David Broadland

By the end of 2023, the allowable annual cut on public land in BC had fallen to about 58.2 million cubic metres per year. But that is likely a considerable overestimation of what can actually be cut on public land. In 2023, the actual cut had fallen to 36.2 million cubic metres, far below the AAC. In the past, the cut has dipped during periods of low demand. In 2021-2022, however, lumber prices were at record high levels yet BC’s production of wood products actually fell even lower. The Ministry of Forests blames this decline in the logging industry’s fortunes on forest fires and the mountain pine beetle. More likely, the ministry has overestimated growth and yield over a long period of time, overestimated the size of the timber harvesting land base, underestimated the impact of climate change and allowed overcutting. The result? A steeply declining area of commercially viable forest. BC Premier David Eby has accurately described the situation as “exhausted forests”.

Saturday, April 13th, 1-5:30pm UBC Okanagan Campus ASC 140 Admission by Advanced Sponsorship/Donation for Reserved Seating and Donations at the Door for Available Seating Programme 1:00 Indigenous Territorial Welcome, Grouse and Pamela Barnes, Syilx elders 1:15 Land Acknowledgment - Alex Morrison, Chair, Peachland Watershed Protection Alliance 1:20 Welcome Remarks & Introductions Eveline Wolterson; Casey Como, IWTF Hosts Taryn Skalbania, IWTF/PWPA, IWTF Address 1:30-1:55 Elliot Tonasket, Retired Councillor & Natural Resource Consultant, Penticton Indian Band Syilx Forestry Standards 2:00-2:25 Michelle Connolly, Conservation North, Protecting Primary Forests, Preserving Biodiversity 2:30-2:55 Refreshment Break, Arts & Science Foyer & Courtyard 3:00-3:35 MLA Mike Morris, Prince George-Mackenzie, Saving BC’s Wildlife – Future for Our Forests 3:40-4:15 Dr. Younes Alila, UBC Forest Resource Management, Hydrology of Convenience in BC Forestry 4:20-4:40 Jennifer Houghton, Boundary Forest Watershed Stewardship Society, The Power of Trees: Safeguarding Communities by Protecting Forests by Law 4:45-4:55 Barry Brandow, Granby Guides & Outfitters, Acknowledgement of Speakers 5:00- 5:25 Q & A panel 5:30-5:45 Dr. John Wagner, UBCO Environmental Anthropologist, Closing Remarks 5:45 Socializing REGISTRATION for UBCO event and live zoom on Eventbrite coming soon! Here:__________________________ Live Event to be recorded and shared LOCATION: UBC Okanagan Campus ASC 140 Theatre - UBC OKANAGAN Arts and Science building, ASC 140 (ground level) – see: https://learningspaces.ok.ubc.ca/classrooms/asc-140. Adjoining Reception Foyer - https://learningspaces.ok.ubc.ca/classrooms/asc-asc-112. Parking: https://parking.ok.ubc.ca/visitor-event-parking/short-term/. (Paid parking in effect at all times.) Get directions: https://ok.ubc.ca/about/maps-directions-tours/ The Interior Watershed Task Force is a coalition of more than twenty NGOs, Community Organizations, and Professionals that was initiated in 2023. The IWTF advocates for the legal protection and preservation of water, primary and natural forests, wildlife and critical habitats in the BC interior. We are based in the Okanagan region of BC and respectfully live and work on ancestral territories of several First Nations.

Scientists, climate activists and media all around the world said BC’s record-breaking fires in 2023 were “fuelled by climate change”. Largely ignored were the actual fuels that make lightning-ignited fires easier to start and harder to control, leading to larger fires. The southern edge of the Donnie Creek fire on May 18, 2023. At this point the fire was burning through black spruce, clearcuts, gas developments and melting permafrost exposed by logging and gas development. HOW MANY OF YOU have noticed that of the 2.84 million hectares of land that burned in BC this year, 1.79 million hectares—nearly 63 percent of the total area burned—was in the far northeast corner of the province? The four largest fires in BC this year all occurred in the triangle of BC that lies on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. That corner, which is ecologically and geologically distinct from the rest of BC, occupies about 12 percent of the land base of the province. For 63 percent of the burned area to be concentrated in a region that occupies just 12 percent of BC suggests that the factors that have influenced the number and size of fires in the northeast aren’t necessarily the same as those impacting the southern part of the province. Consider the record-breaking 619,073-hectare Donnie Creek Fire. The BC Wildfire Service early on attributed the aggressiveness of the Donnie Creek Fire to the dryness of the black spruce stands it burned. At the time the fire exploded on May 12, the foliar moisture content of the region’s black spruce was at its annual low point (the “spring dip”), allowing a slower-moving ground fire to more easily become a faster-moving crown fire. Climate change at work, right? Forest scientists, however, have noted that the “spring dip” of black spruce has been “judged to be not so much a weather-dependent effect but as largely physiological in nature”. I understand that to mean that black spruce’s dried condition in early spring would occur with or without climate change. Black spruce is a highly flammable conifer. The US Forest Service states that black spruce forests are “the most flammable vegetation types in interior Alaska”. Once it gets burning, it’s hard to stop. The Donnie Creek Fire encroaching on gas industry drilling site (Photo: BC Wildfire Service) The range of Black spruce in BC is concentrated in the northeast corner of BC. This is the area of the province lying to the east of the Rocky Mountains, which we might also want to think of as BC’s triangle of fire. Range of black spruce in BC How did climate change impact the triangle of fire this year? A review of NASA’s mapping of the land surface temperature anomaly (diagrams below) shows that the region was much warmer than usual in January, colder than usual in February, and not far from normal in March and April leading up to the start of the northeastern fires in early May. Temperature anomaly in BC’s triangle of fire (denoted by red point) was hotter than usual in January, cooler than usual in February, slightly warmer than usual in March (Mapping by NASA). While the heating and drying effects caused by higher temperatures and less precipitation from May onwards no doubt increased the flammability of the black spruce forests, there are likely additional factors that amplified 2023’s land surface temperature anomaly. This includes the presence of elevated levels of methane at ground level, which raises ground level temperature and may be adding to forest combustibility. Where is such methane coming from? There are two primary sources: Methane released by decomposing plants that were formerly frozen in permafrost and, secondly, geologic methane. Let’s consider each of those, starting with methane released by melting permafrost. Melting permafrost is releasing methane that comes from both decomposing plants and geologic methane A 2020 peer-reviewed study (Geological methane emissions and wildfire risk in the degraded permafrost area of the Xiao Xing’an Mountains, China, Wei Shan et al) published by Nature looked at the impact of released methane on ground level temperature in an area of northeastern China underlain by degrading permafrost. The area is experiencing an increase in frequency of forest fires. The Chinese scientists attributed at least part of this increase in fires to warmer temperatures at ground level that are the result of the release of methane from melting permafrost. The scientists also suggested that the methane could be adding to the “combustibility” of forests. The study noted that “Methane gas released into the atmosphere in permafrost regions is generally believed to be derived from microbial gases released from melted sediments or local release of [geologic] gas.” Other scientists, too, have reported that melting permafrost releases geologic methane. Maps of Canada’s permafrost show that the areas in which the largest 2023 fires occurred in northeastern BC are underlain with discontinuous, sporadic or isolated patches of permafrost. In other words, areas where once-continuous permafrost is now degrading. The effects the Chinese scientists found in their study areas in northeastern China could very well be in play in BC’s triangle of fire. Besides the increased melting of permafrost resulting from global heating, other human-made physical changes to the land are known to increase methane release from such areas. Inside the Donnie Creek Fire’s perimeter there are significant areas of forest that have been removed: clearcuts for timber, gas and logging industry service roads, drilling sites and other gas infrastructure sites, and thousands of kilometres of pipelines and seismic exploration lines. Forest removal, whether it occurs as a result of fire or industrial development, is known to increase the rate at which permafrost melts, thereby increasing the amount of methane released. If the impacts of all of these changes on melting permafrost and the subsequent release of methane are resulting in more and larger forest fires in BC’s and Canada’s boreal regions, then, as scientists have reported, one of the consequences would be an even larger release of methane which is produced by the forest fires themselves. Methane is 28-34 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Comparison of where fires have occurred in Canada’s boreal region shows that a high percentage of them overlap the belt of degrading permafrost. Has the permafrost system been nudged over a tipping point? If so, what role did industrial development play in the nudging? Location of degrading permafrost in Canada aligns well with where forest fires have occurred. BC gas and oil industry is also releasing geologic methane But forest removal and subsequent melting of permafrost is not the only pathway by which more methane is being released in BC’s triangle of fire. The region is part of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin, an area rich in hydrocarbon deposits. During the last 20 years, BC’s burgeoning hydraulically fractured gas well industry has