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.

“This is a form of pseudo-privatization for the exclusive benefit of the major timber companies that hold logging tenures on our public lands,” Wu said.

Setting aside a commercial forest for intensive logging would mean other uses such as parks, drinking watersheds, scenic viewscapes and deer and elk winter ranges would not be considered, he said.

However, Forests Minister Pat Bell said areas with other values will not be considered for the reserve, and protecting drinking water will always be a priority.

Bell said the process for creating intensive forestry areas will be similar to the collaborative approach taken in the Great Bear Rainforest, where government worked with environmentalists, forestry companies and First Nations to allow some logging in the central coast area, while protecting large areas.

“It’s intended to secure a source of fibre for the forest industry with more flexibility for intensive forest management,” he said.

Pilot projects will take place in key areas of the province that are particularly good for growing trees, Bell said.

No targets have been set for the size of the commercial forest reserve, he said.

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.

Mr. Bell is calling for the major companies in his province — Canfor Corp., West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd., Tolko Ltd., International Forest Products Ltd. and Western Forest Products Inc. — to shelve their differences and work together in China.

The idea is to “send a single face, don’t argue with each other. Deal with that in B.C.”

He has proposed calling the new sales coalition “B.C. SPF,” referring to the spruce-pine-fir mix that is the mainstay of interior B.C. firms. There are few details on how such a group would work. Companies currently compete fiercely for the tiny slice of Canada’s market share in China.

“I don’t even know if you could do it,” said Hank Ketcham, president and chief executive of West Fraser, whose company won’t spend money during the current downturn on anything — including selling to China — unless there’s an immediate return.

“We have to be very, very careful that we don’t get out in front of ourselves in our company,” he said. “I don’t want to find that we’ve lost so much money trying to create something that it will take us years to recover.”

“At this point, it’s too early to suggest that’s the right way to go,” said Ric Slaco, vice-president of forestry for International Forest Products. Collaboration makes sense on what government and industry are already attempting — training carpenters, bending the ear of government officials, amending building codes to allow for wood-frame construction — but companies are likely to prefer a more individual approach on sales, he said.

Mr. Bell’s ideas come from the urging of China National Building Materials, a state-owned company that has begun buying, warehousing and distributing about US$4.5-million per month of Canadian wood in China. During a recent trade visit to China, Mr. Bell and the forestry executives listened as Ken Kao, the company’s deputy general manager, urged a more united sales presence and the production of metric sizes and lengths, which Chinese builders demand.

Doing so would enable hefty market gains, Mr. Kao said.

“If we can develop so-called Chinese sizing, Chinese grading, I think the volumes will be even ten times better than right now,” he said.

While some in industry have embraced this approach — Tolko has run some metric sizes through its mills, while Western recently installed an additional saw to cut metric sizes at a cost of $50,000 — others say it isn’t worth the effort.

West Fraser, for one, converted a plywood mill to metric sizes a decade ago, but lost “a lot of money” retooling it back to Imperial sizes when the market wasn’t there, Mr. Ketcham said.

Canfor is similarly reluctant to cut metric, although Don Kayne, Canfor’s vice-president of wood products marketing and sales, said companies are so desperate to sell wood they are more willing to consider radical changes, including Mr. Bell’s SPF idea.

“I think it’s worth looking at some new innovative models to how to approach this market,” he said. “Our overall strategy, which is a Canfor strategy but also an industry strategy, is to increase the consumption of wood-frame construction in China. Bottom line.”

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.

“We will be discussing the court decision and what, if anything, we should do and how we can move forward,” said CRD chairman Geoff Young.

The first matter facing the board is whether to appeal the decision by Justice Robert Metzger, who ruled last month that the voting system for Juan de Fuca electoral area was invalid.

The CRD must also determine what system of voting will be used to decide zoning applications in the area.

The area includes waterfront and recreational land stretching from East Sooke and Jordan River to Port Renfrew.

