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Hot summer in forecast for B.C. forests

A handful of arrests don’t necessarily make a movement but the issue of old-growth logging has been simmering for more than a year.
Neil Godbout
2) Old growth spruce in Anzac area
Devon Bachman stands on top of old growth spruce in the Anzac area that were aged at over 400 years old when they were cut. There was no evidence of spruce beetle in these cut trees. (via Conservation North)

The May long weekend is the annual start of summer in B.C.

So it’s no surprise that the first arrests have already been made in what looks like it might be a long, scorching summer of blockades and protests over old-growth logging.

RCMP have made 21 arrests so far in the Fairy Creek watershed on southern Vancouver Island.

A handful of arrests don’t necessarily make a movement but the issue of old-growth logging has been simmering for more than a year, ever since the John Horgan government received the 2020 Old Growth Strategic Review. That review called for the halt of logging in several key areas, including Fairy Creek, but only one of those nine locations was north of Williams Lake – the 41,000 hectare Seven Sisters area near Smithers.

Conservation North, a regional environmental group, is also seeking protection for the Anzac River valley north of Prince George and cedar-hemlock forests along the Upper Fraser River.

The group staged rallies in Prince George last September and again this March to raise local awareness of the issue. Another rally is set for Saturday at the courthouse.

Last December, the Forest Practices Board found biodiversity may be at risk in the Prince George Timber Supply Area and called for detailed maps of old-growth in the area.

Horgan did commit to implementing the report’s recommendations during last fall’s provincial election campaign. While 353,000 hectares of forest was deferred for logging by the NDP government, critics pointed out some of those areas were already protected and a substantial portion was actually second-growth.

A new report issued this week by a group of independent scientists points to about 1.3 million hectares of at-risk forest, which works out to about 2.6 per cent of the provincial timber supply.

“We waited for the government to map what the panel recommended and there’s been no action — so we  decided to just do it,” forest ecologist Rachel Holt and one of the report’s authors said to The Narwhal.

Holt and the other authors of the report aren’t asking for all of that 1.3 million hectares to be put aside.

“Following the old-growth strategic review panel’s direction, [the province] should take that map and overlay it with planned cut blocks and defer harvest in those areas until the planning is done,” Holt said. 

But Holt said the province isn’t acting fast enough.

“There isn’t time to talk and log and try to create perfect maps,” she said. “Nothing is perfect, but we need to move forward.”

As the arrests on Vancouver Island show, however, a growing number of people are tired of waiting and are willing to block forest service roads to make their point and force the government into action.

Three decades ago, the Clayoquot Sound logging protests started this way. By 1993, it had evolved into a huge protest, one of the largest in Canadian history, and was attracting international media attention.

If the current efforts catch on and spread across the province, particularly into areas where major urban media outlets can easily access the sites and the protesters, casting far more public attention on the issue, the Second War of the Woods could be upon us.

Unless the NDP move quickly on meaningful changes to protect old-growth forests, there could be a long, hot summer ahead.

- Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout