363 BC-Canada

–British Columbia:1) Coleman finally done! 2) Great Bear’s misery fund, 3) Island Timber trashing Myrtle creek, 4) Western will half production, 5) TimberWest stats. 6) History of Tl’oh collaboration with Apollo,
–Canada: 7) Williams Forestry Station, 8) US governors to Boycott Alberta’s oil sands, 9) New forest minister, 10) Weyco loses again, 11) Property protected on the Frontenac Arch, 12) Industry destroys sustainability, 13) Wireless Forest Sensor Network,

British Columbia:

1) B.C. environmental groups, long calling for Rich Coleman’s political head, said yesterday they were “very happy” he’d been shuffled out of the forestry portfolio. “We’ve been running a campaign asking for his resignation for the last eight months,” said Maurita Prato, forest campaigner with the Dogwood Initiative, a non-profit environmental agency. “About a month ago we submitted a petition into the legislature with 2,000 concerned citizens asking he resign. So of course we’re very happy he’s being shuffled out.” Environmental groups made Coleman the target of frequent criticism since his appointment in 2005, as coastal mills continued to close and tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs. Prato said she believes Coleman could have done more to protect the industry. In March, around 1,300 protesters convened at the legislature to demand Coleman act to save old-growth forests and end raw-log exports. It was the largest protest since the Clayoquot Sound rallies 15 years ago. Susan Howatt, campaigns director for Sierra Club B.C., said Coleman leaves a “horrific legacy” for allowing Western Forest Products to remove about 28,000 hectares of private land from tree-farm licences near Jordan River in 2007. WFP then provisionally sold 2,500 hectares to a developer. WFP also applied to develop subdivisions before government could sign changes to limit lot sizes. The moves sparked an angry outcry from local residents. http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/capital_van_isl/story.html?id=5c03cdf7-5da7-40f
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2) Coast Opportunity Funds consists of two non-profit grant-making programs entrusted to oversee and manage $120 million in public and private funding to support both conservation management and sustainable economic development in the Central and North Coasts of British Columbia and Haida Gwaii. Evolving from groundbreaking land-use decisions made by First Nations and the Province of British Columbia, Coast Funds’ programs are designed to protect the rainforest ecosystem and improve the socio-economic conditions of the aboriginal people who live in the region. Known around the world as the Great Bear Rainforest, this area is part of the largest coastal temperate rainforest left on Earth, an ecosystem of global significance, yet one that is equally important to British Columbia for its potential to create a new, sustainable economy. Coast Opportunity Funds recognizes that economic challenges must be addressed hand in hand with conservation needs in order to build healthy and sustainable First Nation communities. Today and into the future, Coast Opportunity Funds’ unique partnership with First Nations and its long-term commitment to lasting solutions will support new forms of innovation in this extraordinary rainforest region. Download Coast Opportunity Funds Structure Chart http://www.coastfunds.ca/index.htm

3) Island Timberlands has started preliminary logging operations on a block through which a portion of Myrtle Creek flows, despite concerns expressed by a variety of community groups. Wayne French, operations planner, said the harvested area of the cutblock is about 19 hectares, with about seven hectares identified for retention, focused primarily around riparian areas. Selective removal of fir poles started last week, French said, with the main harvesting scheduled to take place shortly after the poling process is complete, in about two weeks. Myrtle Creek is almost nine kilometres long, French pointed out, with almost five kilometres above Island Timberlands block and three and a half kilometres below. “There is only 500 metres of the creek that is within Island Timberlands property,” he said. Island Timberlands private lands are regulated by the Private Managed Forest Land Act. Company representatives say their plans go above and beyond what the private forest land regulations require. “We’ve started looking again at what we could do for stream riparian widths over and above what was legally required for us,” said Makenzie Leine, Island Timberlands’ manager of sustainability and community affairs. “That was looking at the science behind fish habitat and water quality that we needed to know to find that sweet spot between environmental protection and economic value, which is two of the three major things we’re balancing in sustainability.” Island Timberlands has done four complete watershed assessments on its private land and is working on a fifth, she said. The company is applying a stream matrix that was developed as a result of its watershed assessments on its whole land base. For the Myrtle Creek cutblock, the falling boundary is about 40 metres away from the creek. The average for the reserve is about 30 metres wide. “It goes down to about 25 metres in some places, but the concept is we wanted to stay above this breaking slope up on the edge,” said Glynnis Horel, a geological engineer who was hired by Island Timberlands. Myrtle Creek supports coho and chum salmon and cutthroat trout and serves as an indicator stream for wild coho salmon and scientific information on the health of the species. Esther Dyck, a Fisheries and Oceans Canada field technician who monitors the fish escapement fence on Myrtle Creek, told members of the community advisory group to Island Timberlands at its June 11 meeting that the logging was an impending disaster. http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19786712&BRD=1998&PAG=461&dept_id=221589&rfi=6

