BC-Canada

Index

–British Columbia: 1) 10-year forest health management strategy? 2) Everything in the Charlottes is super-sized, 3) TimberWest is not necessarily looking to sell the land to developers?
–Canada: 4) Greenpeace Blockades a freighter, 5) Only one of eight scenarios for Crown forest management is the right one, 6) K-C’s massive stockpile of old-growth logs, 7) Save the Carolinian Zone, 8) Gov. will decide to protect our Acadian forest or push it to the brink,

Articles:

British Columbia:

1) “We propose to develop a 10-year forest health management strategy funded by the provincial and federal government,” said Simpson. “The data is not there for us to manage our forests properly and we need to restore the forest service to be our eyes and ears on the ground.” Secondly, the plan would tax and discourage the export of raw logs and tap into value-added forest products to diversify the industry. “We would escalate raw log export taxes and force the companies to manufacture,” said Simpson. “We have all that capital – mills, but no wood. We would provide transition dollars to workers.” And that’s the third point in the plan, providing transition funding to loggers and resource communities while the plan is implemented over a three to five year period. “We are looking at a three to five year transition period over all,” said Simpson, but added “we are committing to a 10-year transition window in our rural plan.” Simpson says his party would also create a permanent commission on foresty that would evaluate conditions and trends, identify options and recommend action. The last part of the plan would radically reform the tenure system. “We would abolish the softwood lumber agreement by changing the tenure system and delinking manufacturing from tenure holdings,” said Simpson. “That would take time, but in the interim we would go to arbitration to change the industry.” The response from North Islanders was generally supportive, but focused more on the problems of the past than on the details of the proposed plan. Worried about jobs and the future of forestry and particularly the future of Western Forest Products, Simpson encouraged loggers to hang on. “I am very concerned about the management structure of Western, but from what we have seen, the answer is no, I don’t thing they are going down,” said Simpson. “There have been 16,000 forest workers out of work or temporarily out of work since January 2007. We are already in transition. We need to manage the work force better. “We are not maximizing economic opportunity.” If elected Simpson says the forest health plan and inventory as well as transition dollars would be implemented immediately. Reforms to the tenure system and a forest commission would take longer. http://www.bclocalnews.com/bc_cariboo/williamslaketribune/news/28639239.html

2) Everything in the Charlottes is super-sized, from trees and bears (the biggest black bears in North America) to seaweed, scallops and record salmon that draw folks for some of the world’s best sports fishing. You can hire a Masset fisherman or head to one of the exclusive luxury lodges on Langara Island off the north coast. We zipped over to one of them, the West Coast Fishing Club, by helicopter, scattering tame deer off the landing pad. The lodge is an elegant, manly place that encourages catch and release by offering world-class Haida art in exchange for letting your 40-pounder go. But I didn’t have to make that decision because, as usual, nothing nibbled. We blamed a pair of killer whales patrolling in the distance and switched to deeper water halibut gear. I found myself childishly overjoyed to snag a modestly sized specimen, an experience akin to hauling a fridge door from the ocean depths. Masset is a no-frills fishing town of loggers and fishermen, hippies and Haida, like the rest of the island. It sits alongside Naikoon Provincial Park, a vast expanse of beach and forest occupying the northeast corner of Graham Island. We quickly became accustomed to the on-and-off light rain showers that are the Charlottes’ trademark weather pattern as we beachcombed for agates, chatted with crab seekers and poked around a shipwreck.Great coffee is generally a rarity in remote places, but we found it everywhere here, even at Moon Over Naikoon, an offbeat, off-the-electrical-grid cafe/informal whale museum in the middle of Naikoon’s rain forest, where we met guide Andrew Merilees over a fair trade Java and still-warm cinnamon buns. Merilees took us to nearby Old Masset, one of the island’s two remaining native communities. “There were once over 500 Haida communities in the islands, with a population of over 7,000,” he said. The Haida were fierce warriors and traders, with a rich culture afforded by a bountiful land. In the late 1800s, though, a series of smallpox epidemics reduced their population to less than 700. Remarkably, their culture didn’t disappear and has been undergoing a growing revival for 50 years. Artists here encourage home visits, so we dropped in on silversmiths, carvers of argillite – a black, coal-like stone – and to the home of Joyce Bennett, a fourth-generation button-blanket maker. Sarah’s Haida Arts and Jewelry, in a stylized longhouse in Old Masset, sells the works of dozens of artists. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/21/TRVG12RJ9Q.DTL

