lower mainland. These events are happening more frequently and their severity is ramping up, slowly, year by year.

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Forests

B.C. failing to meet promised benchmarks to transform old-growth logging

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Two years after pledging to take a new approach to the management of old-growth forests, the B.C. government is failing to make the grade, environmental groups say. 

The province promised to act on 14 recommendations in an independent old-growth strategic review to protect the most at-risk big tree ecosystems while transforming forestry over a three-year period. 

But the NDP government continues to lag on its most urgent and important commitments, and hasn’t completed any recommendations most of the way through the stated timeline, a report card issued by the Wilderness Committee, Sierra Club BC, Stand.earth and Ancient Forest Alliance suggests.

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Forests

Old-growth forests remain at ‘immediate risk’ despite B.C. government promises, report finds

By Natasha Bulowski, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

B.C.’s old-growth forests are still in jeopardy despite the province’s pledge to work with Indigenous nations to temporarily ban logging in specific areas, a new report by Stand.earth finds.

More than 55,000 hectares of B.C.’s proposed old-growth deferrals are still at “extreme risk” of being logged, Stand.earth’s spatial analysis revealed. Satellite imagery analysis shows some deferrals have already been destroyed or are in the process of being clear-cut.

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Forests

Cutting Old Growth: Quadra Woodlot holder responds

On August 17, Cortes Currents published a review of David Broadland’s report ‘Land-use planning on Quadra Island has been undone by the Ministry of Forests.’

Broadland wrote that while all of the other Quadra Island woodlots leave big trees standing, Okisollo Resources fells a substantial number. In ‘before’ and ‘after’ satellite images from one of their cutblocks at Hummingbird Lake, he showed that 35 out of about 50 were logged in July and August of 2019. 

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Transportation

SRD seeking legal advice about Hoskyn Landing access

How our local government works

The Strathcona Regional District is seeking legal advice about expanding the access road and parking lot at Hoskyn Landing, on the north east corner of Quadra Island.

Hoskyn Landing is used by foot traffic crossing from Quadra to Read and Maurelle Islands, as well as hikers on the Surge Rapids Trail and kayakers within Surge Narrows Provincial Park.

The SRD’s current tenure is for public moorage and a boat launch. 

The access road and parking lot are on crown land within the woodlot license of Cape Mudge Forestry Ltd. 

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