installed thousands of wells, compressors, pumping stations, tank batteries, valves, processing facilities and thousands of kilometres of pipelines. This equipment is known to leak methane to the atmosphere. Lots of it. Within the perimeter of the Donnie Creek Fire alone, we counted over 1000 separate gas-industry infrastructure sites. Most of these are drilling sites that contain anywhere from one to twenty individual wells each. How much methane is leaking? A 2017 study, sponsored by the David Suzuki Foundation, estimated that actual methane emissions at ground level, which included all sources, were 2.5 times BC Energy Regulator’s estimates. A 2020 analysis of BC Energy Regulator’s record of leakage from hydraulically fractured wells found that 11 percent of wells are leaking. A study published in 2021 estimated that methane emissions in BC are 1.6 to 2.2 times “current federal inventory estimates”. In other words, we don’t know. But likely more than is being admitted. In any case, would release of geologic methane have an impact? The study by Chinese scientists mentioned above stated “On the one hand, the ‘greenhouse effect’ caused by the release of methane gas will increase the air temperature, which creates favorable conditions for wildfires. On the other hand, the combustibility of methane may also promote regional wildfires.” Global heating obviously played a significant role in the Donnie Creek and other large fires in BC’s triangle of fire in 2023, but ignoring or denying the impact that industrial development could be playing in making those fires larger would be foolish. Are Canadian government scientists ignoring impacts of industrial development? So it was a bit surprising to find that a scientific study authored by a number of Canadian scientists (Abrupt, climate induced increase in wildfires in British Columbia since the mid-2000s, Parisien et al) failed to mention any of the above. The study was released this summer and highlighted the Donnie Creek Fire as though it somehow reinforced the scientists’ main finding that climate change is the main driver of BC’s forest fires. Yet the study did not mention known impacts of industrial development on melting permafrost or include data from either 2022’s or 2023’s forest fires in BC. The lead author of the study, Marc Parisien, is a scientist with Natural Resources Canada in Alberta. The “Raison d’être” of Natural Resources Canada is “to improve the quality of life of Canadians by ensuring that our natural resources are developed sustainably, providing a source of jobs, prosperity and opportunity, while preserving our environment and respecting our communities and Indigenous peoples.” Aside from noting that the practice of eliminating deciduous species from managed plantations contributes to the growing forest fire problem, the scientists acknowledged little or no connection between industrial development in BC forests and the rapid increase in the rate at which forests here are burning. Instead, they implied that any such connection was “ambiguous”. Yet one of the contributing authors to the study is BC’s John Gray, a wildfire ecologist. Following 2021’s disasterous fires in southern BC, Gray was interviewed by Jeff Davies of the Northern Beat for a story titled “BC Wildfires—more than just climate change”. At the time, Gray told Davies: “The fire problem is no longer unmanaged stands. The fire problem is all the managed stands full of slash.” No ambiguity there. In danger of being lost in the din of news stories and scientific studies focussed on “climate-change-fuelled forest fires” is the role that industrial development plays in increasing fire hazard on the ground by creating—year after year—thousands of square kilometres of “kindling”. As noted above, little attention has being paid, so far, to the unique form of kindling industrial development has left scattered across BC’s northeastern triangle of fire. In BC’s south (by which I mean south of Prince George), the “kindling” takes the form of logging slash and highly flammable young plantations. That fuel makes it easier for fires to be ignited—by both lightning and humans. Because of the higher rate of spread of fire in logging slash and young plantations, that makes fires initially harder to control. Those initially harder-to-control fires quickly find—because of their pervasiveness across almost any southern BC landscape—nearby clearcuts and young plantations, where the same rapid growth occurs. This dangerous combination of high-hazard fuel conditions and the widespread availability of those conditions is inevitably leading to larger fires. While the increased temperature and lower humidity that come with global heating increase fire hazard across the landscape, the impact is higher in clearcuts than in forests. Scientists report that the ground temperature in clearcuts is considerably higher than in nearby managed or unmanaged forests. This means, logically, that on any given extreme fire-weather day, fire hazard will be greater in clearcuts. With the widespread and growing prevalence of clearcuts, the end result should be obvious: Climate change is amplifying the influence of logging on fire. As well, scientists have reported that the hotter temperature in clearcuts has a heating and drying effect on remaining stands of older forest adjacent to the clearcuts. The effect can extend into the forest more than 240 metres from the edge of the clearcut. Further, scientists have reported that stands of pine burn at a rate 8.4 times higher than stands of deciduous species. Eradication of fire-resistant species like aspen in plantations of commercially desirable pine—a wide-spread, ongoing practice in BC—is destroying the natural fire break deciduous species provide. Hence, larger fires. The southern part of BC, where almost all logging occurs, now has a vast, constantly-being-renewed area of monoculture clearcuts and young plantations where deciduous species are erradicated. As primary forests continue to be liquidated and plantations are logged at a younger and younger age, the area of dangerously flammable clearcuts and young plantations is continuing to grow relative to the volume being extracted. Unless the overall allowable annual cut is reduced significantly, this issue will get more acute and dangerous. As global heating creates longer fire seasons with hotter maximum temperatures, lower humidity and stronger winds, all this human-created danger is combining to produce larger forest fires, which, in turn, amplify climate change. Has southern BC, too, reached a tipping point? In many of the big fires of 2021, a high percentage of the area within a fire’s perimeter had been previously disturbed by logging (see image below; see more images here). At some point, presumably, there would be too much logging slash and young plantations to be able to suppress fires. Have we already reached that point, or are we just getting closer? The August 6, 2021 perimeter of the 60,000-hectare Flat Lake Fire (black line) superimposed on top of the BC ministry of forests’ RESULTS Openings record of logging (red-shaded area). The green-shaded area is Flat Lake Provincial Park. There doesn’t appear to be any organized plan by government or industrial forest scientists to confess to what is turning out to be the crime of the century: The intentional liquidation of BC’s much more fire-resistant primary forests and the production of tens of millions of hectares of “kindling” during a time of a growing climate emergency—and a cover-up to blame the effects on “climate change”. There is, however, a glimmer of light that has begun to appear in Ministry of Forests records of the total volume of trees removed from BC clearcuts each year. That volume has begun to fall. In the twelve months from the beginning of December 2022 to the end of November 2023, the overall volume cut in BC was about 36 million cubic metres. This is approximately 50 percent below what ministry timber supply analysts had predicted for this year in 2004—at the height of the Mountain Pine Beetle infestation. It is unlikely that this fall in volume is being intentionally orchestrated by the machinery of the Ministry of Logging; it is more likely that past misjudgments about future timber supply are beginning to assert themselves. In either case, since clearcutting and plantations raise fire hazard for up to 30 years or more, the current era of dangerously large fires in the south will likely get worse for many more years. In the north—in BC’s triangle of fire—the impacts of industrial development, including logging and further exploration and development of gas fields, will melt more and more permafrost. In each case, without a drastic decline in the area of BC being logged each year, further industrial development will simply worsen the impacts of climate change. Why are British Columbians allowing this to happen? Why are they not outraged? Related stories: Clearcut logging increases forest fire risk The forest-industrial complex’s Molotov clearcuts Current BC reforestation is 19th century quack medicine