3) Land owned by TimberWest in the Nanaimo Lakes area is being considered for non-forestry uses. Company spokesman Stephen Bruyneel said officials from TimberWest, Vancouver Island’s largest landowner with 325,000 hectares of land, will visit Nanaimo this fall to meet with community and financial organizations about possible uses for the land around the Nanaimo Lakes and other areas close to the city. He said TimberWest is not necessarily looking to sell the land to developers, but to partner with community groups to get the best value and use out of the land. “We’re responsible land owners and we have no intention of just selling the land and walking away,” Bruyneel said. “We own a lot of land and not all of it is being used for logging and we feel there’s potential for other uses so we’re consulting with communities all over Vancouver Island to determine what they would want to use the land for.” In 2007, an analysis of TimberWest property identified about 54,000 hectares of TimberWest land with the potential to be used for new, sustainable land management opportunities. The land represents about 17% of TimberWest’s landholdings on Vancouver Island and includes land around the Nanaimo Lakes and Mount Benson. Last week, Bruyneel told the Parksville and District Chamber of Commerce said that while forestry remains TimberWest’s main concern, with 80% of its holdings devoted to logging, land development is its new major thrust as the forestry downturn continues with no end in sight. http://www.canada.com/nanaimodailynews/news/story.html?id=dadc1a76-4c98-4f7d-ab3e-48aaa911841d

Canada:

4) Greenpeace Canada has begun a blockade of the freighter Jaeger Arrow from their ship, the Arctic Sunrise, in Quebec’s Saguenay River near Chicoutimi. Three Greenpeace activists are hanging from the ship’s mooring lines while two other activists block the freighter in a zodiac boat to prevent its departure. “Save the Boreal Forest” has been painted on the hull of the freighter. http://weblog.greenpeace.org/makingwaves/archives/2007/09/pulp_freighter_blockade_in_can.html#more – http://c4cargo.com/pulp-freighter-blockade-in-canada

5) In an article published Sept. 12 in this newspaper, Mark Arseneault of the N.B. Forest Products Association eagerly suggested increasing tree plantations to fight the effects of climate change. Our forests can indeed play an important role in climate change adaptation, and it is crucial that enormous reductions in greenhouse gas emissions occur in the next 20 years. The Erdle Task Force report, which contains eight scenarios for Crown forest management, shows that conservation-oriented scenarios would produce up to 20 per cent more carbon sequestration than scenarios that emphasize increasing plantations. If Mr. Arseneault was earnest in his desire to combat the effects of climate change, he would not recommend conversion of our diverse Acadian forest to plantations of a few softwood species. Those softwood species found in commercial plantations are common to boreal (colder) forests, and are projected to fare poorly as our climate warms. Many other tree species that are part of New Brunswick’s diverse forests (and are replaced in plantations) are projected to adapt better to future climate changes. In the Erdle report only one scenario (Option B) explicitly proposes returning New Brunswick’s forests to past levels of diversity. That option also emphasizes increasing protected natural areas, allowing more forest to age into old-growth, and protecting critical species habitats – all essential in the face of oncoming uncertainties of climate change. If any of us is serious about adapting to the effects of climate change, then we need to choose forest diversity over plantations. http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/opinion/article/421411

6) Shocking new photos released today reveal the existence of a massive stockpile of old-growth logs that are destined to become disposable products like Kleenex tissue and Cottonelle toilet paper for tissue giant Kimberly-Clark Corporation (K-C). The logs originate from the Ogoki Forest, the single most ecologically valuable area left in Ontario’s southern Boreal Forest and the site of growing controversy. The stockpile is evidence of Kimberly-Clark’s egregious mismanagement of the forests despite company claims that “much of [the] fiber from the Canadian Boreal forest comes to K-C in the form of wood pulp produced from sawdust and chips – or leftovers – of the lumber production process.” As these new photos and recent government correspondence reveal, Kimberly-Clark is currently purchasing huge quantities of pulp made primarily from whole, old-growth trees from intact areas of Canada’s Boreal Forest. And, some astonishing facts from a recent report that Greenpeace put out on Kleenex, “Cut and Run”: 1) Kimberly-Clark uses hundreds of thousands of tonnes of tree fibre from the Kenogami Forest every year to produce disposable tissue products, including Kleenex. 2) Kimberly-Clark directly managed and logged the Kenogami Forest for 71 years, from 1937 to 2004. 3) Since Kimberly-Clark started logging there, 71 per cent of the Kenogami Forest has been fragmented. Woodland caribou have been driven out of 67 per cent of the forest, and wolverines have completely disappeared from its boundaries. 4) Between 2001 and 2006 alone, 220,500 hectares (544,635 acres) of intact forest was fragmented—an area more than twice the size of Dallas. 5) Caribou are predicted to die-off in 95 per cent of the forest within the next 20 years, due to the logging that has already been done. Eighty per cent of the monitored species in the forest are predicted to decline substantially within the next 100 years. 6) Many of the remaining intact and old-growth forest areas in Kenogami, including critical threatened species habitat, are slated to be cut under the 2005–2010 and draft 2010–2011 plans. http://thebirdsandthepcbs.blogspot.com/2008/09/consumer-rumors-time-to-stop-buying.html h