Under the former system, all directors could debate planning issues in Juan de Fuca, but only Juan de Fuca, Metchosin and Central Saanich directors could vote.

The area sprang into the limelight after the province allowed Western Forest Products to remove 28,283 hectares of private land from three Vancouver Island tree farm licences.

After that happened, the WFP then made a provisional deal to sell more than 2,500 hectares of high profile land to developer Ender Ilkay.

The CRD responded by downzoning forest land to 120-hectare minimum lot size.

But those zoning changes also affected smaller property owners who were no longer allowed to develop four strata lots on their four-hectare properties.

The bylaws were challenged in court by WFP and the Association of B.C. Landowners.

It is important for the CRD to make a decision as soon as possible, Young said.

“And, it is no secret that, whatever happens, we need to have more planning efforts in that area,” he said.

Growth is almost inevitable because of the release of TFL lands and the province should help with planning costs, Young said.

“I suggest there’s a pretty strong rationale for getting some help from the province,” he said.

Duncan Kerr, WFP chief operating officer, said he hopes to meet with CRD directors as soon as possible to talk about the route forward.

“It makes sense to make decisions looking at the entire portfolio. It would be a shame to see it broken up and sold individually,” he said.

“I also hope this means people can get past the idea that the original TFL decision can be reversed.”

Ilkay, who still has an option to buy the parcels of land, is also hoping the court ruling will lead to civilized community debates.

“Anything I am going to do would involve rezoning anyway,” said Ilkay.

The initial plans by Ilkay included large tracts of parkland and a community centred around the Jordan River townsite.

“I think the proper way to do anything like this is for all parties to sit down and have consultations.

“The process of trying to shove something down one party’s throat never works and that’s what was occurring here,” he said.

However, others are imploring the CRD to appeal the decision.

“Western Forest Products has continually shown disregard for the will of the affected communities,” said Maurita Prato, forest campaigner for Dogwood Initiative.

“Although the court decided the CRD process was flawed, it does not lessen the communities’ resolve to protect what is most important to them.

“The race to save Jordan River is still on,” she said.

A better approach, concluded this report, is ecosystem-based management. Essentially, this means identifying all the values of an ecosystem — which might be providing clean water, wildlife habitat or carbon storage — and making sure no activity within the ecosystem impairs those functions.

O’Riordan, a former deputy ministry in the Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management (now the Integrated Land Management Bureau) said the province is moving towards ecosystem management, but government structure needs to change to reflect this more holistic approach.

For example, the Forest and Range Practices Act identifies biodiversity conservation areas, but these don’t necessarily apply to mining or hydroelectric development.

The ecosystem approach is currently being tested on the central coast of the province, home to the Great Bear Rainforest. The B.C. government, First Nations, loggers and environmental groups are working on a management plan that would protect two million hectares of land there.

The director of Forest Ethics, Valerie Langer, told the CBC a week ago she was worried the provincial government was “getting jitters” about making firm decisions and meeting the March, 2009 deadline for a plan.

Langer wasn’t available to comment, but Forest Ethics’ director of climate change Merran Smith told The Tyee this report should give the provincial government even more impetus to meet their commitment.

“The report is really saying the [ecosystem management] approach is the best approach from a climate change perspective as well as an ecosystem perspective,” said Smith.

“So let’s get on with it.”

Liz Bicknell, communications director for the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands said the province is “absolutely committed” to meeting the March deadline.

Bicknell wouldn’t say whether such an ecosystem-based management plan was being considered for other areas, but said the province would review the report’s recommendations.

O’Riordan’s report is the first of ten that will be produced by the Adaptation to Climate Change Team at Simon Fraser University.

“There’s not a lot of these really big chunks of ecosystem left,” said Stuart Pimm, a conservation biologist at Duke University, said in a joint interview on Tuesday with several environmental experts.

