British Columbia: New Community forest with Whistler & tribes

Whistler Council voted this week to sign a partnership with the
Lil’wat and Squamish nations to create an arms-length corporation that
will jointly run the long-anticipated Cheakamus Community Forest.
Though returning Councillors Eckhard Zeidler and Ralph Forsyth
repeated prior concerns about the feasibility of reaching the annual
allowable cut of 20,000 cubic meters of wood from the community forest
area, the vote at Monday’s (Dec. 15) first regular meeting of the new
Council was unanimous to sign the partnership agreement. Heather
Beresford, the municipality’s manager of environmental stewardship,
explained that Council’s resolution in August that Whistler be exempt
from the allowable-cut requirements imposed by the Ministry of Forests
and Range would be a “show stopper” for the community forest.
Provincial legislation requires an annual allowable cut of wood to be
assigned to every forest tenure awarded, she said.

This week’s vote
included a withdrawal of Council’s August resolution. While Zeidler
acknowledged the annual-cut exemption “isn’t going to fly,” he pointed
out that since the community forest tenure area was initially
developed, “tremendous changes” have taken place in the amount of land
available for logging. New conservancies and other exclusions have
reduced available land by about 30 per cent, but the proposed annual
cut amount has remained the same, he said. Zeidler and Forsyth both
questioned whether parcels visible from Highway 99 or elsewhere in the
valley would have to be logged to achieve the annual cut. Though she
admitted it’s “challenging” to find places to harvest, Beresford said
the harvesting plan will be based on small parcels and won’t include
“large clear cuts.” Local forester Peter Ackhurst, who will be one of
Whistler’s directors on the community forest board, said the areas
with the least visual impact will be chosen. “It would have to be the
last tree standing before we would do that,” he said of logging next
to the highway. The community forest allows local officials to have
control over logging within Whistler’s boundaries and surrounding
areas, and the three partners are committed to using an
ecosystem-based management approach for more environmentally
responsible logging.
http://www.whistlerquestion.com/article/20081218/WHISTLER01/312189976/1030/whistler

Posted via email from Deane’s posterous