7) “This area is richer in plant and animal species than any other area in Canada. However, although these forests account for less than 1% of Canada’s landmass they hold half of all the rare and endangered species of plants and animals in this country. The human population in the Carolinian Zone is expected to grow by a third in the next 25 years putting further pressure on clearing existing remnant forests.” I understand that some organizations like www.carolinian.org attempt to designate more Carolinian forest as “protected”. However, they do not attempt to promote an awareness of human overpopulation and the need to stop growth to preserve biodiversity. History demonstrates that protected areas will not be preserved alongside human population growth. “Smart Growth” is an oxymoron because regardless of how people are situated, each new person must consume finite resources in order to survive. Most of the population growth that destroys our Carolinian forests comes deliberately from immigration, and could be easily prevented by a simple policy change. Pronatalist incentives such as baby-bonuses are also easily preventable. Both measures will require adequate public education so that the average Canadian understands that their quality of life comes from biodiversity and a generous amount of natural resources per capita, not perpetual economic growth (year-to-year GDP increase driven by population growth and per capita consumption growth). My question to you is, what do you think it would take to preserve Southern Ontario’s Carolinian forests in the long term? http://ecologicalcrash.blogspot.com/2008/09/strategy-to-preserve-carolinian-forests.html

8) By the end of the year the provincial government will decide whether to better protect our endangered Acadian forest or push it to the brink of extinction. They will use two reports released on Aug. 27 to guide their decision. One report is a menu of seven forest management options and the other is an analysis of global market opportunities for the forestry sector. The first report, prepared by the Task Force on Forest Diversity and Wood Supply, included the participation of the Conservation Council’s Policy Director David Coon. This report describes the impacts of the different forest management options on forest diversity and wood supply. The second report by CIBC economist Don Roberts and Woodbridge Associates recommends increasing wood supply to forestry companies. Increasing wood supply would mean a reduction in conservation areas and an increase in tree farms at a time when our forest is at a critical state. Twenty-five per cent of our public forest is now less than 20 years old. Over half of our bird species’ populations are not secure. Increasing wood supply would not ensure that mills stay open. Industry prefers Option E, which is the Self-sufficiency Task Force option the Minster of Natural Resources had the Task Force analyze. Option E would see 20 per cent of trees harvested by clearcutting and 37 per cent of our public forest converted to plantations. Many citizens of New Brunswick are repulsed by the impacts of clearcuts. Clearcutting must be cut in half to help restore our Acadian forest, protect animal and plant habitats, and safeguard our streams and rivers. The primary objective of the industry option is to increase current and future softwood supply through reductions in conservation areas and increases in plantation areas. Riparian buffers would be reduced to 20 metres under their option, which will destroy water quality, aquatic habitats, and kill fish. Option E would decimate forest diversity and weaken the forest’s ability to recover from disturbances that are increasing in frequency due to climate change, including: fires, pest outbreaks, droughts and floods. We need to manage for abundant wildlife habitat, protection of streams and rivers, climate change impacts and forest diversity in terms of age and species. The Conservation Council therefore supports the conservation-oriented options A and B described in the first report. These options increase protected areas, and restore old growth forest conditions, while reducing clearcutting and capping plantations. Option B focuses on ensuring our forest can withstand the ravages of climate change by restoring the diversity of species, which will be unaffected by global warming. Option B also increases the minimum area of old forest to 51 per cent by 2062, providing critical habitat for species that can only survive in such conditions like pileated woodpeckers, owls and flying squirrels. http://www.conservationcouncil.ca/News/news09150803.aspx