The BC logging industry can be relied on to mislead in the push toward reducing carbon emissions. IN A RECENT op-ed in Business in Vancouver, Linda Coady, president and CEO 0f the BC Council of Forest Industries, wrote that “forestry is key to growing a resilient bioeconomy in BC”. “Globally, the shared challenge of moving towards a net-zero economy and reducing emissions is vital”, Coady wrote. “In British Columbia and Canada, we have a unique opportunity with a sustainable and regenerative natural resource like forestry.” But Coady’s argument was based on a misleading account of how much of a logged forest is utilized in BC. She wrote: “The Canadian forest sector has a critical role to play in meeting this challenge. The forestry industry in BC strives to use virtually 100 per cent of every tree. Almost half becomes lumber for high-value wood products, with the balance becoming residual wood chips used to create pulp and paper, packaging, novel bioproducts and bioenergy—a growing part of the bioeconomy.” Coady is mixing up “trees” with “merchantable logs”. These are two very different things, and the difference just disappears into thin air in her half-baked bioaccount of what happens to BC forests after they are razed by logging. Here’s a more realistic account: Coady wants us to believe that logging can somehow reduce carbon emissions. But let’s consider the premature forest carbon emissions caused by logging. The merchantable portion of a tree contains 0nly 41 percent of the carbon in a humid BC forest and 39 percent in an arid forest (see “The relative size of pools of carbon in a logged BC forest”, here). Coady ignores the other 60 percent. When a forest is logged, over 80 percent of the forest carbon that was left in the clearcut takes a shortcut back to the atmosphere compared to what would have happened had the forest not been logged. The carbon in branches, undersized tops, unmerchantable trees, rotten wood, waste, breakage and coarse woody debris that are piled and then burned goes straight back to the atmosphere. Understory plants are killed and their carbon quickly returns to the atmosphere. The same applies to small and fine woody debris that lay on the forest floor before logging. Western Forest Products burn piles in a logged area of humid old forest near the Klanawa River on Vancouver Island. (Photo: TJ Watt) TimberWest burn piles in a logged area of humid second-growth forest near Granite Bay on Quadra Island. (Photo: David Broadland) Tolko slash piles ready for burning in an arid forest near Peachland (Photo: Taryn Skalbania) Logging regulations require a certain amount of coarse woody debris to be left in the clearcut. The carbon that debris contains, along with the carbon in stumps and roots, returns to the atmosphere more slowly, but faster than would have been the case if the forest had not been killed by logging. In the meantime, during fire weather, all of the debris left lying in the clearcut makes the fire hazard associated with that clearcut higher than it had been in the mature/old forest that preceded it. As a result there is a higher likelihood of this residual logging debris becoming part of a forest fire, an event that would quickly release much of the remaining carbon in the clearcut or plantation to the atmosphere. Lastly, with the forest cover removed, the forest floor is exposed to the sun and soil temperature rises, causing a higher rate of decomposition and a quicker release of soil carbon to the atmosphere than would have otherwise occurred. And what about the approximately 40 percent of the forest carbon that was trucked out of the clearcut as merchantable logs? The Ministry of Forests’ own research (see graph below) shows that about 50 percent of the carbon in BC forest products has returned to the atmosphere after 28 years. After 100 years that rises to 80 percent. BC Ministry of Forests’ graph Coady says BC and Canada have a “unique opportunity” for reducing emissions in the global push to get to “net zero”. She’s right, but the “opportunity” isn’t what her industry hopes it will be. The industry and the Ministry of Forests want the public to subsidize a tiny, token cleanup of the mess it leaves after logging, and then to be able to greenwash themselves with claims of an imagined “bioeconomy” that will reduce emissions. But with logging being the largest single source of carbon emissions in BC, the only realistic path to substantially reduce those emissions is to reduce the volume of forest cut in BC each year.

BC’s “exhausted forests” may be about to undergo a generational shift in management paradigm. We hope so. But based on its recent poor record of settling First Nations’ land claims, applying ecosystem-based management and conserving biodiversity, it’s just as likely that government is taking us into a new phase of “talk and log”. Clearcut logging of old forest near the Mahatta River on Vancouver Island in the territory of Quatsino First Nation. The NDP government’s recent record of forest management in BC has been so controversial that it may be trying to change its spots. Should the proposed Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework initiative be taken seriously? (Photo by TJ Watt) JANUARY 31 is the deadline for public comment on the BC government’s proposed “Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework”. My intention here is not to provide you with a summary of that document, which you can read for yourself. Instead, I offer a number of criticisms of the framework based on the current government’s recent record on three of the central propositions of the framework: One, that the provincial government is serious about conserving biodiversity; second, that a declaration of “ecosystem-based management” will slow or stop biodiversity loss; and, third, that the current government is genuinely interested in reconciling with First Nations over land claims. We always need to hold government accountable for what it has done, not so much for what it says it will do. The draft Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework doesn’t even mention the Tripartite Framework Agreement on Nature Conservation (the Nature Agreement) recently signed with the federal government, but the objectives of the two initiatives dovetail closely with each other: both are intended to conserve biodiversity and both call for First Nations to play a leadership role in the process of establishing that protection. The Nature Agreement commits the Province to have 30 percent of BC’s land and water under some form of conservation status by 2030 and creates a $1.2 billion fund to accomplish that. That the relationship between the two initiatives has not been spelled out in the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework is puzzling. What happens if the Liberal government is defeated in the next federal election and Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives defund the Nature Agreement? Is that possibility the reason the connection is left unclear? As well, in October 2023, Premier David Eby announced a $300 million “Conservation Funding Mechanism” to “fund new conservation measures that are led or supported by First Nations, lasting environmental protection measures, capacity building for First Nations, stewardship and guardian programs, and support for low-carbon economic opportunities.” Would that money support the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework? Is that $300 million different money than the $600 million BC would contribute under the Nature Agreement? Without actually saying it, the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework is poised to establish what forest “conservation” would mean in BC. But forest conservation is not an abstraction. Unless it takes place on the land, it isn’t happening. The Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework, then, although it says nothing yet about which places would be conserved, would eventually have to define where—geographically—conservation would take place. And we can’t talk about “where” without considering the Nature Agreement, which says that 30 percent of the province needs to be in some form of a conservation area. So the comments below intertwine the two initiatives. This government has been good at protecting rock and ice. That won't conserve biodiversity. The primary objective of the federal-provincial Nature Agreement is to protect biodiversity—the myriad forms of life that live here. To do that will require shifting more of BC’s terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems into some form of conservation status. Right now, approximately 14.4 percent of BC is in some form of conservancy, ecological reserve or protected area. To bring that to 30 percent, another 14.74 million hectares of the province will need to be shifted into some form of conserved area or protected area by 2030. There is, of course, a growing global movement—“Half for Nature”—supporting conservation of 50 percent of the world’s terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems. But first we have to try for 30 percent. The most recent example in BC of the government saying they are making this necessary shift was the establishment of the Incomappleux Conservancy in 2023. The on-the-ground details of that conservancy are worthy of our close attention. They show why the Incomappleux Conservancy—if it was used as a model for conservation in the rest of BC—would severely constrain the conservation of actual biodiversity. But the details also point in the direction of how to get BC on the right track. Before the declaration of the Incomappleaux Conservancy, the immediately controllable threat to biodiversity there was the harm that would be done by logging in the remaining old forests of Block 2 of TFL 23. The licence to log that area was held by Interfor. In the agreement to establish a conservancy, Interfor gave up the right to log in the valley in exchange for $3.75 million, according to the Valhalla Wilderness Society. (Note: By “old forest”, I mean primary forest. However, not all primary forest is “old”. If that’s confusing, see this definition of “primary forest”.) Here’s part of the problem: The vast majority of the area of the new conservancy consists of biodiversity-scarce ice and rock, which, obviously, were not directly threatened by logging. Only a small fraction of the conservancy consists of old forests containing high levels of biodiversity that were threatened by logging. The areal extent of the Incomappleaux Valley that’s now in the conservancy that was considered suitable for logging—see Interfor’s map of its timber harvesting land base in blue in the image below—was only 3600 hectares. To “protect” the biodiversity that remained in that area the provincial government established a 58,000-hectare conservancy. So for each hectare of land in the conservancy that once supported a high level of biodiversity and could be or had already been logged, over 15 hectares of unthreatened, low-biodiversity rock and ice were included in the conservancy. The light green area over this satellite image shows the extent of the Incomappleux Conservancy. The light blue areas show Interfor’s mapping of the area it considered suitable for logging (the THLB) before the conservancy was declared. If that 15 to 1 ratio of unthreatened rock and ice to threatened forest area in the Incomappleux Valley Conservancy is used as a model for “protecting” the rest of the province, then instead of protecting 