“So we understand that were we to destroy this, the consequences would be vast. The carbon implications alone are significant, especially at a time when 20 percent of global carbon emissions come from deforestation.”

Pimm and 13 other environmental experts are part of an international team to be formally unveiled this week, which will monitor the protection of the boreal forest.

This continent-wide swath, covered mostly with fir trees and wetlands, is the world’s largest carbon “bank” on land, storing almost twice the carbon per square yard (meter) as tropical forests because of the rich composition of its soil.

The area now holds 186 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to 27 years worth of global carbon emissions. If all of the boreal carbon was released, it would theoretically accelerate global warming by 27 years.

It also has huge reserves of fresh water and habitat for healthy populations of wildlife, including moose, caribou, songbirds and migratory waterfowl.

PRESSURE FROM LOGGING, OIL, MINING

Only 10 percent of the forest is now protected, and much of the land is under pressure from corporate logging, mining and oil and gas operations, Steven Kallick of the Pew Environment Group said in the interview with Pimm and others.

Logging is of particular concern to climate experts, because deforestation is blamed by U.N. studies for causing 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.

The plan to preserve the boreal forest picked up momentum last year when 1,500 scientists from more than 50 countries called for its protection.

In July, the government of Ontario agreed to strictly protect half of its boreal lands and to sustainably manage the other half, with no extraction of minerals or other natural resources allowed.

Last week, Quebec Premier Jean Charest, now campaigning for re-election, pledged to do the same if he wins. Canadian businesses also have endorsed the plan, and Kallick said there is a good chance most provincial governments will as well.

While Canada’s boreal forest is the best candidate for protection, the same plan for strict preservation might be applied to other places around the world. These include parts of the western Amazon, Siberia, Congo and the Australian outback, the scientists said.

Jeremy Kerr, a biogeographer at the University of Ottawa, said he and other scientists were surprised and delighted that Canadian politicians have been persuaded by science.

“As scientists, for decades … we have targeted our efforts at saving the last remnants of things that have been pushed to the brink of total destruction,” Kerr said.

“Here … we have massive intact ecosystems and we have advised policymakers that if they want to have a sustainable future, they have to protect those intact ecosystems, and they have actually started to do so.”

Because most exports of Canada’s natural resources go to the United States, whatever impact the protection plan has locally will also be felt south of the Canadian border.

But the big forest’s effect as a brake on climate change will be a global benefit, said Jeff Wells, senior scientist with the International Boreal Conservation Campaign.

“In this world of difficult (environmental) conditions … you feel like you have to do a million things to solve the problem,” Wells said. “Here we have a one-stop solution to keep the carbon in the bank and provide resilience for species.”

“During the whole 28 months that we were working on it, they did not understand their obligations.”

Smith wrote in her decision: “I find that the Crown did not correctly understand what was required, and misapprehended its duty to consult and accommodate in the circumstances.”

Smith ordered that a mediator be appointed, at the expense of the province, and that the province pay all court costs.

That is a relief, Sayers said.

“In the original decision, we only got about 15 per cent of court costs back,” she said. “This round has been pretty costly, with a lot of extra days in court.”

Last May, Sayers revealed that the province, through its Crown corporation, B.C. Investment Management Corporation, is a 25 per cent owner of Island Timberlands.

Sayers charged that the deletion of the timberlands from TFL 44 was a calculated decision to increase the value of the property in advance of the subsequent acquisition by Brascan, now Brookfield Management.

In her decision, Smith concluded the Crown did not wilfully withhold information, but said the financial interest “should have been disclosed to the petitioners and to the court, along with the other information as to the structure of BCIMC and its arms-length investment decision-making.”

Although the province will not reverse the decision to remove the property from TFL 44, Sayers said the ruling means that Island Timberlands will have to go beyond a vague promise to be “good neighbours” with Hupacasath.

“What she has told the Crown and Island Timberlands is that they have to find a way to work with us,” she said. “We’ve never heard it so clearly said before. It gives us a good position for future discussions with the province.”

