Environmentalists reject forest reserve

By Judith Lavoie, Times Colonist
A plan by the province to create a commercial forest reserve is being attacked by environmentalists who fear it will put huge tracts of land off limits to future forest conservation.

Ken Wu, campaign director for the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, called the commercial forest reserve announced this week by Premier Gordon Campbell a back-door way of reintroducing the unpopular “working forest” proposal.

The working forest was a government proposal to designate almost half the province as forestry areas to give more certainty to logging companies. The plan was abandoned in 2004 after an outcry by environmentalists.

B.C. forestry minister wants ‘single face’ for China-bound exports

By Nathan VanderKlippe, Financial Post
BEIJING – The CEOs may not like it, but British Columbia’s Forestry Minister is setting out plans to radically remake his province’s approach to selling lumber in China.

Out, in Pat Bell’s plan, are competition and two-by-fours. In are joint marketing and metric sizes, which most B.C. mills are not currently configured to make.

“Let’s get into China and let’s do it as a team,” said Mr. Bell, who has made growing the Chinese market for Canadian lumber a key priority since being named Minister of Forests and Range in June.

Zoning issues to be discussed by CRD board

By Judith Lavoie, Times Colonist
A closed-door meeting of the Capital Regional District board will be held tomorrow to mull over options following a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that struck down zoning bylaws on the southwest corner of Vancouver Island.

A road to a subdivision just past Jordan River.

A closed-door meeting of the Capital Regional District board will be held tomorrow to mull over options following a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that struck down zoning bylaws on the southwest corner of Vancouver Island.

SFU report ‘impetus’ for province to meet Great Bear commitments

-thetyee.ca
British Columbia is a biological ark: the last refuge for most of the biodiversity in North America, according to a report on climate change released yesterday.
But the government decision-making process about how we use the land and water — and ultimately impact that biodiversity — is a “recipe for disaster” said Jon O’Riordan, a former provincial deputy minister and the lead policy author for the report.
That’s because natural resources are managed independently of one another.

Politicians persuaded to save Canada boreal forest

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Politicians actually listened when experts told them to protect Canada’s boreal forest, a potent weapon against global warming, and the plan for this vast green area could work on some of the world’s other vital places, scientists told Reuters.
Bigger than the Amazon and better than almost anywhere else on the planet at keeping climate-warming carbon out of the atmosphere, the boreal forest stretches across 1.4 billion acres (566.6 million hectares) from Newfoundland to Alaska.

Judge: Province failed in duty to consult First Nations on removal of lands from TFL

Shayne Morrow, Canwest News Service
A B.C. Supreme Court judge has ruled the province fell critically short in its obligation to consult and accommodate Hupacasath First Nation in the removal of 70,000 hectares of privately owned timberland from Tree Farm Licence 44.
In a December 2005 court decision, Justice Lynn Smith gave the Ministry of Forests two years to negotiate a settlement that would address the Alberni Valley nation’s right to exercise its aboriginal rights within the property, including access to sacred sites, harvesting of cedar and traditional medicines, and hunting.

Ancient mindsets can destroy ancient forests

What’s left of the province’s magnificent old-growth forests must be protected
Ken Wu, Special to Times Colonist
This Saturday, British Columbians may see one of the largest — if not the largest — environmental protests in our history at the legislature. Several thousand environmentalists and forestry workers, children and seniors, workers and business owners in Victoria are expected to call on the B.C. Liberal government to protect remaining old-growth forests on Vancouver Island and in the Lower Mainland, to ensure sustainable logging of second-growth forests and to ban raw log exports.
There are several reasons for the upswing in forest activism.

WCWC hopes for big turnout at protest

Judith Lavoie, Times Colonist
Western Canada Wilderness Committee is hoping to beat records set by 1993 protests against logging in Clayoquot Sound by holding the largest environmental rally ever seen in B.C.
WCWC is using Facebook and e-mail as organizing tools and is hoping 3,000 protesters show up at the legislature at noon Saturday for the Rally for Ancient Forests and B.C. Jobs.
“We have done the groundwork, lined up key allies and, with a provincial election coming up in May, we’ve got great momentum,” said Ken Wu, WCWC campaign director.

Revisit of tree farm licence issue requested

Judith Lavoie, Times Colonist
When Arnie Campbell thinks of what the Juan de Fuca electoral area has lost due to removal of private land from tree farm licences, he gets hopping mad.
Looking at how residents of the Kootenays were treated when the provincial government allowed private lands held by bankrupt Pope and Talbot be taken out of the TFL, he wants the Vancouver Island decision revisited.

Interior’s trees get a better deal

Times Colonist
Vancouver Islanders were reminded this week of how terribly the provincial government betrayed them in allowing vast tracts of land to be removed from tree farm licences.
In the Interior, the government has just approved the removal of 4,341 hectares from a tree farm licence. That is about 15 per cent of the area that the government allowed Western Forest Products to remove earlier this year from a South Island tree farm.