Most of the great forests that once covered the West Coast are gone. Though there is still an extensive canopy, the trees are scraggly compared to the stumps and historical photographs left from decades ago. The clear cutting in British Columbia is so extensive that, since 2003, the forests have been emitting rather than storing carbon. Some call for a more environmentally sensitive industry and an example of Cortes Islands quest for sustainable logging is about a mile from my home.
This isn’t the first time that there has been disputes over logging in the Chapman Creek Watershed. In response to complaints from the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD), in 2014 the ‘Managed Forest Council hired Madrone Environmental Services to ascertain the cause of “increased turbidity” in the water supply (which services up to 30,000 households). Geoscientist Gordon Butt pointed to logging after the “onset of the fall rains” and concluded, “Although there has been no clear contravention of the regulations, it is clear to me that industry standards for protecting water quality have not been met in CH1. The short-comings are substantially more serious given the fact that this logging has been carried out in a highly sensitive watershed supplying a large population.” [1] When AJB Investments resumed logging operations in late January of this year, Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) responded with a blockade. The latest attempt at negotiation has just broken down and the month long siege of Chapman Creek continues.
The struggle to save the Walbran valley’s ancient trees, in a intact Old Forest ecosystem, started in the 1980s. This led to the logging blockades and the provincial government setting a portion of this area in the Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park. A Surrey based logging company recently applied to harvest eight cutblocks of the unprotected area and on last month the Ministry of Forests gave them permission to start in cutback 4424. Friends of Carmanah/Walbran responded by setting up a community witness camp. Yesterday, September 9, Teal Jones’ road building crews were turned away. Thus it is that war on the woods returns To the Walbran.
British Columbia’s Ministry of Forests said the first cutback the in the Walbran Valley is only 3.2 hectares large. It is to be heli-logged, not clearcut. The province is protecting over 30,300 hectares in old growth management areas in the South Island Natural Resource District. The map on the top of this page shows what they did not say, why the Walbran is important.
On September 18th BC’s Ministry of Forests gave Teal Jones approval to start logging in what is believed to be one of Canada’s most important stands of unprotected old-growth rain-forest. The Walbran Valley, on Vancouver Island, contains some of the nation’s oldest and largest red cedar and sitka spruce trees. Teal Jones has applied to log eight cutbacks. So far, they have only been permission to log a 3.2 hectare section known as Cutblock 4424. Yet when you consider the role that trees have fighting Climate Change, how does BC defend logging the Walbran?
A spokesperson from the Ministry of Forests provided most of the answers that follow.
