Below is a rough timeline of 4 years since the BC NDP government came to power of the key developments and associated facts related to provincial old-growth forest policy, with links to key sources provided.
It should be noted that protected areas in the province are overwhelmingly created through systematic land-use planning processes, and the last time a province-wide set of land-use planning initiatives (based on the objectives of the time) had been undertaken was the early and mid-1990’s under the NDP government of Mike Harcourt when hundreds of new protected areas were designated under the Protected Areas Strategy, the Clayoquot, CORE and LRMP land-use plans, and with (deficient) old-growth and biodiversity guidelines outlined in the Forest Practices Code. To get to this point today in 2021, where hundreds of other areas will likely be protected via a set of province-wide old-growth policies and new legislation with area-based deferral and protection initiatives, has been a massive, decades-long effort involving the expanded awareness and engagement of hundreds of thousands of British Columbians speaking up for the protection of old-growth forests, including the engagement of broader and more diverse sectors of society than in the 1990’s (alliances between environmentalists and forestry workers, unions, businesses, and local governments have been developed in particular since the 2000’s), while First Nations whose unceded territories these are have increasingly developed their own land use plans and old-growth protection initiatives.
Right now, the development of a new set of old-growth management policies and the ensuing land-use plans being developed by First Nations regarding old-growth logging deferrals and protected/forest reserve areas will fundamentally decide the fate of the remaining old-growth forests in BC. It cannot be stated enough how vital these next few months and years will be for old-growth forests, which are now down to their last remnants of high-productivity stands (where the classic forest giants at the heart of the debate are concentrated) that are largely still being logged- we have now entered the most decisive time period for the last of the best ancient forests in BC, and all hands on deck are required.
The potential for a seismic shift in land use and old-growth protection across BC is huge - but so is the inertia of a reluctant government and timber industry to maintain the status quo. Read on.
Through a review of the timeline below, several facts become clear:
The BC government wants to maintain the status quo of large-scale old-growth logging for as long as possible, until the end. In particular, central to their interests is to minimize protection and ensure continued logging of the high-productivity (ie. grandest) old-growth stands most sought after by the timber industry that are the “ecological heart” of old-growth forests and that are also at the heart of the political controversy.
The BC NDP government is “pushable” by the conservation movement, steadily being moved by the decades-long expansion of public awareness and pressure (and ultimately, due to a fear of the insurgent BC Green Party in swing ridings) to make commitments and incrementally open the door for further policy changes to protect more old-growth – but they are doing so with great reluctance and resistance.
For the first time in over 25 years, the BC government has opened the door to a potential major new policy overhaul of provincial old-growth policies that could result in the large-scale protection of the several million hectares of remaining old-growth forests in BC – if the conservation movement keeps expanding and supports key financing for First Nations Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas and the associated sustainable economic alternatives. The key turning point in this policy shift was the appointment of the Old-Growth Strategic Review public input panel in the Fall of 2019, which resulted in a series of environmental recommendations to overhaul the old-growth policies in BC involving a “paradigm shift”, according to the panel.
The BC government has employed all manner of strategies to buy time for more “talk and log” to continue the status quo of old-growth liquidation. Being a time-constrained issue, this has deadly consequences for the ecosystems that are being clearcut and replaced by tree-plantations. The key strategies employed by the BC NDP government to sustain the status quo of massive old-growth liquidation include:
Creating more consultations and processes – literally consultations about the previous consultations now - to buy time and delay any change on the ground
To inflate the statistics of the amount of old-growth that remains and is protected by combining the small trees with the big trees. That is, by including vast tracts of low-productivity old-growth with small trees of low to no timber value, growing in bogs, on steep rock faces, and in subalpine landscapes, together with the far scarcer medium to high productivity old-growth forests of great timber value (and conservation value) at the centre of the controversy. It’s like including your Monopoly money with your real money, then claiming to be a millionaire – so why stop spending your real money?
By undertaking 2 year logging deferrals on scattered areas around the province that largely consist of low-productivity old-growth, already protected or reserved old-growth, second-growth, clearcuts and non-forested landscapes, and claiming the entire area as newly “protected old-growth”, making the public believe these are vast tracts of previously endangered old-growth trees that have been saved.
