357 BC-Canada

–British Columbia: 1) Loggers prevent critical habitat, 2) Spruce budworm / Tussock moth, 3)As if the forests were saved: enviros and loggers join hands, 4) Salvage of Beetle kill makes problem worse, 5) Island timberlands kills non-conifers/poisons neighbors,
–Canada: 6) Tembec shuts down all harvesting until Nov., 7) Heron rookery destruction heads to trial, 8) A demonstration of what’s wrong with mining claims, 9) Battles over Indigenous land rights continue to this day, 10 ) Treeclimbing, 11) Oil sands’ conservation offsets? 12) From age 7 to 104 they speak for the trees,

British Columbia:

1) Confidential BC government documents recently released to the Wilderness Committee and Ecojustice reveal political interference in the overdue Recovery Strategy for the Vancouver Island marmot one of the world’s most endangered mammals. Despite the fact that the marmot has been intensively studied, and its habitat has been mapped and identified, no critical habitat is identified in its draft Recovery Strategy. The identification and protection of critical habitat, the area an endangered species needs to survive or recover, is essential for the recovery of species. This is especially important given that over 80 percent of species at risk in Canada are at risk because of the loss and fragmentation of their habitat. Recovery strategies for species at risk are required under the Federal Species at Risk Act. BC is leading the development of numerous recovery strategies for provincially at-risk wildlife. Recovery strategies are legally required to identify critical habitat to the extent possible. The lack of critical habitat identification is a hallmark of recovery strategies spearheaded by the BC Government. Last year an internal memo released to the Wilderness Committee and Ecojustice revealed the provincial government explicitly instructed recovery teams to not map critical habitat. Maps are key to identifying the location of critical habitat and thus essential to its eventual protection. The newly released confidential government documents regarding the Vancouver Island marmot, which include emails between BC government bureaucrats and recovery team members, contain concerning comments including: 1) “The Government stripped out identification of critical habitat. Things keep changing.” 2) “It is not clear from the text why currently occupied “I must say I am rather )3habitat couldn’t be identified . . . ”  disappointed with the state of the recovery strategy at this stage. Especially for such a high profile species with so much money invested in it. . . This document is likely to get a lot of public scrutiny, and it is already overdue.” “We have a big problem,” said Gwen Barlee, policy director with the Wilderness Committee. “The BC government has a written policy which is preventing the identification and mapping of critical habitat in recovery strategies even when there is enough scientific knowledge to do so. They don’t want to identify and protect critical habitat because they don’t want to step on the toes of industry that is shameful.” http://www.wildernesscommittee.org

2) Rogan said spruce budworm, a moth that eats new shoots on fir and spruce trees in its larval stage, is plentiful in Kamloops and the surrounding Crown forest. It can kill saplings in one year. And over several years of attack, even mature trees are at serious risk. While the Ministry of Forests is spraying thousands of hectares surrounding the city, there is no control program in Kamloops. And another pest, tussock moth — far more destructive than spruce budworm — also threatens to turn what’s left of Kamloops’ tree canopy a grey and lifeless swath. “We’re approaching what we’d call year one,” said Lorraine Maclauchlan, an entomologist with the B.C. Forest Service, of tussock moth. “It’s cyclical and appears almost magically and in big numbers. After three years it crashes just as fast.” Tim Hall, a Barnhartvale landowner, knew even before he could see any damage or see the larvae that he was facing an infestation of tussock moth that began last year. “You can smell them before you can see them,” said Hall. “You get a sweet smell and that’s the smell of tussock moth.” In large numbers, the moths can cause allergic reactions in some people when hairs fill the air and cause symptoms ranging from rash and itching to anaphylactic shock. “I had the full reaction,” said Deborah Murray, owner of Thompson River Tree Service, who ended up with an infection from taking out five trees at Rayleigh elementary this year. “Every inch of the branches had a cocoon.” For spruce and fir trees, even hardy Colorado blue spruce varieties used in landscaping, the moth “can and does kill trees in a single year,” Maclauchlan said. Unlike pine beetle, which kills trees by burrowing into bark, spruce budworm and tussock moths eat shoots and needles. Like pine beetle, when populations are in check, they help the ecosystem by preying on weak trees, thinning out the canopy and increasing growth on neighbouring timber. But large outbreaks can wipe out 40 per cent or more of timberlands and stunt growth for a decade of those trees that do survive. For unwary neigbourhoods, the insects can strip and kill valued trees. Maclauchlan is overseeing spraying this week for tussock moth around the city, particularly in the Barnhartvale area where Hall’s 44-hectare property has already been hard hit by pine beetle. landwatch@lists.onenw.org