Sayers said the ruling can be seen as a victory for small communities in general, as multinational corporations move away from forestry and into real estate development on their private timber holdings.

Aboriginal title may prove to be a powerful tool to protect private forest lands, many of which are important recreational areas, from unchecked development, she said.

The case started in July 2004, when then-Forest Minister Mike de Jong deleted the private forest land — which represents one-third of Hupacasath traditional territory — from the TFL, immediately prior to the sale of the land by Weyerhaeuser to Island Timberlands.

Old-growth forests provide habitat for species at risk, like the marbled murrelet and the spotted owl. Only seven spotted owls are known to remain in B.C.’s wilds; there were more than 1,000 until most of their old-growth habitat was logged around the Lower Mainland.

Ancient forests are also important for the economy. A recent study from Simon Fraser University showed that the old-growth forests of southwestern B.C. are worth more to the economy standing than logged, when factoring in tourism, hunting, angling and their role as carbon stores.

Ancient forests are also integral to many First Nations’ cultures, which continue to use the cedar, salmon and multitudes of species that live in these ecosystems.

Another reason for the growth in public concern over forestry is the estimated 18,000 B.C. forestry workers who have lost their jobs in the largest forestry downturn in living memory.

Analysts typically cite the collapse of the U.S. housing market and, until recently, the high Canadian dollar for the downturn. Few mention the fundamental driver behind the coastal industry’s decline — resource depletion. The industry has largely logged off the biggest and best old-growth trees in the most accessible areas, including virtually all of the valley bottoms. A full transition to logging second-growth forests is not only inevitable, but necessary for the industry’s long-term survival. We’re arguing that the government must ensure this transition is completed before the last of our unprotected ancient forests comes down.

Forestry unions have been joining forces with environmentalists on Vancouver Island, calling on the government to halt the export of raw logs and the deregulation of forest lands and to assist in developing and retooling sawmills that can handle smaller second-growth trees. Those now constitute most of our productive forests, including 90 per cent of the richest sites.

Finally, another reason for the upsurge in forest activism is the provincial election coming in May. There was an expectation that new Forests Minister Pat Bell would do things differently than Rich Coleman, his predecessor.

So far Bell seems to be taking the same old road. His office released figures in August that vastly inflated the amount of remaining ancient forests on Vancouver Island by including the stunted, marginal trees in bogs, on rocky sites and in the snow forests at high altitudes, most of which can’t be logged because the trees are too small. It did this to justify the continued liquidation of the productive, big-treed ancient forests that have always been at the centre of the controversy.

The reality is that only 25 per cent of the original productive old-growth forests on Vancouver Island still remain, including only 10 per cent of the valley bottoms where the largest trees grow, according to satellite photos. Unfortunately, only six per cent of the Island’s original productive old-growth forests are protected in parks.

How many jurisdictions on Earth still have trees with trunks that grow as wide as living rooms and as tall as skyscrapers, and that can live to be almost 2,000 years old? How many places still have a chance to keep one of the most beautiful ecosystems standing for all the species and its citizens, while ensuring a sustainable and flourishing industry based on second-growth forestry and value-added processing?

Unless he deals with these issues on the southern coast in a sound way, Premier Gordon Campbell will come to see that his government’s outdated mindset on ancient forests might result in his government’s extinction.

Ken Wu is the campaign director of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee in Victoria.

However, Forests Minister Pat Bell said he would be surprised if WCWC gets the numbers because the province has “done a tremendous job protecting ecosystems.”

The best example is the 6.4 million hectares of the Great Bear Rainforest, he said.

“There’s 2.2 million hectares under full protection and the remainder is under ecosystem based management, which is nearly completed. I am quite proud,” Bell said.

“This is the usual suspects saying the usual stuff. They are not paying attention to all the things that have gone on already in the province.”