By creating a straw man of their environmental opponents’ positions (the new Forest Minister Katrine Conroy in particular is guilty of this), insinuating that enviro-groups want to immediately shut down the forest industry. In reality the call is for the government to implement its own public input panel’s recommendations to immediately defer logging on all high-productivity and most at risk old-growth types – a tiny subset of all forests in BC. The government then knocks-down the false construct of an argument that they themselves erected, in a bid to make themselves look like “reasonable moderates” who want a “balance” between forestry jobs and protection when already 92% of all high-productivity old-growth has been logged, and most forest lands across BC are second-growth that are open to logging.
Most importantly, by continuing to increase the economic dependency of First Nations communities, whose unceded lands these are and who ultimately decide which areas are deferred and protected or not, on old-growth logging revenues in the form of revenue-sharing, joint-venture, employment and tenure agreements – while failing to provide any funding for the sustainable economic alternatives (tourism, sustainable seafood, clean energy, non-timber forest products, carbon offsets, etc.) that would allow First Nations to choose a conservation-based approach to land management that protects old-growth forests on a major scale. By doing so, they are calculating that First Nations will ultimately fall on the side of largely entrenching the status quo of old-growth logging if they have an economic dependency on it (as a result of the limited economic options on First Nations reserves and successive governments including the current one fostering and facilitating that economic dependency ultimately for political purposes). However, the federal government has now just kicked-in $2.3 billion for Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas, that may up-end this calculation by the BC government…
The keys now to saving old-growth are:
The province must make all remaining high-productivity old-growth and the most at-risk old-growth central to their deferral and protection agenda.
The province must make science and ecological integrity central to their new forest policies and legislation, including removal of all existing caps or maximum limits that conservation measures can have on the available timber supply for logging.
Provincial financing, which can be augmented by federal, non-profit and other funding sources, is vital for Indigenous old-growth protection initiatives including First Nations land use plans and Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas. This includes helping to develop the sustainable economic alternatives in First Nations communities tied to old-growth protection, and for private land acquisition.
This will require, as always, the continued build-up of a large-scale, broad-based ancient forest movement that includes support for forestry workers via government incentives and regulations for a value-added, second-growth forest industry and a just transition for workers – and most importantly, support for Indigenous old-growth protection initiatives.
BC Old-Growth Policy Timeline under the BC NDP Government – 2017 to 2021
* Take note this timeline does not include a list of all activities, projects, protests and events from environmental, First Nations, labour, academic, local government and provincial opposition government actors – it is focused on the central provincial policy developments related to old-growth from the BC NDP government.
In April of 2017 the BC NDP's Election Platform included a promise that, if elected, they would "...manage BC's forests and old-growth...and use the ecosystem-based management approach of the Great Bear Rainforest as a model". See page 61 here: https://action.bcndp.ca/page/-/bcndp/docs/BC-NDP-Platform-2017.pdf
That approach in the Great Bear Rainforest, where a science committee (the Coast Information Team) devised protection targets unconstrained by caps on timber supply impacts as occurs everywhere else in BC, resulted in about 85% of all forests being protected, representing all ecosystem types. Such an approach for Vancouver Island, where only about 20% of the original productive old-growth remains, and the rest of BC would effectively end almost all old-growth logging - certainly for the "big tree" (medium to high-productivity) old-growth stands.
After being elected in June of 2017, the NDP government then conveniently "forgot" or ignored their pre-election promise on old-growth (and still to this day). They repeated countless lies and distortions about how much old-growth remains while logging continued in multitudes of contentious old-growth hotspots like the Nahmint Valley where they allowed a company to cut down BC's 9th widest Douglas-fir via BC Timber Sales, the government's logging agency, and adjacent to the Juan de Fuca park near Parkinson Creek and allowed logging in the Walbran Valley, Caycuse Valley, Edinburgh Mountain, and in contentious old-growth areas across the province, with about 55,000 hectares of old-growth on average logged each year according to provincial statistics.