4) Western Forest Products Inc. (TSX:WEF) says it will cut production in half this summer due to weak markets in the United States and Japan, a move that will affect about 1,850 people who work directly or indirectly for the company. The cuts relate to operations on Vancouver Island, the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Sunshine Coast in July and August and will affect about 650 of Western’s hourly employees and 1,200 contractors. The company, based in Duncan, B.C., announced last month it had a net loss of $17 million in the first quarter, as a decline in log prices and sales volume combined to reduce its revenues by 26 per cent from the same time last year. Revenue fell to $203.7 million down from $276.3 million as the volume of logs sold fell by 30 per cent and average price per log fell by 11 per cent. Western Forest Products had previously reduced its logging operations on Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast during May and June. That meant harvesting was already about one-third lower than normal. In the latest announcement, Western Forest Products said it will also shut down its sawmill at Duke Point during July and August. That’s in addition to the indefinite shutdown of the Ladysmith sawmill and shorter periods of downtime at other mills. http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hileWRQDK7ejWTtbT_gjgapWWqTA

5) TimberWest Forest Corp., together with its subsidiaries, harvests and sells logs primarily in British Columbia. The company’s products include softwood lumber products, wood chips, and sawdust. It supports the growth Douglas fir, western red cedar, hemlock, balsam, and cypress, Sitka spruce, and other species. As of December 31, 2007, the company owned approximately 796,000 acres of private timberland, including 134,000 acres of real estate of located on Vancouver Island. It also involves in the development and sale of real estate properties; and processing and sale of softwood lumber produced by its Elk Falls sawmill located at Campbell River on Vancouver Island. In addition, the company owns renewable Crown harvest rights to 0.7 million cubic meters of logs per year. It sells its products to customers primarily located in Japan, China, Belgium, Australia, Canada, and the United States. The company was founded in 1997. It was formerly known as TAL Acquisition, Ltd. and changed its name to TimberWest Forest Holdings Ltd. in June 1997. Further, it changed its name to TimberWest Forest Management Limited in January 1998, and subsequently to TimberWest Forest Corp. on September 30, 1998. The company is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. With 77.75 million shares outstanding and 240,300 shares declared short as of May 2008, there is no longer a failure to deliver in shares of TWTUF. According to quarterly data provided by the SEC, there were still 10,352 shares of TWTUF that were failing-to-deliver as of August 14, 2007. http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1698731/

6) One of his proudest accomplishments was helping develop Tl’oh Forest Products — a value-added sawmill created from a joint venture between the band and Apollo Forest Products. The mill employs about 60 workers, 80 per cent of whom are first nations people. Securing a provincial tree farm licence to supply the mill was no easy task. The nearby Tl’azt’en Nation gained a licence in the 1980s and Thomas helped them set up reforestation programs. But he felt strongly his own band could benefit by gaining a similar asset. “There was really good money to be made in the timber industry then and we had nothing going on in our community,” he said. ” … So we decided to block off a route through our reserve where logs were being transported out of the community. “We told the government nobody could take anything out until we got something in return.” The four-person, four-hour blockade strategy worked. The Nak’azdli nation applied for, and received, a provincial tree farm licence and the sawmill opened in 1994. The band plans to use mill profits to build a new reserve grocery store and it also operates a successful gas station, which contributes about $125,000 a year to a band-owned school. Thomas, who is president of the B.C. First Nations Forestry Council, has a special interest in the devastating impact of the mountain pine beetle, which has destroyed local forests. He feels the dying forests are susceptible to fires and has pushed federal officials hard for funding to help first nations communities develop more resources to respond to fires. Thomas knows the downturn in the timber industry means the regional economy must diversify and he wants to do what he can to bring that about. Tourism has great potential, he said, and so does mining. But he still has environmental questions bout a $917-million copper-gold mine proposed for the area by Terrane Metals. http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=01ccd520-4581-4cac-b8af-29d5ab1
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Canada:

7) In an effort to reforest areas cleared of trees, the provincial government in 1908 opened the St. Williams Forestry Station, Canada’s first forestry station. Over the years, hundreds of millions of tree seedlings have been produced at the station and planted across Ontario. The forestry station — now operated by a private company called ForestCare — will celebrate a legacy of helping keep Ontario green with a 100th anniversary public celebration on July 12. While the St. Williams facility was privatized in 1997, its history as a provincially operated forest station is chronicled in an interpretive centre that opened on the station grounds in 2005. Members of the Port Rowan-Walsingham Heritage Association formed a committee with an aim of establishing the centre in 2003. “We feel (the forestry station) is an important story in this area and that we had to preserve this story so the descendants of the pioneers and the descendants of those who worked here could know the history,” says heritage association president Paul Smith. John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, in the early 19th-century encouraged settlement in the Norfolk area by offering 100-acre and 200-acre plots of land in exchange for a promise that settlers would clear land of the forests of pine and hardwood trees that covered the area. The objective of the policy was to clear the land so it could be dedicated to producing food, but things didn’t go as planned. Because of Norfolk’s sandy soils, much of the land lost its fertility once trees were cleared — turning it into a desert-like environment — and many settlers were reduced to subsistence living. The policy introduced by Simcoe led to tens of thousands of acres of land being cleared of forest cover, up to 30 percent of the land in present-day Norfolk County. “They said when the wind came up, the sky would be black because of the sand blowing,” says heritage association member Ingrid McKee. http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1087378

8) Alberta politicians and oil producers are fighting back at a resolution passed by U.S. mayors calling for a boycott of fuel from Alberta’s oilsands. At their annual meeting in Florida, the American mayors passed a resolution that urges major American cities to ban the use of fuel from the oilsands in municipal vehicles. The mayors claim that producing oil from the oilsands emits three times as much carbon dioxide into the environment as conventional oil production. Calgary’s mayor responded to the resolution by inviting the mayors to visit Alberta and learn more about the province’s oil industry. “When you have an important group such as this one passing a resolution saying do not use Alberta oil from the oilsands, I think it’s important to us that we wake up and say this is an early warning and a signal,” Dave Bronconnier told CTV Calgary’s Kevin Green. Alberta Finance Minister Iris Evans was angered by the news of the resolution, and said it is the result of a lack of understanding of how Alberta produces oil. “It offends me deeply to hear people say dirty oil,” Evans said. However, Pierre Alvarez of the Canadian Association of Oil Producers, said such a resolution would be almost impossible to enforce because a litre of fuel cannot be traced back to the oil from which it was produced. Alvarez said his organization needs to do a better job of educating people about the environmental impact of oil production. “We’ve been great at talking about the economic issues,” said Alvarez. “I think maybe we need to spend a little more time talking about the environmental issues.” Most of Alberta’s $11 billion in oil revenue comes from the oilsands, but Alvarez said the resolution won’t have an economic impact. However, the Sierra Club of Canada believes the controversy surrounding the oilsands will only grow. “I wouldn’t be surprised, particularly with an American election coming up later this year, if this became more of an issue,” said the Sierra Club’s Grady Semmens. http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080624/oilsands_boycott_080624/20080624?h
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9) It can’t be said that new Forests Minister Pat Bell doesn’t know the issues that afflict his portfolio. He’s the MLA from Prince George North, whose riding includes Mackenzie, where more than 1,000 forest workers have been laid off and every major forestry operation in town has been shut down. Bell’s appointment has been well received by the industry. He is a former contract logger himself. But a lot is riding on the new minister. “I think he knows a lot of our issues well. With the support of the premier and the government, we are hopeful that the new minister can help us define a vision for our industry well into the future,” said Dave Lewis, executive director of the Truck Loggers Association. But the government Bell represents is widely perceived, whether rightly or wrongly, as partly responsible for not having made forestry a top priority on its agenda. Further, as agriculture and lands minister, Bell played a significant role in shaping some of the issues that affect the industry today. http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=6c74664a-e988-444e-aec4-3312b9c
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10) The Department of Natural Resources has announced it has formally taken over Crown licence five, formerly allocated to forestry company Weyerhaeuser. Weyerhaeuser held the license for eight years following it’s takeover from Eagle Forest Products in 2000. The American forestry giant shut down its Miramichi OSB mill in January 2007 and permanently closed it on June 6 this year. The company announced in April the mill will be dismantled over the summer if it continuing efforts to find a buyer for the facility are unsuccesful. http://miramichileader.canadaeast.com/news/article/331321

