Inquiry Finds BC Timber Sales Ignored Most Everything In Logging Old-Growth On Vancouver Island
But they logged it, because, you know, that's the main thing.
The B.C. government has put biodiversity and old-growth at risk in Vancouver Island’s Nahmint River watershed, which is home to ancient forests with some of the province’s largest Douglas fir trees, a Forest Practices Board investigation has found. The investigation, released on Wednesday, concluded the B.C. forests ministry erred in approving a forest stewardship plan put forward by BC Timber Sales, the government agency responsible for auctioning off provincial logging permits.
The plan failed to meet land-use objectives for biodiversity protection, including where and how much old-growth forest should be conserved in the 20,000-hectare watershed southwest of Port Alberni, the three-year investigation found. “BC Timber Sales’ forest stewardship plan did not meet the legal objective, and it should not have been approved,” Forest Practices Board chair Kevin Kriese said in a statement. “We looked at the remaining forest in the watershed and found there are some ecosystems that could be at risk if more logging takes place in them.”
The investigation also found BC Timber Sales did not follow good conservation design, use available ecosystem mapping or ensure forest ecosystems were adequately represented at the landscape level through old-growth management areas. These issues have occurred “over a long period of time and are creating real risks to ecosystems,” the board found.
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The investigation was triggered by a complaint from the Ancient Forest Alliance, following a May 2018 trip to the Nahmint Valley by Inness and other alliance members, including photographer TJ Watt, as well as members of the Port Alberni Watershed-Forest Alliance. Their fact-finding expedition discovered exceptionally large Douglas fir trees — including the fifth and ninth widest Douglas firs ever recorded in the province — scattered amidst the remains of an extensive clearcutting operation. The two groups also documented old-growth cedar stumps measuring almost four metres in diameter.
Inness said trip participants were amazed by the sheer beauty of the Nahmint Valley, which has some of the grandest and most intact ancient rainforests in B.C. outside of the Great Bear Rainforest and Clayoquot Sound. “On the flip side, we were struck by the sheer scale and pace of the old-growth logging that was happening there,” she said. “It was as though the trees could not be cut fast enough.”
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Before and after images of a massive Douglas fir tree in the Nahmint Valley. According to the B.C. Big Tree Registry, this Douglas fir was the ninth-largest of its kind in Canada. Photo: TJ Watt