Save Fairy Creek: The battle over Western Canada's ancient forests

Western Forest Products

07/06/2021 12:00

(Repeats story published on Sunday)
    By Nia Williams
    CALGARY, Alberta, June 6 (Reuters) - Nolan Paquette started
working part-time at his local sawmill more than 20 years ago
while still at school, pushing a broom on the clean-up team. Now
38, Paquette drives trucks and operates machinery at the same
Western Forest Products-owned  WEF.TO  mill in Duke Point,
Nanaimo, the third generation of his family to work in forestry
on British Columbia's Vancouver Island. 
    He is one of 38,000 workers in Canada's westernmost province
 whose job, according to the industry, depends on the logging of
towering old-growth trees, such as cedars, Douglas firs and
western hemlocks aged at least 250 years, and in some cases more
than a thousand. 
    The dispute over felling British Columbia's ancient forests
has been thrust into the limelight by a months-long blockade of
private logging company Teal Jones in the Fairy Creek watershed
on western Vancouver Island. Protests that started last August
have intensified in recent weeks, leading to more than 150
arrests.    
    Environmentalists camped out in the dense coastal rainforest
say they are fighting Canada's version of the ivory trade. This
weekend activists urged more supporters to carpool and convoy to
Fairy Creek headquarters to show solidarity in a last stand.
    The forestry industry says protestors are endangering the
livelihoods of thousands of hardworking families.
    The Pacheedaht First Nation, in whose territory Fairy Creek
lies, are divided on the issue.    
    The increasingly bitter struggle - taking place in B.C.
Premier John Horgan's own electoral district - is playing out
amid record-breaking North American lumber prices, and a
provincial government promise to review policies allowing
old-growth logging. 
    "It would devastate the economy if we lost old growth,"
Paquette said, referring to environmentalists' calls to ban the
practice. "You're not going to find a C$31 an hour ($26)
unskilled job on the island without forestry." 
    
    DECLINING INDUSTRY
    British Columbia used to be the epicentre of the North
American lumber trade thanks to its vast untouched forests and
it still supplies nearly half of Canada's softwood lumber.
Nationally, the industry contributed C$24 billion ($19.8
billion) to Canada's nominal GDP in 2019, and exports worth C$33
billion.
    But reliance on old-growth logging, which makes up a quarter
of B.C.'s annual timber harvest, is becoming an increasing
problem as the ancient forests shrink.
    Some coastal B.C. sawmills - like Duke Point - are set up to
process only large to very large trees.
    Fairy Creek protestor Shambu, 47, said it is "inevitable"
old-growth logging will come to an end as the resource
disappears and that government funding is needed to help the
industry transition to logging and processing planted forests. 
    "Do we leave these loggers to find a living in a dying
industry, or do we help them? Either we sort out transition
funding now, when there's still a fraction of old growth left,
or when there's none," Shambu, who joined the Fairy Creek
blockade last August, said.
    Since then the camps have grown from nylon tents to buses
with wood-burning stoves and water boilers, with hundreds of
people passing through them.  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL2N2NL1Q2
    But protests are also raising questions over whether
environmentalists should tell indigenous people how to manage
their resources.
    The Pacheedaht First Nation has said it does not welcome
third-party activism in its territory, while elder Bill Jones
supports the blockades and says protesters are there at his
invitation. He accused the band council of "thinking the forest
is a commodity."
    
    ANCIENT ECOSYSTEMS
    In a statement Surrey, Vancouver-based Teal Jones said
harvesting work within its tree farm licensing area was
responsible and sustained hundreds of jobs. Throughout the
protests the company has continued to log what trees it can, and
gained access to the nearby Caycuse watershed in late May after
police cleared blockades there.
    Last week the left-leaning B.C. government released details
of a plan to modernise the forestry industry. It continues to
work on implementing the recommendations of an independent
strategic review published last year, which called for a
"paradigm shift" to protect old growth and defer logging in
certain areas.
    The province will announce deferrals in more old-growth
areas later this summer, B.C. Minister of Forests Katrine Conroy
told Reuters, adding her goal was to consult with First Nations
and protect forestry jobs as well as ancient forests.
    "It's a balance," she said. "I don't believe we have to give
up the environment for the economy."
    B.C.'s lumber trade was built on valley-bottom forests - the
cathedral-like groves seen in tourist brochures - as loggers
focused on the most lucrative and accessible trees. It has been
understood for decades a transition would be needed as they run
out, said Ken Lertzman, professor of forest ecology at Simon
Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C.
    "There's no question it's important to the industry from an
economic perspective, but that doesn't mean you don't need to
bear the cost of protecting it anyway," he said.
    
    SURGING PRICES
    An unprecedented rally in lumber  LBc1  due to
pandemic-induced supply chain interruptions and homeowner demand
is starting to drag on North American housing starts, though it
has given logging companies a chance to repair balance sheets
after a number of tough years.  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL2N2N5142
    The centre of the North American industry has shifted to the
warmer southern United States, where trees grow faster, said BMO
Capital Markets analyst Mark Wilde. Major Canadian companies
including West Fraser Timber Co Ltd  WFG.TO  and Interfor Corp
 IFP.TO  are investing there.
    High prices have further polarised Canada's old-growth
debate.
    "These prices make it really difficult to say to people we
are going to walk away from this resource," said John Innes,
dean of forestry at the University of British Columbia.
 ($1 = 1.2107 Canadian dollars)

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 (Reporting by Nia Williams in Calgary, Alberta
Additional reporting by Julie Gordon in Ottawa
Editing by Denny Thomas and Matthew Lewis)
 ((nia.williams@thomsonreuters.com; +1 403 531 1624; Reuters
Messaging: nia.williams.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))