I nominate our recent Chief Forester Diane Nicholls to the BC Forestry Hall of Shame. She has raised the conflict of interest bar so high---advocating for the wood pellet industry (using debunked information) then joining the executive of the world's largest wood pellet company---few will be able to match her. While in office she constituted a board of advisers, the "Chief Forester's Leadership Team", comprised of top foresters of the biggest forest firms in BC, ensuring that logging operations would be maximized at the expense of the public interest and BC ecosystems. She's peddled dubious information about the dangers of glyphosate, fiddled with AAC allotments, and generally shown herself to be no friend of the forests nor the people of British Columbia.

I believe the machine that grinds away to sustain BC's logging economy has largely elicited feedback from the forest industry on how to set policies for maximum profit and jobs, while pretending its all sustainable, certified and in the entire publics interest. The chief foresters leadership team and the chief her self were the biggest drivers in this as was senior executive who believed that everything this group wanted was certified by the Pope or some higher power. In fact this machine and its feedback mechanism had become perverted over time until fires, floods and devastated communities came to dominate our forests and their ability to mitigate the losses as a result of poor poor short term thinking. Now, the government and industry, both of whom are responsible for the state of BC , are in fast track denial creating a an even bigger set of lies about our future instead of recognizing that the cumulative effects on the landscape have been born out of short term profit driven motives and massive loopholes put in place to facilitate the status quo. The fight to maintain control over BC's forests will never be wrestled from the hands of corporations or the executive whom are paid by BC taxpayers yet toil for big business rather than the big picture. BC's future will only worsen with more fires caused by an interior carpeted with fuel from industry driven policies to increase profits and a government unwilling to accept the fact that past and present policies are the root of our problems. To do this they must recognize where these failures came from but this would attach liability. So to stay out of court BC will continue to lie and deny everything. How can we move forward unless we acknowledge our past mistakes??????, and there are many!!!

Thanks for this excellent report on how the timber supply review and allocation process continues to be corrupted by industry at the highest levels.

I am ex government ABCFP member. the fact that provincial oversight regarding ethics of the forest profession is needed at all concerns me. Its no wonder there is so much distrust.

So Miss Nicolls new job with Drax, the largest pellet company in the world is bound to kill humans. The quote below is a recommendation from 200 US scientists to the US congress: The scientists note that annual carbon emissions from logging in U.S. forests are comparable to emissions from the residential and commercial sectors combined. They ask legislators to reject false climate solutions that promote forest biomass logging (removal and incineration of trees for energy production) under the guise of “climate-friendly” or “carbon neutral” energy or logging for cross-laminated timber (CLT) and other wood products under the guise of carbon storage. Most of the carbon in trees is removed from forests when they are logged and quickly ends up in the atmosphere or in landfills, they caution. The scientists also note that logging, including commercial “thinning,” can often increase fire intensity in forests, while damaging soils and removing vital nutrients, which undermines the carbon sequestration and storage capacity of forests. “Forests are our only means for removing atmospheric carbon dioxide and storing the carbon long term at the needed scale. Burning wood in place of coal is accelerating global warming and decreasing the capacity of forests to counter the buildup of heat-trapping carbon dioxide,” said Dr. William Moomaw of Tufts University. Dr. Chad Hanson, a forest ecologist with the John Muir Project, observed, “The dangerous excess CO2 that we’ve put into the atmosphere with fossil fuel consumption and logging will stay there for far too long if we don’t take serious steps to bring it down, and forest protection is our best and most effective way to do that.” Dr. Dominick DellaSala, Chief Scientist with the Geos Institute, added, “The vast majority of scientists warn that in order to avoid catastrophic climate impacts in the decades ahead, including new pandemics potentially linked to deforestation, we need to keep dinosaur-carbon in the ground and store atmospheric carbon in forests.”

I always thought this was insane behavior. Was it all just to support the pesticide industry? It ought to be a crime to spray the forests with any pesticide agents. Mother Nature knows what she is doing.

A few other factoids about our beloved outgoing chief who was also supposed to be the person identified as a leader on Ethics within her own ministry. A few years ago, her and her 'Chief Foresters Leadership Team ' (contractors and corporate exec's) attempted to organize a Godess Festival in the North Island to promote the overarching success that the role women have played in shaping forestry. In fact I believe it was spin doctoring to once again obtain more deregulation and false information about how wonderfully managed BC's forests have become under their leadership. This followed on the heels of the Professional Reliance report and then the Professional Governance Act which both concluded that money was corrupting licensed contractors and employees of forest companies and they were not able to to think or work independently but would comply with any and all requests made by those writing cheques. Not a single solitary word was ever uttered from the chief foresters mouth about the professional reliance report or why the Attorney Generals office needed a whole new department and legislation to protect the publics interest. She was absolutely silent on this massive ethical topic, why was that I wonder. All of her staff ( which is massive) are required by their oath of employment to support her in all her endeavours and never ask a single question online or in person which would undermine her role in leading government. I think it goes without saying that any institution that muzzles its staff and employees is not behaving independently and have many things to hide. My biggest fear is the person who replaces her will be much worse and will be replaced by forest company executives to ensure no one ever questions a single decision and is quickly disciplined or muzzled.