Bell said he is not happy that raw logs are being exported, but, in this economic climate, jobs would be lost if raw log exports were banned.

However, Bell is going to China next month in hopes of taking advantage of Russia’s decision to slap an 80 per cent export tax on logs.

“That will create a huge window of opportunity for B.C. to start selling lumber into the Chinese market,” he said.

The association and Malahat-Juan de Fuca NDP MLA John Horgan are writing to Forests Minister Pat Bell asking that government reconsider the decision to allow Western Forest Products to remove 28,000 hectares of private land from three Island tree farm licences.

“If your government is now committed to ensuring workers are central to land removals and that recreation and wildlife values are accounted for in the Interior, then the same protections should be available on Vancouver Island as well,” Horgan said in the letter.

The community lost the better part of a year of planning after WFP put the most high profile land — including the Jordan River waterfront — on the market and processes such as the parks plan are only now re-starting, Campbell said.

There is no planning for fire protection if WFP is given approval for 319 acreages, no parks in areas traditionally used for recreation, no mapping of watersheds and development along the west coast makes a mess of the Regional Growth Strategy.

In the Interior, government consulted with communities.

About $4.4 million will go to local contractors, critical wildlife habitat was excluded from the land release, the company donated $50,000 to the Nakusp Community Forest and the province has bought two recreational areas.

Bell readily admits it is a different standard and said government learned from the scathing auditor general’s report, which found the WFP decision was made without sufficient regard for the public interest.

“Pope and Talbot is bankrupt. No one likes private land deleted from TFLs, but it means the money will be paid to the service providers,” he said.

However, it would not be practical or appropriate to revisit the WFP decision, he said.

On the Island, nothing.

In the Interior, the company — or the receiver running it — provided benefits in return for the province’s generosity. About $4.4 million will go to contractors. The company is under protection from creditors; that money might otherwise have gone unpaid.

An area of critical wildlife habitat was excluded from the release. The licence holder donated two parcels of land, which will likely become parks, and provided $50,000 to a local community forest. Road access was enhanced. All in, the province said, the benefits were worth $5.8 million to the region.

On the Island, no parks, no cash, no community support, no job guarantees. No benefit to the region.

The auditor general, in a scathing review, found former forests minister Rich Coleman had failed to consult, failed to assess the benefits to the company and acted “without sufficient regard for the public interest.”

The result has been planning chaos. Thousands of hectares of what had been protected forestland — including land around Sooke Potholes Provincial Park and Jordan River waterfront that had been used for public recreation — are now open for development.

Wildlife habitat, jobs and the interests of capital region residents and communities were ignored; the company’s shareholders received a $200-million windfall.

The Interior decision, which covers land near Castlegar, shows how much this region lost through the government’s indifference to the public interest.

If the removal of 4,341 hectares was worth $5.8 million in local benefits, then the removal of six times as much land on the south Island would be worth perhaps $35 million.

Parks could have been created; public amenities supported; wildlife corridors maintained; First Nations accommodated.

Forests Minister Pat Bell said the government had heeded the report on the failure to consider the public interest here and obtained an adequate compensation package for Interior residents.

“We have listened to the auditor general’s comments and we have more than met the test that he would be looking for in this case,” he said.

But an admission of past failures is meaningless without actions to right the wrongs. Instead, residents in this region have received silence from Bell, Premier Gordon Campbell and Ida Chong and Murray Coell, the two local representatives in cabinet.

The provincial government chose to announce the latest release of land from tree farm licences on Tuesday, aware that reporters and media would be focusing on the federal election.

Perhaps it hoped Islanders would not notice the reminder of how badly they had been betrayed.

But news like that can’t be hidden. The government, with this deal, has accepted the need to obtain fair compensation for the public when it releases land from tree farm licences.

That principle was ignored on the Island, this year and in 2004 when even larger tracts were released.

The government owes this region the same diligence, respect and consideration it has accorded Interior communities.