11) The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) is proud to announce the protection of an ecologically significant property on the Frontenac Arch, just north of Kingston. Together with Environment Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR) and private donors, NCC has secured a critical wildlife corridor between Frontenac Provincial Park and the Queen’s University Biological Station. The spectacular property is also part of NCC’s annual Gifts to Canadians program. “It is wonderful to have two of our major partners here to celebrate with us today,” remarked Donna Stewart, NCC Ontario’s Regional Vice President. “It is the power of partnership that enables us to accomplish incredible conservation feats like protecting this important property, making sure that places like this will stand forever.” The 1,100 acre (445-hectare) property has been secured with support from the Government of Canada under the Natural Areas Conservation Program. This program, launched in April 2007, is a $225 million investment by the Federal government towards conservation across Canada. The bulk of these funds are being used to advance NCC’s land conservation work across Canada, and NCC is committed to matching the federal dollars, delivering an overall investment in conservation of $500 million. The property includes 6 kilometres of shoreline on Upper Rock Lake, Elbow Lake, and Spectacle Lake. These waters drain into the Cataraqui River, part of the recently dedicated Rideau Waterway World Heritage Site. The lands are part of the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Reserve, designated by UNESCO in recognition of this unique landscape where natural heritage and human development coexist. The property contains numerous wetlands and supports Canadian species at risk such as Eastern Ratsnake, Common Musk Turtle, Cerulean Warbler and Butternut trees.
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2008/23/c6688.html

12) Dean Crocker fears it may lead to the demise of his business. Crocker owns an outfitting lodge approximately eight km into the backwoods near Clarenville. The Department of Natural Resources, Forestry sector, is gearing up to start work on a road that will make the timber adjacent to Beaver Pond, near North West Brook, accessible for cutting. The area was targeted as a priority for harvest in the department’s five-year forest management plan(2007-2011) for forestry unit 2, due to the advanced age and species content of the timberstands in the area. The block contains approximately 38,200 cubic metersand harvesting should be completed over the next five years. To provide access to this timber stand, the department plans to upgrade 4.2 km of Tower Road, widen 5.8 km of the train railway and construct 2 km of new accessroad near Beaver Pond. The old railway bed is the narrow trail Crocker follows to his lodge, using his all-terrain vehicle. He brings in tourists from all over the world, taking them on biggame hunts, wilderness adventures and snowmobile safaris, giving them a feel for the remote life – all via the railway bed. Apart from the railway there’s little sign of man, once you reach the depths of the forest near Crocker’s lodge. He’s heard rumors of this impending road development for some time, but never imagined the day would come. “Nobody ever contacted me or let me know anything about it so I just figured well… it’s not going to happen,” Crocker admits. Natural Resources Minister Kathy Dunderdale wasn’t available for comment on the issue. According toan email reply, provided by the department’s public relations officer Tracey Barron; in September 2007, the forest management plan was registered with theDepartment of Environment and Conservation for Environmental Assessment (EA), which includes inviting public comment. It was released from theEA process in December and is publicly available. This doesn’t cut it for Crocker, who feels he was left in the dark on the matter, until after tenders were awarded to the construction companies and the project was basically underway. http://www.thepacket.ca/index.cfm?sid=146361&sc=368

13) Have you ever wondered what happens in the rainforest when no one is looking? The departments of computing science and Earth and atmospheric science at the University of Alberta have been working together to create a Wireless Sensor Network that allows for the clandestine data collection of environmental factors in remote locations and its monitoring from anywhere in the world where the Internet is available. The research team, including Pawel Gburzynski, Mario Nascimento, and Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa, recently launched EcoNet, a functional model of a WSN for environmental monitoring in the display house in the University of Alberta’s Agriculture/Forestry Centre. The display house hosts a small but feature-rich environment that mimics that of a tropical forest. Using a WSN, a number of sensors can continuously monitor factors like temperature and luminosity and will process, store, and transmit data co-operatively and wirelessly with other sensors to generate data that can then be collected and made available to users virtually anywhere on the globe. The sensors represent a technology for researchers to monitor diverse phenomena continuously and inconspicuously. Having the data continuously monitored by researchers substantially increases the chances of uncovering anomalies early enough to investigate them promptly and thoroughly. The overall framework of WSN also can be extended for use in other closely related scenarios such as monitoring potentially dangerous situations like hazardous waste disposal, or hard-to-witness phenomena such as ice cap movements in the Arctic. http://www.eponline.com/articles/64574/