14 million hectares of threatened biodiversity, the Nature Agreement would protect less than 1 million hectares of land that is actually threatened by logging. That tendency of government to “protect” ice and rock in BC is one aspect of the problem. But in terms of protecting existing pools of high biodiversity in the conservancy area, the creation of the conservancy provides an even smaller benefit. Of those 3600 hectares that were threatened by future logging—much of which had already been logged once—little of that area still contains high levels of biodiversity: a mere 273 hectares. That’s the area of old forest, as mapped by the Old Growth Strategic Review’s Technical Advisory Panel (shown in dark green in the image below) that overlaps with Interfor’s mapped timber harvesting land base. Interfor’s mapping of areas suitable for logging (blue) in part of the Incomappleux Conservancy. TAP’s mapping of priority deferral areas are shown in dark green. Areas where the blue overlaps the dark green were the only remaining areas of old forest that were still threatened by logging. So to protect 273 hectares of highly biologically productive old forest, the BC government has created a conservancy that’s 58,000 hectares in size. At that rate, 14.74 million hectares of new protected areas and conservancies would only conserve 70,000 hectares of the most biologically productive land in BC that hasn’t already been logged. That outcome would be an utter failure to meet the Nature Agreement’s primary objective of conserving biodiversity. The government and industry may argue that since “restoration” or “rehabilitation” of logged land is possible, it’s okay to include clearcuts in conservancies and protected areas. But in BC’s forested ecosystems, only old forests contain high levels of biodiversity. The great amount of time and money that would be needed to restore clearcuts to old forest put such an approach far outside both the budget and the limited timeframe we have left to prevent irreversible biodiversity loss. By the way, the Incomappleaux Conservancy is not protected from mining or private development of recreational infrastructure, which are permitted in a provincial “conservancy”. All of the existing mineral claims in the conservancy have been left intact. And although climate change threatens to bring change to the entire conservancy, labelling an area as a “conservancy” or a “protected area” will have no affect on how climate change degrades ecosystems there. That, then, is the most recent record of the current NDP government at creating a conservation area to protect biodiversity. While the draft Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework promises a paradigm shift in managing for biodiversity in BC, the government’s record suggests that promise could be just a more sophisticated form of talk and log. A non-business-as-usual approach to conservation is possible There are, however, a couple of aspects of the Incomappleaux Conservancy that suggest a direction that could lead to greater success. To understand where hope may lie, we first need to consider the budgetary restraints of the Nature Agreement. The Nature Agreement commits the federal government to contribute about $600 million to finance conservation and requires BC to contribute a matching $600 million, for a total of $1.2 billion. That’s the budget. As mentioned above, the Valhalla Wilderness Society estimates Interfor was paid $3.75 million for giving up its right to log in the Incomappleaux River watershed—most of which, as mentioned above, has already been logged. According to government records, that compensation required Interfor to give up—in perpetuity—the right to log 36,300 cubic metres of wood each year from Block 2 of TFL 23 forests. Using Valhalla’s estimate of what Interfor was paid—$3.75 million—that works out to $103 for each cubic metre of allowable annual cut taken back by the province. This number allows us to estimate how much biodiversity-threatening logging could be permanently reduced across BC using the $1.2 billion budget of the Nature Agreement: 11.7 million cubic metres per year, in perpetuity. Is that a lot or a little? In 2023, logging on public land in BC removed 36 million cubic metres. So the $1.2 billion Nature Agreement budget could finance reduction of logging across the province by about 33 percent (relative to 2023), in perpetuity. But who should be compensated for that reduction? The logging companies whose allowable annual cut is reduced? Or the actual owners of the land? I will come back to this question later. To do this would require convincing political decision-makers that spending scarce public resources on “protecting” or “conserving” rock and ice is nonsensical if the objective is to conserve biodiversity. BC’s vast expanses of rock and ice are under little or no threat from development and contain minimal biodiversity. Common sense, then, should dictate that all of the Nature Agreement’s budget should go to protecting land that is actually under imminent threat from logging or other forms of large-scale, biodiversity-threatening industrial development, like large mineral mines and natural gas and oil fields. Except in the northeastern corner of BC, the only controllable, widespread threat to biodiversity is logging, including road-building. So we know where the emphasis for conservation needs to occur: in forests, particularly old forests. But how should government decide which old forests that are threatened by logging should be protected? What should be protected? The draft Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework initiative flows out of the recommendations of the Old Growth Strategic Review conducted by Gary Merkel and Al Gorley, both professional foresters. Recommendation #2 of their report was to “Declare the conservation and management of ecosystem health and biodiversity of British Columbia’s forests as an overarching priority and enact legislation that legally established this priority for all sectors.” Note the emphasis on “forests”. Gorley and Merkel were not recommending conservation of rock and ice. The details for recommendation number #2 make it clear that it applied “particularly” to “old forest” rather than, say, managed plantations. Following release of the review’s report in 2020, a technical advisory panel (TAP) was constituted and that group identified 2.6 million hectares of “priority areas for deferral” around the province. TAP was responding to Gorley and Merkel’s recommendation #6, which was: “Until a new strategy is implemented, defer development in old forests where ecosystems are at very high and near-term risk of irreversible biodiversity loss.” While TAP’s mapping of “old forest” wasn’t always accurate (as it had predicted), it established that, except in a few cases, remaining highly productive old forest generally occurred in relatively small areas spread thinly around the province, a condition that is almost entirely the result of the relentless logging of primary forests in BC since the late nineteenth century. In many cases, the areal extent of old forest remaining in a given biogeoclimatic zone had fallen below the critical level of 30 percent of the area of the zone. TAP called these “high-risk forests”. There should be no question, then, that those “priority areas for deferral” must be included in conservation and protected areas nominated for the Nature Agreement, just as Merkel and Gorley recommended. Yet the draft Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework doesn’t even mention “old forest”, except when referring to the name of Gorley and Merkel’s report. While protecting old forest needs to be at the centre of any framework intended to address biodiversity loss in BC, the remaining patches of the most biologically productive old forest are small and wouldn’t necessarily make viable “protected areas” all on their own. There are literally thousands of these small patches and turning them all into “protected areas” could make for a difficult-to-administer protected areas system. One possible solution to this dilemma would be to not conserve small areas of old forest as formal protected areas or conservancies. Instead, forest-related legislation could be amended to simply make it illegal to log old forest in these areas, including a suitable buffer of surrounding recruitment forest in those biogeoclimatic zones where old forest has fallen below 30 percent. Even though there is no specific mention in the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health framework of how old forest would be conserved, by highlighting “ecosystem-based management”, the authors seem to be pointing to that as the approach government would use to resolve the contentious old forest issue in BC. Would ecosystem-based management provide protection for what needs to be protected? The draft Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework seems to depend heavily on the hope that an “ecosystem-based” forest management paradigm would result in conservation of the old forest identified by TAP. What is ecosystem-based management? The draft framework offers few specifics. It defines it as “an adaptive approach to managing human activities that seeks to ensure the coexistence of healthy, fully functioning ecosystems and human communities. The intent is to maintain those spatial and temporal characteristics of ecosystems such that component species and ecological processes can be sustained, and human well-being supported and improved.” The draft Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework promises that “ecosystem-based management” (EBM) will be applied across British Columbia, but will this promise—by itself—result in the conservation of old forest identified by TAP? The framework states that “Implementation of EBM will look different across BC (spatially and temporally)…”. The framework also states “It is expected that there will continue to be areas of more intensive development to accommodate population growth and increasing demands for food, fiber, and energy…”. I take the term “intensive development” to include logging as well as oil and gas development. In other words, the framework recognizes that ecosystem-based management could create a result anywhere between slightly