Here is an article by Justine Hunter about their heel-dragging.
and here are a couple Op-Eds written by the EEA’s Ken Wu back then:
Vancouver Sun: What Will it Take to Save BC’s Old-Growth Forests
The Times Colonist: Saving old growth requires more than government talk
As push came to shove (conservation groups campaigned furiously as the BC government continue to ignore the old-growth issue, and the BC Green Party raised the issue increasingly) the BC NDP government announced in the Fall of 2019 that they would convene a public input panel, the Old-Growth Strategic Review panel chaired by independent foresters Al Gorley and Gary Merkel, that would take input from the public and stakeholders from October 2019 to January 2020 - see: https://engage.gov.bc.ca/oldgrowth/
The panel came up with recommendations that essentially call for a paradigm shift and full overhaul of BC's old-growth management policies, including science-based protection of ecosystems and immediate logging deferrals in the high productivity old-growth and the most endangered or at-risk old-growth forest types. The recommendations were sent to the government in April of 2020 and then the BC government sat on them until September of 2020. You can read the full report here.
Take note on pages 55 and 56, in the section on Immediate Deferrals and the "Implementation Advice" point 3, it calls for deferrals on old-growth logging in areas with "Site Index over 20 metres" - what that means is halting all cutting of the grandest stands with the largest trees at the heart of the controversy, of which 415,000 hectares remain in the province. It also advises logging deferrals on the most endangered old-growth types with less than 10% left (by Biogeoclimatic Ecological Classification or BEC variant), oldest forests (over 500 years old in the coastal and inland rainforests and over 300 years in the drier Interior), and most intact areas (areas that "contribute to greater ecological resilience").
In June of 2020, a few months before the Old-Growth Strategic Review report’s public release and the government's response, a team of scientists, Dr. Rachel Holt, Karen Price and Dave Daust of Veridian Ecological Consulting, released a pivotal report that profoundly shaped the political landscape as it pertains to old-growth forests in the province. Their analysis showed that only 8% of the original, high productivity old-growth (the stands of the classic forest giants at the heart of the controversy of Site Index 20 m and above - this means that trees can be expected to grow over 20 meters tall in 50 years) still remain, about 415,000 hectares across BC, and that this only constitutes 3% of the remaining old-growth forests in BC.
It also showed about 2.2 million hectares of medium productivity old-growth remain (also heavily logged by industry, site index 15 to 20 meters), while 10.6 million hectares of generally "small tree" old-growth on low productivity sites remain (site index below 15 meters) in bogs, steep rock faces, and high elevation subalpine snow forests. That is, the situation is extremely dire, as conservationists have been saying all along - and that the province has been conflating all these productivity types into a giant confused mix that fails to make distinctions between productivity classes, ie. big, medium and small-tree old-growth.
It’s like mixing your Monopoly money with your real money and claiming to be a millionaire, so why stop spending your real money? This is the BC government's classic spin technique and policy loophole - log the big, protect the small.
Here is their report (see page 1 for the breakdown of the productivity site index classes)
Here is a key article: Vancouver Sun: Scientists conclude B.C.'s count of old-growth forest greatly overestimated
Here is our press release: Media Release: New Province-Wide Analysis On BC’s Old-Growth Forests Shows A Dire Situation
In September of 2020, the BC Government then released the public input panel's Old-Growth Strategic Review recommendations and simultaneously announced their own old-growth policy direction. What they did essentially was proclaim 2-year logging deferrals in 9 areas (which we'll get to in a minute) which missed the "ecological heart of BC's old-growth forests" (ie. most of the high productivity old-growth or the grandest stands), and stated that they would start another round of consultations with stakeholders (industry, labour, municipalities, enviro's...who were already consulted), and First Nations about the recommendations of the Panel (literally, "consultations about the consultations").
They did not commit to implementing all 14 of the recommendations, including the critical logging deferrals on all remaining high productivity old-growth, nor did they commit to the 3-year timeline to implement them as recommended by the Panel. However, for the first time in decades of old-growth policy stagnation they opened the door to a potential policy overhaul that could lead to major old-growth protection - if we build a much more powerful and diverse movement.