3) Their roadside confrontations over old-growth coastal forests a fading memory with the establishment of new rules and conservation areas, environmentalists and forest workers are joining forces to focus on restoring B.C.’s historic links between timber harvesting and local jobs. The Wilderness Committee and Steelworkers issued a joint statement calling on the province to establish a “forest land reserve” to protect B.C.’s forests from residential development, similar in concept to the agricultural land reserve. Wu says with three quarters of B.C.’s south coastal forests now second-growth, B.C. should be ensuring investment in mills and manufacturing from private and public forest lands. “Conservation and sustainability of jobs go hand in hand,” Wu said at the Fort Langley demonstration. “The government needs to be proactive, with retooling and investment, otherwise when there is recovery we will be logging but without the milling jobs.” Steelworkers representative Scott Lunny welcomed the environmental group’s help to push for requiring local manufacturing as a condition of all forest licences. The combined effort is planned to continue up the May 2009 provincial election. “Any support we can get for our efforts to protect B.C. jobs is welcomed in these desperate times,” Lunny said. After ending the requirement for local milling, the B.C. Liberal government began releasing private forest lands from tree farm licences at the request of companies on Vancouver Island. The licences required the private lands to be managed for forest use, in exchange for cutting rights on Crown land. Their release allows key water access and log sort locations to be considered for waterfront development. Another forest land release in the Kootenay region is pending, and is a condition of land sales organized under bankruptcy proceedings for U.S.-based forest company Pope & Talbot. B.C. Auditor General John Doyle is examining whether the government should require compensation from timber companies for releasing private lands. landwatch@lists.onenw.org

4) There is mounting evidence that salvage logging of pine beetle-killed stands causes more ecological degradation than leaving them alone, scientist Phil Burton told a forum at UNBC on Tuesday. Given that only about one-third of the beetle-impacted area is made up of pure lodgepole pine stands, and given that the dominant form of harvesting is clear-cut logging, when salvage operations take place they are also removing the secondary forest structure, he said on the opening day of a two-day forum on the impacts of the pine beetle. That secondary structure — particularly the non-pine species — could provide timber for mills in 20 to 40 years so is important from a mid-term timber supply perspective, explained Burton, who works with the Canadian Forest Service in Prince George. It is an issue that communities in the heart of the beetle-epidemic are particularly concerned about, given the mid-term timber supply is forecast to drop about 40 per cent in the next decade, and even greater in some communities. The decrease in timber supply will bring a decrease in traditional forest-based jobs in many of the forest-based communities. The Canadian Forest Service has estimated that a conservative 22-per-cent decrease in the timber supply, will cause 600 job losses in Burns Lake and Houston. In Prince George, a conservative 17-per-cent decrease in the timber supply would cause a job loss of 2,900. Burton said the salvage logging can also have an impact on wildlife habitat given the large areas of salvage logging. It is important that wildlife have snags and brush to hide in, or they will be forced off the land and be compromised, he said. Wide-spread salvage logging is also an issue for carbon loss, as there are projections that show a greater loss of carbon from salvage-logged areas, he said. Carbon loss is an issue in climate change as carbon is considered a greenhouse gas, in part, responsible for warming temperatures. The forum, organized by the Forest Research Extension Partnership (FORREX), a non-profit organization which partners with industry and government, is meant to provide an opportunity for scientists and industry and community leaders to share lessons learned from the epidemic and explore community-based solutions. http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/20080610135926/local/news/beetle-logging-could-be-hurting-f
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5) Starting as soon as Monday (June 16), Island Timberlands plans to apply pesticides to kill maple and alder trees on its privately owned lands north of Cliff Gilker Park, near the B&K logging road in Roberts Creek. The move has some neighbourhood residents crying foul. Brett Heneke lives on Day Road and said trails in the area are heavily used by mountain bikers, trail walkers and horse riders. Gough, Clack and Roberts creeks all pass through cutblocks that will be affected. Island Timberlands manager of community affairs Mackenzie Leine said the pesticide will be delivered through a basal application of glyphosate (sold in stores as Vantage and Roundup) and triclopyr (which also goes by the brand name Release). “It’s actually a benign application of herbicide,” she said, noting there will be no broadcast spraying involved. All neighbours within 150 metres of the treatment area boundaries were notified in a letter sent out on May 26, meeting the minimum 10-day notification period required. Any water sources identified, such as wells, will be given a 30-metre radius of protection. The application won’t begin until the weather stays dry for a few days, she added. These are all minimum margins of protection required under the province’s 2003 Integrated Pest Management Act, said Dan Bouman, executive director of the Sunshine Coast Conservation Association. The act requires a forestry operator to detail what pesticides they’ll use and what areas they will target — not enough information with which to evaluate the possible risks to the ecosystem and to those living nearby, Bouman said.“The system this new act replaces had provisions in place for a member of the public to appeal to higher bodies,” he said. “Now, the public has no right of appeal.”At the June 5 infrastructure services committee meeting, the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) board passed a motion, put forward by Gibsons director Barry Janyk, that Island Timberlands be requested to find alternatives to using pesticides. The SCRD will also send a letter outlining the SCRD’s pesticide policy to Stuart MacPherson, the executive director of the private managed forest land (PMFL), and copy it to the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). http://www.coastreporter.net/madison%5CWQuestion.nsf/0/9CA0A0DB6407869B8825746700167705?OpenD
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Canada:

6) Tembec is halting all harvesting activities in Northeastern Ontario until November. The decision will temporarily affect about 100 employees mainly in the Hearst and Kapuskasing area. There is a sufficient supply of logs to meet production requirements given the stockpiles already in mill yards and in bush inventories. Tembec says the harvesting suspension is another indication of the serious state of lumber market conditions, driven primarily by the dramatic fall in the number of housing starts south of the border. Tembec is active in the Hearst forest and has equal ownership with Kruger in Marathon Pulp. http://foresttalk.com/index.php/2008/06/12/harvesting_halts_in_northeastern_ontario

7) BURTON — New Brunswick forestry giant J.D. Irving Ltd., charged in 2006 with destroying blue heron nests while cutting a logging road, will face a trial after the company failed to persuade a judge that the law protecting migratory birds is out of date and unconstitutional. The company and one of its foremen are accused of destroying eight nests on J.D. Irving property in Lower Cambridge. Herons are protected under the federal Migratory Birds Convention Act. Violations are punishable with fines up to $1 million, a three-year prison term or both. Irving lawyers challenged the federal legislation, which has been on the books since 1917, arguing the law is as outdated and infringes on provincial jurisdiction. But provincial court judge Patricia Cumming disagreed. In her decision, she said the protection of migratory birds is an international matter that overlaps federal and provincial jurisdiction. “The subject matter of the legislation is the protection of migratory birds that travel and are found internationally, requiring a single and unified approach to fulfil Canada’s obligations under an international treaty,” she told the court. Irving’s lawyers also argued the wording of the legislation is vague, and that it was meant to deal with the impact of hunting. But Cumming said the wording is clear, and the intention of the Act “remains conservation and protection.” “This is not merely hunting legislation…this is environmental legislation,” she said. Cumming has ordered a trial to begin Oct. 15. Outside the court, the decision was applauded by Jim Wilson, director of Nature New Brunswick. “It’s certainly good news for migratory birds across North America and beyond,” he said. http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jODgL40WxnmaRmp6B9CdneBP1fLg

8) I bought a new axe and a file for sharpening the axe, a huge roll of pink plastic ribbon, donned my official old prospector’s hat and set out around our neighbourhood in lovely rural Kingsville to stake my claims. I consulted geological maps and discovered a possibility that oil and natural gas could be found in my backyard and ravine. There is also potential for salt and, if worse comes to worse, I can always open an aggregate quarry and harvest sand and gravel. We may not have gold in the ground in Kingsville but by jimminey-crackers we still have resource exploitation potential. Some of my neighbours have not been sympathetic to my prospecting. One complained loudly when I took my axe and blazed along the trees of his driveway. And, he’s still fuming about the pink ribbons I’ve hung in his magnolia tree. But, I showed him the Ontario Mining Act and he cowered under my threat to call out Ontario’s Mines Minister Michael Gravelle and troops to enforce my mining claims. Another neighbour was upset simply because I explained to her that her in-ground swimming pool violated my sub-surface mineral rights now that I’d staked a claim around her red maple trees and hung pink ribbon on her forsythia bushes. I warned that her menacing shotgun would be no match for my right to call in the Ontario Mining Commission and its enforcement brigade. I adjusted my GPS, spat a wad of chewin’ tobacco into her daffodils, and carried on. Of course, with all my neighbours, I’ve induced them to my point-of-view with the prospect of big royalties they will surely earn once we bring in a few gas wells in their front and back yards. I suppose the prospect of being a petroleum baron in Kingsville has mollified their initial shock and turned it to awe. We will know much better next year after our initial test well drillings are completed. http://www.kifriends.org/2008/06/why-muskoka-cottage-owners-will-win.html

9) Mention Native peoples being forced off their lands and most Americans think of their high school history books. But battles over Indigenous land rights continue to this day, even right here in North America. Here’s one example, but with a happy ending. Grassy Narrows First Nation is an 800-person community living on 2.4 million acres of Boreal forest in northwest Ontario, 28 hours by car from Toronto. For more than a decade, the community has been fighting the clear-cut logging of its forest. On Tuesday, it won a major victory against the largest paper company in the world: logging giant Abitibi Bowater is formally announcing its decision to stop clear-cutting and buying wood from Grassy Narrows traditional territory today at its shareholder meeting in Montreal. Rainforest Action Network (RAN) began collaborating with Grassy Narrows in 2003, a year after the community established what would become the longest running logging road blockade in North America. RAN helped the community by pressuring U.S. companies Weyerhaeuser and Boise, the major buyers of wood from Grassy Narrows territory, to cancel their contracts with Abitibi. Boise announced that it would do so in February. Weyerhaeuser continued with business-as-usual and is rumored to be considering stepping in to log Grassy Narrows territory for itself after Abitibi leaves. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-brune/major-victory-for-indigen_b_105778.html