restrained clearcut logging and a protected area. The concept of EBM was developed in BC beginning around 2000. By 2004 an EBM Planning Handbook had been created along with much supporting science and a management framework. There are examples where EBM had been implemented in 2007, and based on that record, there’s little evidence that simply introducing EBM to an area made any difference over business-as-usual forest management. For example, in the Thurlow Landscape Unit portion of TimberWest’s TFL 47, where EBM was supposed to be practiced as a result of the 2007 South Central Coast Order, we see that EBM—at least in the hands of TimberWest—looks very much like logging does under the slight constraints of the Forest Planning and Practices Regulation. TimberWest’s EBM logging in the Thurlow Landscape Unit, part of the Great Bear Rainforest (Photo by Tavish Campbell) A 2015 investigation conducted by the Forest Practices Board regarding a complaint by Sonora Islanders about logging in the Thurlow Landscape Unit found that “TimberWest did not manage the forests consistent with the spirit and intent of EBM.” Seen from space, EBM clearcuts on the northern Discovery Islands look exactly like anywhere else in the timber harvesting land base of BC, even though old forest in the area has fallen to critically low levels. Left to right: Hardwicke Island, West Thurlow Island and East Thurlow Island, all supposedly managed under “ecosystem-based management.” So it remains doubtful that further implementation of EBM—coupled with the existing regime of professional reliance in which the foresters employed by a profit-driven logging company are expected to restrain the company from profiting too much at the expense of nature—can be counted on to conserve remaining old forest, even in an area where it has fallen below 10 percent. What would be needed for ecosystem-based management to conserve old forest? The short answer here is: A prohibition of logging in old forest. But that’s not a complete answer. The fundamental weakness of ecosystem-based management is that, in practice, it blends the science of ecological risk with the politics of human need (and greed). But politics has a history of thwarting the adoption of science in forest management in BC. For example, the Coast Information Team—and others—told government 20 years ago that natural disturbance return intervals in many BC forested ecosystems were much greater than had been previously understood. That meant that, naturally, much more of BC would be covered by old forest than the forest management regime in BC was allowing for in its policies and practices. In turn, that meant there would be a higher risk of irreversible biodiversity loss under that management regime. That 20-year-old science has just recently resurfaced in the Interim Assessment Protocol for Forest Biodiversity in British Columbia (2020). BC’s Old Growth Forest: A Last Stand for Biodiversity (2020) provided a graphic illustration of this risk relationship. None of this knowledge is currently being applied by government or logging companies in forest management practices. Risk to ecological function, biodiversity and resilience based on the amount of an ecosystem remaining relative to natural amounts. (From BC’s Old Growth Forest: A Last Stand for Biodiversity ) Instead, the forest management paradigm in operation throughout BC has been based on an imposed political condition that forest conservation measures should not impact timber supply for human use by more than 6 percent, province-wide. Why “6 percent”? This was an arbitrary choice that reflected a political priority in 2003. The government of the day thought it could attract more investment to BC’s struggling logging industry by making it a reliable player in the export of wood products to the global market. Now 80 to 90 percent of the forests cut in BC are exported as wood products and raw logs. There was never a non-economic understanding backing that 6 percent “balance”. It was purely political. As a result, in those 20 years, millions of hectares of old forest were logged that wouldn’t have been if science had been the priority instead of politics. Many of the forests logged were a thousand or more years in the making. They can’t be “restored” as long as the human need for timber supply is being artificially “balanced” against the needs of nature, especially when that balance has been set at 94 for timber and 6 for nature. It’s not for nothing that Premier Eby has described BC forests as “exhausted”. Photo by TJ Watt For ecosystem-based management to have any chance of conserving old forest—or even recruitment forest for future old forest—the “balance” in the timber harvesting land base of BC needs to be based on the most current scientific consensus regarding natural disturbance interval and the ecological risk of deviating from the long-term natural occurrence of old forest. And, of course, the development of a society-wide consciousness that only a low risk of biodiversity loss is acceptable. After all, nature is the most essential life support system we have, supplying us with habitat for wildlife, clean water, oxygen, flood control, spiritual sustenance, fire hazard management, carbon storage for climate stability, and so forth. Does anybody think such a transformation could happen by 2030? The best insurance against high-risk politicians is protected areas The best—if not the only—insurance against the tendency of governments to accept a higher level of risk of irreversible biodiversity loss for political reasons is to create hard protective boundaries around areas of old forest, boundaries that are resistant to changes in government. But, as the record on creating the Incomappleaux Conservancy shows, government is prone to shooting us in the foot by puffing up such protected areas with large amounts of land that are under no imminent threat. To protect 30 percent of the most biologically productive terrestrial areas of BC means protecting 30 percent of its most biologically productive forests. Where should those protected areas be located? BC began developing a “Protected Areas Strategy” in the early 1990s when there was a push to raise protection of special areas of land from 6 to 12 percent. A system of ecosystem classification has been under development since 1985, and that system identifies how much of each of the 139 terrestrial and marine ecosections in BC have been protected. Ecosections are “areas with minor physiographic and macroclimatic or oceanographic variations”. Each is slightly different, biodiversity-wise, from its neighbour ecosections. To see how much of the ecosection you live in is protected, or to learn which ecosection you live in, go to this page. Twenty-four ecosections already have 30 percent or more of their area protected. But 57 have less than 6 percent protected. A good guide to where additional protected areas ought to go could be based on the goal of protecting 30 percent of each ecosection across the province. Mapping of TAP’s priority old-growth deferral areas along with existing protected areas and conservancies on top of ecosections allows for quick identification of ecosections where there is old forest but little existing protection. Old growth Douglas fir are protected in Elk Falls Provincial Park (Photo: David Broadland) First Nations Leadership The draft Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework doesn’t provide anything of substance regarding First Nations beyond these good intentions: “The Framework promotes an inclusive, partnership-based approach—founded on upholding Title and Rights of First Nations and advancing reconciliation.” The Tripartite Framework Agreement on Nature Conservation (the Nature Agreement) signed with the federal government, states: “The Framework Agreement includes a shared commitment to work toward true and lasting reconciliation with First Nations. This work is based on recognition and respect for shared stewardship responsibilities, the benefits of healthy ecosystems, and the inherent right of First Nations to self-determination and self-government within their territories. Canada and BC recognize that First Nations have been caretakers of the lands and waters in what is now called BC since time immemorial and are leaders in stewarding lands and waters.” This all sounds fine, until you consider the actual record of the governments of Canada and BC at signing treaties with BC First Nations. Since the BC Treaty Commission started the process of treaty-making with first Nations in 1992, only six treaties have been completed by the Commission. Those treaties returned a total of 39,778 hectares of land to BC First Nations, an area that is considerably smaller than the Incomappleux Conservancy (the Nisga’a Treaty was negotiated outside of the BC Treaty Commission process). Based on the BC government’s account of the population of First Nations who have signed those six treaties, the treaties have returned an average of 8 hectares per Indigenous person to the rightful owners. At that rate, signing treaties that cover the 200,000 members of all BC First Nations would see approximately 1.6 million hectares returned—or 1.7 percent of the area of BC. Compare that 8 hectares per person to the area controlled for the economic benefit of the 46,000 people in BC who are directly employed in the logging-forestry-saw-milling-pulp-and-paper complex (2023). In 2024, logging companies have long-term exclusive access to forest resources on about 21 million hectares of the most biologically productive unceded traditional territories of First Nations. That works out to 456 hectares per industry worker. Treaties are returning land to First Nations at the rate of 8 hectares per person, but the logging industry has access to 456 hectares per worker. How does this historically disempowering imbalance advance reconciliation? The current provincial government continues to fight First Nations who try to use the courts to get some of their traditional territory returned. For example, the province has fought vigorously against Nuchatlaht First Nation’s claim to 200 square kilometres on the north end of Nootka Island—lands that the BC Ministry of Forests has allowed Western Forest Products to decimate with clearcut logging. Thirty