Here is the BC government's announcement
Here is our response: BC's New Old-Growth Policy: Missing The Heart Of Old-Growth Forests, But Shows Some Promise
Regarding their logging deferrals for 2 years on 9 areas that total 353,000 hectares: it turns out only 3,800 hectares, or about 1%, was formerly unprotected high-productivity old-growth...the rest was already protected old-growth, second-growth that could still be logged, alpine non-forested landscapes, and low to medium productivity old-growth.....BUT that didn't stop them from proclaiming an outright lie that they "protected 353,000 hectares of old-growth", stated repeatedly with Facebook ads during their October 2020 election campaign.
There have been more moratoria since then, including a 1-year moratorium in the habitat of Canada's last 3 spotted owls near Yale, and a 70-hectare agreement with the Squamish First Nations to protect a section of Dakota Bowl yellow cedars.
See an analysis at the Vancouver Sun: B.C.’s new old-growth strategy needs improvement, and also at the Narwhal: B.C. allows logging in nine ‘protected’ old-growth areas
The BC election then happened in October of 2020, and under massive pressure from conservationists and the Greens (who made old-growth a central election issue) the BC NDP committed on the campaign trail in Prince George to implement all 14 recommendations of the old-growth strategic review panel.
During the election campaign, the BC NDP placed a series of Facebook ads claiming that they had “protected 353,000 hectares of old-growth” - an outright lie, as they were 2 year logging deferrals, not protected areas, and most of the deferral areas were not previously unprotected high or medium productivity old-growth at the heart of the debate (see above).
However, in March of 2021 the BC NDP government missed the 6 month deadline to implement the main bulk of 2-year logging deferrals, in particular on 415,000 hectares of high productivity old-growth and the other most at-risk old-growth types as recommended by the Old-Growth Strategic Review Panel. Under questioning from Green MLA’s Sonia Furstenau and Adam Olsen, Forest Minister Katrine Conroy then employed all manner of spin, sophistry and deception, claiming that they did implement the required logging deferrals – You can see some exchanges here:
Will the BC NDP talk and log until all old-growth is gone?
and
In April of 2021, the BC NDP government’s new provincial budget was released. It lacked the critical funding at the most critical time in the history of BC’s old-growth forests - funding that is needed while the key consultations are underway with First Nations (whose unceded territories these are) across BC on the logging deferrals (or not), potential protection (or not), and the nature of new key forestry legislation and policies that will be developed over the next 2.5 years that will fundamentally determine the fates of old-growth forests across BC. As such, the BC NDP government’s budget is a significant move to minimize disruption to the status quo of large scale industrial old-growth liquidation by timber companies until the end.
See our media release here: EEA Commends the Old-Growth Forest Resolution of hte Union of BC Indian Chiefs.
For a government to say they’re in favour of old-growth protection but without the requisite funding is like a government declaring their support for education and health care, just not the funding. It's a hollow promise at its core, stated for political PR purposes at the expense of real living things and people.
The BC NDP budget included no major funding commitments to establish new Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas - IPCA's (unlike the $2.3 billion allocated in the federal budget, also released this week, in large part for IPCA's), nor to help finance the sustainable economic alternatives to the dependency on old-growth timber revenues in most First Nations communities (a dependency fostered by successive BC governments, including the current one) in the main "old-growth zones" of BC, nor for the acquisition and protection of private lands with old-growth and endangered ecosystems.
By failing to commit to the key funding for old-growth in their provincial budget, the systematic logging deferrals and protection of the remaining high-productivity old-growth forests and other most at-risk forests cannot happen on a sufficient scale. It will now be up to conservationists and First Nations to leverage a subset of significant federal funds and to raise funding ourselves on a major scale in a short time frame to help protect these endangered ancient forests.
See a key article about conservation financing here: First Nations leaders, conservationists have a new plan to protect old-growth
And the EEA and conservation groups’ joint letter with the Union of BC Indian Chiefs: Critical Funding For First Nations Old-Growth Protection Initiatives Needed From BC Government - Letter
See a joint media release with the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, the EEA, and various First Nations, Scientists, Politicians and Conservationists calling for provincial and federal financing for old-growth protection in BC.
Watch for more CALLS to ACTION shortly on how you can help us expand and broaden the movement towards ensuring critical solutions to protect the last stands of endangered ancient forests. Thank you.
- Ken Wu, Executive Director, Endangered Ecosystems Alliance
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