Yes, for sure, several people should make a formal ethics complaint against Diane Nicholls and her senior staff for not appropriately doing work that upholds the Public Interest as paramount. Instead the Roundup/Aspen work was done to benefit the forest industry as paramount and as such was completely unethical. Unfortunately, while all professional organizations and their members (Registrants) are bound by the PGA act and their respective Codes of Ethics to uphold the public interest as paramount in all aspects of their work, I have found the ABCFP to be inordinately aligned with the forest industry instead of the people of BC. What a shame.

James, you must add investigative journalist to your credentials. Had this information been released a few months ago, it could have resulted in the CF's dismissal from Govt. Now we can say good riddance to her. Now that she is off to Drax, we fully understand what we are dealing with—a company that will hire "professionals" that happily abuse the system and easily withhold info that could benefit public good. If this last paragraph of James's piece IS true, is it not enough info to lodge a complaint with the ABCFP? Looks to me like there's plenty of data to back up claims or concern and launch an investigation. "There is little doubt that in the writing and re-writing of this report the power of a critical institution—the Chief Forester’s Office—was intentionally abused. The public interest was undermined. The report was designed to allow a key practice of modern forestry to continue: The maximization of coniferous timber supply by eliminating deciduous species. The risks that glyphosate spraying and conifer-dominated monocrop plantations pose to the future resilience of the landscape, the timber supply, and to public health and safety don’t—evidently—measure up to what’s most important to the current Chief Forester’s Office: the health of forestry company profits." If the CF is alleged to have broken this following ABCFP condition alone, it is grounds for a complaint: ''undermines the principle of holding paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public, including the protection of the environment and the promotion of health and safety in the workplace in the manner that reflects the stewardship of a given profession by each regulatory body'' ABCFP also says any other RPFs must report her if they believe she harmed he environment by dumbing down the study. "ABCFP registrants also have a duty to report any instance where the continued practice of professional forestry by another registrant may pose a risk of significant harm to the environment or to the health and safety of the public." I have read that many complaints against RPFs get thrown out; can someone comment? Do you believe filing a complaint against the CF is do-able, a possibility? By law the ABCFP MUST investigate every complaint, whether from a group, another RPF or an individual. Wouldn't it be something if the ABCFP opened up their emails Monday April 25th morning and had 150+ separate complaints on CF Nichols during her last week in the TOP RPF position in the province? She leaves government April 30th. Wonder if her new post at DRAX requires RPF certifications? What if they are suspended for the investigations, hmmm! While we are at it, we may as well mention her henchman, project lead Shawn Hedges, former Director of Sustainability and Forestry in the Chief Forester’s Office for his the behind-the-scenes direction being a little less objective, in a briefing note to Forests’ Minister Doug Donaldson. Is he not complicit? Should he be allowed to stay with BCTS? I suppose the greatest fear is the magnitude of what we are facing. If James has uncovered so much deceit in just one small report by so many levels of government and industry, what ELSE is going on around us today and for the past 50 years? We can trust no one, nor anything government shares as research or data. Makes you wonder how much of the Gorley and Merkle report was erased for the public GOOD before the public saw it? Looking forward to more damming evidence in part 2 James.

Once again, great policy research and superb journalism. Thank you. A bitter pill for the dinosaurs in the forestry sector and profession to swallow.

Based on many analyses that I have done over the past 30 years, falldown has been occurring for many years, albeit disguised by maintaining cut levels through lowering rotation ages, changes to or ignoring sites classified as environmentally sensitive that constrained logging, and lowering economic operability standards. However, these band-aid fixes no longer work, because we are literally running out of reasonable size trees to turn into valuable wood products. Outside of TFLs, "forest development planning" has literally turned into a form of "timber staking," where companies compete to log the best of what remains. Inside TFLs, cuts are temporarily maintained by cutting younger and smaller trees. And, without any effective government oversight, this colonial approach to resource management only makes things worse. The latest band-aid brought in by the last liberal government is omnipresent in forest legislation and regulations (FRPA and FPPR): Without unduly reducing the supply of timber from British Columbia's forests.... This transparent, industry-biased support for logging provides for timber extraction to override every mention of protection of forests for essential benefits like water supplies, sensitive ecosystems, and wildlife habitat. In the climate and biodiversity crises, there is a need to ramp up protection of forests, as their "non-timber" benefits are far more important for survival than wood products. This need has been substantiated by many respected scientists and practitioners for nearly a decade, but it falls on deaf ears, both with forest professionals and political leaders. Think how "drastic" falldown would look if we did what was right and protected all remaining primary and near-primary forests as sinks for carbon, biodiversity, and water. Along with a small group of scientists, I am just finishing up preliminary Nature-directed Stewardship Plans for two local consumptive use watersheds. These plans are turning out to show how very little, if any of the forests that are left make ecological and social sense to log. We have dug ourselves into a far bigger hole than falldown of timber alone reveals. But wait, MASS timber offers the way out, as we can make "value added" wood products out of smaller and smaller, and younger and younger trees. This new "timber rush" has the potential to degrade forest ecosystems far beyond clearcut, short rotation forestry. Also, as a number of analysts have shown, MASS timber is also not the "green," carbon storage building material touted by its proponents. We need to wake up, stop seeing forests as logs standing vertically, and support the protection and restoration of forests for their myriad essential benefits for survival of life.

Absolutely great article. So well documented, thorough, and in my opinion balanced too. The truth may be hard to hear for some, but there's no point in avoiding it like an osterich with its head in the sand. Let's get on with a transition to more value added and ecologically based forestry, with realistic financial support for tenures moved to First Nations and local forestry communities on condition they manage in this new paradigm.