years of expensive legal negotiations for return of their land—through both the BC Treaty Commission and BC courts—has impoverished many First Nations. Their desperate need for any economic development has pushed many of them into signing “Forest and Range Consultation and Revenue Sharing Agreements” with the BC government. These provide a First Nation with about 3 percent of the stumpage collected by the province from logging on its traditional territory. That works out to between one-half of one percent and 1 percent of the value of the logs before they are milled. The province’s commitment to fully consult with First Nations on resource issues is also questionable. The NDP government did pass the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act in 2019 as a framework for reconciliation with First Nations. But this has provided no comfort to those hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation who are resisting construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. They did not consent to its construction. As well, the province has recently been taken to court by the Gitxaała Nation. The Nation has challenged the ease with which a mining company, using BC’s Mineral Tenure Act, was able to apply for a claim on the Nation’s territory—without consultation. The specifics of these cases and others strongly suggest a soft commitment on the part of the BC government for consultation with First Nations about what resource development can occur on their traditional territories. Given the province’s dismal record on completing treaties, its miserly compensation to First Nations for forestry agreements and its willingness to further impoverish First Nations by fighting in court against their land claims and the requirement for consultation, why would anyone believe the province is serious about First Nations being equal partners—let alone leaders—in an initiative to conserve more of BC’s old forest? In the absence of progress on the completion of just treaties, some First Nations have already seized the leadership from government on conservation in their territories by declaring Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs). To date there are at least 17 such declarations that involve nearly 8.7 million hectares of unceded lands. At this point, those IPCAs would cover more than half of the additional land that would be required to bring BC up to 30 percent protected/conserved. There are likely more to come. But IPCAs also raise some questions. One declared IPCA is an initiative of the Kaska Dena who have proposed the immense 4-million-hectare (40,000 square kilometres) Kaska IPCA in northern BC. The area has few roads and doesn’t appear to have either loggers or gas frackers knocking on its mainly ice and rock doors. If it is not under imminent threat—unlike so much of southern BC—is there a pressing need for it to be protected? Will the government use these declarations to avoid protecting the more contentious areas that contain priority deferral areas that logging companies want to log in southern BC? The Flathead Valley in southeastern BC, for example, has many old forest priority deferral areas, zero protected areas and a significant level of logging activity. In the short term, the Flathead is far more threatened than the Kaska IPCA. Which should have priority in terms of conserving biodiversity? Another potential issue with IPCAs is that the 18 First Nations that have declared them are, in fact, a small subset of the over 200 First Nations in BC. Many First Nations—pushed into economic impoverishment by loss of access to their traditional lands and resources—may be more interested at this time in getting a slice of the logging happening in their territories than they are in conservation. How will the provincial government ensure that the most biodiversity-rich areas of those territories also get protected? Who should be compensated? Who should be compensated for the land taken out of the timber harvesting land base for the purpose of conserving biodiversity? In the case of the Incomappleux Valley Conservancy, the only “compensation” mentioned was paid to the logging company Interfor. It might come as a surprise to some people that Interfor was compensated at all. Ever since passage of Bill 28 (the Forest Amendment Act) in 2021, the forest industry and its proxies have been claiming that government could now take back tenure with no compensation. For example, Susan Yurkovich, president of the Council of Forest Industries, told Business in Vancouver in 2021, “People have bought assets over time, including tenure, and Bill 28 now says that you can effectively have an asset removed with no compensation, and that has a chilling effect on investment”. But the companies never paid government for those “assets”. They may have paid annual rentals, renewal fees and stumpage to the BC government for the rights to log forests in their tenure or licence on publicly-owned land, but the government always had the legal right to reduce the volume that could be harvested on those tenures. So a risk of reduction has long existed. In spite of that risk, logging companies willingly participated with other logging companies in buying and selling their rights to log on publicly owned land in a market that only required government approval of such transfers. The fact that logging companies created a market in which tenures were bought and sold does not now mean that the public should compensate these companies if the government decides it needs to reduce the allowable annual cut on that publicly-owned land so that it can be used for some other public interest: Like conservation of biodiversity or providing First Nations with greater access to their own resources. Logging companies that also own mills—which are privately-owned assets—have long known of the risk that the volume of logs available to those mills could be reduced by government, and that such a reduction could lower the value of their mills. Why, then, should the $1.2 billion budget of the Nature Agreement go toward compensating logging companies for the reduction in allowable annual cut that is necessary for conservation of biodiversity? Why not, instead, allocate this budget to the actual owners of the land—BC’s First Nations? For those that are willing to conserve identified areas of old forest in their territories, put them on the list for Nature Agreement compensation. Wouldn’t that foster reconciliation? Tell the government what you think Obviously, I am skeptical about the NDP government’s intention with this initiative. Given the way in which this is being tied to consultation with and agreement by First Nations, and given that a new “Forest Landscape Planning” process has been undertaken that would displace the started-but-never-completed Landscape Level Planning process, I can see this all taking another 20 years before it, too, is replaced with some other initiative. During that time, much more old forest will disappear. Independent forest ecologist Rachel Holt—who has been a key player on the technical advisory panel—is not skeptical. She has a different take on the initiative and you will benefit from the information she provides in the powerpoint presentation below. You have until January 31 to send in your own comment: biodiversity.ecosystemhealth@gov.bc.ca

Scientists, climate activists and media all around the world said BC’s record-breaking fires in 2023 were “fuelled by climate change”. Largely ignored were the actual fuels that make lightning-ignited fires easier to start and harder to control, leading to larger fires. The southern edge of the Donnie Creek fire on May 18, 2023. At this point the fire was burning through black spruce, clearcuts, gas developments and melting permafrost exposed by logging and gas development. HOW MANY OF YOU have noticed that of the 2.84 million hectares of land that burned in BC this year, 1.79 million hectares—nearly 63 percent of the total area burned—was in the far northeast corner of the province? The four largest fires in BC this year all occurred in the triangle of BC that lies on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. That corner, which is ecologically and geologically distinct from the rest of BC, occupies about 12 percent of the land base of the province. For 63 percent of the burned area to be concentrated in a region that occupies just 12 percent of BC suggests that the factors that have influenced the number and size of fires in the northeast aren’t necessarily the same as those impacting the southern part of the province. Consider the record-breaking 619,073-hectare Donnie Creek Fire. The BC Wildfire Service early on attributed the aggressiveness of the Donnie Creek Fire to the dryness of the black spruce stands it burned. At the time the fire exploded on May 12, the foliar moisture content of the region’s black spruce was at its annual low point (the “spring dip”), allowing a slower-moving ground fire to more easily become a faster-moving crown fire. Climate change at work, right? Forest scientists, however, have noted that the “spring dip” of black spruce has been “judged to be not so much a weather-dependent effect but as largely physiological in nature”. I understand that to mean that black spruce’s dried condition in early spring would occur with or without climate change. Black spruce is a highly flammable conifer. The US Forest Service states that black spruce forests are “the most flammable vegetation types in interior Alaska”. Once it gets burning, it’s hard to stop. The Donnie Creek Fire encroaching on gas industry drilling site (Photo: BC Wildfire Service) The range of Black spruce in BC is concentrated in the northeast corner of BC. This is the area of the province lying to the east of the Rocky Mountains, which we might also want to think of as BC’s triangle of fire. Range of black spruce in BC How did climate change impact the triangle of fire this year? A review of NASA’s mapping of the land surface temperature anomaly (diagrams below) shows that the region was much warmer than usual in January, colder than usual in February, and not far from normal in March and April leading up to the start of the northeastern fires in early May. Temperature anomaly in BC’s triangle of fire (denoted by red point) was