10) “Hug the tree, say your name, and ask for permission to climb.” Those instructions begin my 36-metre climb of a white pine that’s more than 200 years old and majestically rooted atop a rocky hillside near Wakefield, Que. I’ll climb to a height of 18 metres — six storeys high — where I’ll rest temporarily atop a unique seven-metre-wide treehouse — one of the largest, if not the largest, in Canada. From there, I’ll get a slight boost as I continue stretching and pulling myself up, literally towards the end of my rope, to a total height of 36 metres — 12 storeys up from the ground. Did I mention that I have a fear of heights? I do, but with my harness secured and ropes double-checked, I feel that this adventure is both scary and safe. My guide is Jamie Robertson, a former highrise window installer, cleaner and certified instructor in something called “highrise suspended access.” Robertson runs a business called Wild Adventures in the forest surrounding Wakefield, incorporating the lushness of the landscape with off-the-path activities meant to heighten an awareness of the joys of being immersed in the natural world. http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/travel/story.html?id=33e9a57a-b5eb-4aa1-826c-4083664
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11) A new system of conservation offsets has been proposed for Alberta’s oil sands and other industries to address the growing impact on biodiversity on the Boreal forest. The report, Catching Up: Conservation and Biodiversity Offsets in Alberta’s Boreal Forest, was commissioned by the Canadian Boreal Initiative (CBI) and brings together experiences from the applications of offset policies in other jurisdictions, with perspectives from industry, First Nations, government, academics and environmental groups in Alberta.Biodiversity or conservation offsets allow resources companies to compensate for the unavoidable effects on biodiversity from their development projects by conserving lands of equal or greater biological value, with the objective being no net loss in biodiversity. “Managing development to maintain biodiversity is a significant challenge in Alberta’s Boreal Forest because of the combined and growing effects of energy and forest sector development,” said Simon Dyer, a leader author of the report. “There is also a real need for conservation to ‘catch up’ to the pace of development. Within Alberta’s Boreal Forest, the amount of land now licensed for development has doubled to 2.8 million hectares over the past five years, and unless key lands are soon secured for conservation, there will be real consequences for wildlife and traditional uses. Conserving forests to offset impacts associated with development projects is a tool industry can use to compensate for their impacts.” The report was supported by Canadian-based energy company Nexen Inc., which is actively looking for ways to reduce the industrial footprint from its oil sands operations. Along with report author Pembina Institute and CBI, Nexen is part of a working group advancing two pilot biodiversity offset projects in northeastern Alberta that seek to protect large areas of the forest from industrial activity, in order to offset some of the biological impacts of development within the region. Other members of the working group include Suncor Energy, Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc., the Little Red River and Tall Cree First Nations, and the Nature Conservancy of Canada Alberta Region. http://www.canadiandriver.com/thenews/2008/06/10/biodiversity-offsets-proposed-for-oil-sands.htm

12) Almost 100 years separated some of the speakers Monday night as Nova Scotians expressed their views on the future of the province’s natural resources. “The animals are really important because if we were animals, we wouldn’t like our homes to be all ruined and all our food to go away,” Laura Bartlett, 7, said in an interview after the public meeting in Halifax. Wilfrid Creighton, 104, had a little more natural resource experience than the younger speakers. He was appointed provincial forester in 1934 and served for 15 years. In 1949, he became deputy minister of the Department of Lands and Forests. For the next 20 years, he said, he worked to improve and expand provincial Crown land. That’s a resource Nova Scotia has been wasting since the province was first settled, he said. “Successive provincial governments have shown little appreciation for the value of our forests,” Mr. Creighton said. “In my estimate, our Crown lands in their present state are worth about $200 an acre, or $800 million in total. With better management, these lands could easily increase in value at least threefold.” Mr. Creighton said more foresters and technicians are needed in the woods, and the additional cost would be offset by the increased forest value. He said it’s up to the government to manage the forests properly and it should ban clearcutting near roads, lakes and rivers. “Once the government has managed its lands properly and set an example, it should enforce existing legislation,” said Mr. Creighton, who received an ovation from the crowd when he finished. Leo Dillman, executive director of Voluntary Planning, said the public meetings are to determine what natural resources issues and concerns are most important to the public. The information gathered from the meetings, along with written submissions, will be compiled in the group’s final report, due in December. http://thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/1061322.html