hotter than usual in January, cooler than usual in February, slightly warmer than usual in March (Mapping by NASA). While the heating and drying effects caused by higher temperatures and less precipitation from May onwards no doubt increased the flammability of the black spruce forests, there are likely additional factors that amplified 2023’s land surface temperature anomaly. This includes the presence of elevated levels of methane at ground level, which raises ground level temperature and may be adding to forest combustibility. Where is such methane coming from? There are two primary sources: Methane released by decomposing plants that were formerly frozen in permafrost and, secondly, geologic methane. Let’s consider each of those, starting with methane released by melting permafrost. Melting permafrost is releasing methane that comes from both decomposing plants and geologic methane A 2020 peer-reviewed study (Geological methane emissions and wildfire risk in the degraded permafrost area of the Xiao Xing’an Mountains, China, Wei Shan et al) published by Nature looked at the impact of released methane on ground level temperature in an area of northeastern China underlain by degrading permafrost. The area is experiencing an increase in frequency of forest fires. The Chinese scientists attributed at least part of this increase in fires to warmer temperatures at ground level that are the result of the release of methane from melting permafrost. The scientists also suggested that the methane could be adding to the “combustibility” of forests. The study noted that “Methane gas released into the atmosphere in permafrost regions is generally believed to be derived from microbial gases released from melted sediments or local release of [geologic] gas.” Other scientists, too, have reported that melting permafrost releases geologic methane. Maps of Canada’s permafrost show that the areas in which the largest 2023 fires occurred in northeastern BC are underlain with discontinuous, sporadic or isolated patches of permafrost. In other words, areas where once-continuous permafrost is now degrading. The effects the Chinese scientists found in their study areas in northeastern China could very well be in play in BC’s triangle of fire. Besides the increased melting of permafrost resulting from global heating, other human-made physical changes to the land are known to increase methane release from such areas. Inside the Donnie Creek Fire’s perimeter there are significant areas of forest that have been removed: clearcuts for timber, gas and logging industry service roads, drilling sites and other gas infrastructure sites, and thousands of kilometres of pipelines and seismic exploration lines. Forest removal, whether it occurs as a result of fire or industrial development, is known to increase the rate at which permafrost melts, thereby increasing the amount of methane released. If the impacts of all of these changes on melting permafrost and the subsequent release of methane are resulting in more and larger forest fires in BC’s and Canada’s boreal regions, then, as scientists have reported, one of the consequences would be an even larger release of methane which is produced by the forest fires themselves. Methane is 28-34 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Comparison of where fires have occurred in Canada’s boreal region shows that a high percentage of them overlap the belt of degrading permafrost. Has the permafrost system been nudged over a tipping point? If so, what role did industrial development play in the nudging? Location of degrading permafrost in Canada aligns well with where forest fires have occurred. BC gas and oil industry is also releasing geologic methane But forest removal and subsequent melting of permafrost is not the only pathway by which more methane is being released in BC’s triangle of fire. The region is part of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin, an area rich in hydrocarbon deposits. During the last 20 years, BC’s burgeoning hydraulically fractured gas well industry has installed thousands of wells, compressors, pumping stations, tank batteries, valves, processing facilities and thousands of kilometres of pipelines. This equipment is known to leak methane to the atmosphere. Lots of it. Within the perimeter of the Donnie Creek Fire alone, we counted over 1000 separate gas-industry infrastructure sites. Most of these are drilling sites that contain anywhere from one to twenty individual wells each. How much methane is leaking? A 2017 study, sponsored by the David Suzuki Foundation, estimated that actual methane emissions at ground level, which included all sources, were 2.5 times BC Energy Regulator’s estimates. A 2020 analysis of BC Energy Regulator’s record of leakage from hydraulically fractured wells found that 11 percent of wells are leaking. A study published in 2021 estimated that methane emissions in BC are 1.6 to 2.2 times “current federal inventory estimates”. In other words, we don’t know. But likely more than is being admitted. In any case, would release of geologic methane have an impact? The study by Chinese scientists mentioned above stated “On the one hand, the ‘greenhouse effect’ caused by the release of methane gas will increase the air temperature, which creates favorable conditions for wildfires. On the other hand, the combustibility of methane may also promote regional wildfires.” Global heating obviously played a significant role in the Donnie Creek and other large fires in BC’s triangle of fire in 2023, but ignoring or denying the impact that industrial development could be playing in making those fires larger would be foolish. Are Canadian government scientists ignoring impacts of industrial development? So it was a bit surprising to find that a scientific study authored by a number of Canadian scientists (Abrupt, climate induced increase in wildfires in British Columbia since the mid-2000s, Parisien et al) failed to mention any of the above. The study was released this summer and highlighted the Donnie Creek Fire as though it somehow reinforced the scientists’ main finding that climate change is the main driver of BC’s forest fires. Yet the study did not mention known impacts of industrial development on melting permafrost or include data from either 2022’s or 2023’s forest fires in BC. The lead author of the study, Marc Parisien, is a scientist with Natural Resources Canada in Alberta. The “Raison d’être” of Natural Resources Canada is “to improve the quality of life of Canadians by ensuring that our natural resources are developed sustainably, providing a source of jobs, prosperity and opportunity, while preserving our environment and respecting our communities and Indigenous peoples.” Aside from noting that the practice of eliminating deciduous species from managed plantations contributes to the growing forest fire problem, the scientists acknowledged little or no connection between industrial development in BC forests and the rapid increase in the rate at which forests here are burning. Instead, they implied that any such connection was “ambiguous”. Yet one of the contributing authors to the study is BC’s John Gray, a wildfire ecologist. Following 2021’s disasterous fires in southern BC, Gray was interviewed by Jeff Davies of the Northern Beat for a story titled “BC Wildfires—more than just climate change”. At the time, Gray told Davies: “The fire problem is no longer unmanaged stands. The fire problem is all the managed stands full of slash.” No ambiguity there. In danger of being lost in the din of news stories and scientific studies focussed on “climate-change-fuelled forest fires” is the role that industrial development plays in increasing fire hazard on the ground by creating—year after year—thousands of square kilometres of “kindling”. As noted above, little attention has being paid, so far, to the unique form of kindling industrial development has left scattered across BC’s northeastern triangle of fire. In BC’s south (by which I mean south of Prince George), the “kindling” takes the form of logging slash and highly flammable young plantations. That fuel makes it easier for fires to be ignited—by both lightning and humans. Because of the higher rate of spread of fire in logging slash and young plantations, that makes fires initially harder to control. Those initially harder-to-control fires quickly find—because of their pervasiveness across almost any southern BC landscape—nearby clearcuts and young plantations, where the same rapid growth occurs. This dangerous combination of high-hazard fuel conditions and the widespread availability of those conditions is inevitably leading to larger fires. While the increased temperature and lower humidity that come with global heating increase fire hazard across the landscape, the impact is higher in clearcuts than in forests. Scientists report that the ground temperature in clearcuts is considerably higher than in nearby managed or unmanaged forests. This means, logically, that on any given extreme fire-weather day, fire hazard will be greater in clearcuts. With the widespread and growing prevalence of clearcuts, the end result should be obvious: Climate change is amplifying the influence of logging on fire. As well, scientists have reported that the hotter temperature in clearcuts has a heating and drying effect on remaining stands of older forest adjacent to the clearcuts. The effect can extend into the forest more than 240 metres from the edge of the clearcut. Further, scientists have reported that stands of pine burn at a rate 8.4 times higher than stands of deciduous species. Eradication of fire-resistant species like aspen in plantations of commercially desirable pine—a wide-spread, ongoing practice in BC—is destroying the natural fire break deciduous species provide. Hence, larger fires. The southern part of BC, where almost all logging occurs, now has a vast, constantly-being-renewed area of monoculture clearcuts and young plantations where deciduous species are erradicated. As primary forests continue to be liquidated and plantations are logged at a younger and younger age, the area of dangerously flammable clearcuts and young plantations is continuing to grow relative to the volume being extracted. Unless the overall allowable annual cut is reduced significantly, this issue will get more acute and dangerous. As global heating creates longer fire seasons with hotter maximum temperatures, lower humidity and stronger winds, all this human-created danger is combining to produce larger forest fires, which, in turn, amplify climate change. Has southern BC, too, reached a tipping point? In many of the big fires of 2021, a high percentage of the area within a fire’s perimeter had been previously disturbed by logging (see image below; see more images here). At some point, presumably, there would be too much logging slash and young plantations to be able to suppress fires. Have we already reached that point, or are we just getting closer? The August 6, 2021 perimeter of the 60,000-hectare Flat Lake Fire (black line) superimposed on top of the BC ministry of forests’ RESULTS Openings record of logging (red-shaded area). The green-shaded area is Flat Lake Provincial Park. There doesn’t appear to be any organized plan by government or industrial forest scientists to confess to what is turning out to be the crime of the century: The intentional liquidation of BC’s much more fire-resistant primary forests and the production of tens of millions of hectares of “kindling” during a time of a growing climate emergency—and a cover-up to blame the effects on “climate change”. There is, however, a glimmer of light that has begun to appear in Ministry of Forests records of the total volume of trees removed from BC clearcuts each year. That volume has begun to fall. In the twelve months from the beginning of December 2022 to the end of November 2023, the overall volume cut in BC was about 36 million cubic metres. This is approximately 50 percent below what ministry timber supply analysts had predicted for this year in 2004—at the height of the Mountain Pine Beetle infestation. It is unlikely that this fall in volume is being intentionally orchestrated by the machinery of the Ministry of Logging; it is more likely that past misjudgments about future timber supply are beginning to assert themselves. In either case, since clearcutting and plantations raise fire hazard for up to 30 years or more, the current era of dangerously large fires in the south will likely get worse for many more years. In the north—in BC’s triangle of fire—the impacts of industrial development, including logging and further exploration and development of gas fields, will melt more and more permafrost. In each case, without a drastic decline in the area of BC being logged each year, further industrial development will simply worsen the impacts of climate change. Why are British Columbians allowing this to happen? Why are they not outraged? Related stories: Clearcut logging increases forest fire risk The forest-industrial complex’s Molotov clearcuts Current BC reforestation is 19th century quack medicine

Teal Cedar’s claims of “irreparable harm” are not supported by its own numbers. Forest defenders march into Waterfall Camp near Fairy Creek Valley in June 2021. (Photo by Alex Harris) ON OCTOBER 4, 2023, Teal Cedar Products Ltd filed a statement of claim in BC Supreme Court against 15 individuals, an air service company and the “Rainforest Flying Squad”, all of whom, Teal claims, caused damage and loss to the company as a result of the blockades near Fairy Creek in TFL 46. The blockades began in August 2020 and peaked in the summer of 2021. One person being sued by Teal, who requested anonymity, said the company is seeking millions in damages. Teal’s claim alleges that “the Defendants and co-conspirators not named as Defendants in this action agreed, combined, and conspired to use unlawful means to conduct the Blockades and to engage in Blockade Support (the “Conspiracy”). The predominant purpose of the Conspiracy was to injure Teal Cedar by obstructing, delaying, and preventing lawful forestry or road construction activities in and around TFL 46. The Defendants knew or ought to have known that the Conspiracy would cause harm to Teal Cedar.” While a BC Supreme Court will have to weigh for itself the validity of Teal’s claim that “the predominant purpose of the Conspiracy was to injure Teal Cedar”, the basis in law that Teal is making its claim is that the actions of the blockaders did the company “Irreparable harm”. This is also the legal basis on which Teal sought an injunction against the blockades in 2021. At that time, Justice Frits E Verhoeven gave Teal an injunction. I wrote about this here, stating that Verhoeven’s decision was flawed. In his judgment, Verhoeven stated, “There is also no doubt that Teal will suffer irreparable harm if the injunction is not granted.” But there was doubt then, and there is even more now. Back then, Verhoeven based his judgment on numbers that were provided to him by Teal Cedar. The numbers that Teal provided were a moment-in-time analysis of how Teal could be affected—in terms of the volume that it wouldn’t be able to log because of the blockades, and the money that it would then lose as a result. However, because the volume logged in a TFL is governed by a five-year cut-control period, the court won’t be able to blame a drop in volume in TFL 46 for the year 2021, for example, and say it was because of the blockades. The court is going to have to look at the entire 5-year cut-control period and the volume Teal was allowed to cut under the conditions of its TFL. An internal Teal document shows that the total volume it was permitted to log in TFL 46 for the five-year cut-control period between 2018 and 2022 was 1,837,155 cubic metres. That was the company’s production goal. All of its planning was based on that goal. Ministry of Forests’ records show that the volume of logs Teal trucked out of TFL 46 during those five years was 1,774,421 cubic metres. In other words, Teal cut 97 percent of what it was legally entitled to cut without incurring carryover into the next cut control period or incurring financial penalties. By the way, in the previous 5-year cut control period (2013-2017), Teal was able to log 99.5 percent of its permitted cut. So Teal was able to cut most of what it planned to cut in TFL 46 in its 5-year cut-control period, 2018 to 2022. But the Teal document referred to above also shows that Teal planned to cut 367,431 cubic metres in TFL 46 in 2019. In fact, however, it cut only 238,947 cubic metres. That is 128,484 cubic metres less than it had planned to cut. This loss in what it had planned to cut can’t be attributed to the blockades, which didn’t start until August 2020. And this loss in the planned cut is greater than the difference between what Teal planned to cut during its 5-year cut-control period and what it did cut. In other words, the blockades didn’t cause Teal’s slight decline in volume taken in 2019—something else did. For more information, the court would need to consider nearby TFLs—and news reports. Western Forest Product’s TFL 44 lies just north of Teal’s TFL 46. An internal Western Forest Products document shows that for the five-year cut control period between 2016-2020, the company was permitted to log 3,912,410 cubic metres. But Western was only able to produce 2,422,220 cubic metres—62 percent of what it was permitted to log. Western’s production was not limited by blockades. The internal document makes it clear that a significant portion of the area of TFL 44 that it is permitted to log is, in fact, “economically challenging” to log. Could Teal’s slump in production in TFL 46 be related to similar “economically challenging” times? According to Teal itself, this loss in production was either caused by excessive stumpage rates or it was caused by poor market conditions. Take your pick. In other words, there are other factors at play—besides whether or not a TFL has been the subject of blockades—that can have a much greater impact on how much of the permitted volume a TFL holder is able to extract. One of those factors is the market price for wood products, which clearly wasn’t so good in 2019. But nearly 43 percent of the volume Teal logged during its 2018-2022 5-year cut-control period was logged in 2021 and 2022 during a period of extraordinarily high prices for wood products. Teal will also need to explain to the court why it reduced its production in Forest Licence A19201 in Timber Supply Area 30, where there were no blockades. A review of Teal’s total production during its 5-year cut-control period for that licence shows that Teal undercut its AAC there by 138,465 cubic metres, an even larger undercut than occurred in TFL 46. Had it not undercut in A19201, it would have had more than enough volume to meet its needs. It’s difficult, then, to fathom why Teal is claiming in its statement of claim that, as a result of the blockades it incurred, for example, “the cost of acquiring timber from outside of TFL 46.” Teal may claim that only TFL 46 can provide it with the old-growth cedar that it turns into shakes and shingles at its Surrey Mill. But here, again, Teal’s reliance on old-growth cedar—in the face of broad public criticism of the use of old forest for short-lived building materials like shakes and shingles—indicates a failure of the company to recognize it needs to implement changes in how it conducts its business. If it had to acquire “timber from outside TFL 46”, that self-inflicted cost may have been a function of its own poor corporate judgment. Teal is seeking general damages, special damages and special costs. The company is also seeking a “permanent injunction enjoining the Defendants and anyone with knowledge of the Court’s order from interfering with Teal Cedar’s forestry and road construction activities, or that of its contractors” within the area established by the injunction granted to the company in 2021. Hopefully, the “Fairy Creek Fifteen” will get themselves a team of good lawyers armed with a deep understanding of all the reasons most British Columbians want to see the remaining highly biologically-productive old-forest ecosystems in the province conserved and protected. In any case, the numbers shouldn’t hurt them. Related stories: Justice Verhoeven’s flawed decision on Fairy Creek blockades Lies, guitars and a few facts about the Fairy Creek Rainforest blockades Where was the “clarity of knowledge” in the Fairy Creek old-growth logging dispute?