Protests target logging, land sales

Demonstrators will be on the lawn of the legislature at noon today, protesting the withdrawal of private lands from tree-farm licences on northern Vancouver Island.

At the same time, an informational picket in Duncan will protest continued logging in the Koksilah/Glenora watershed, and on Bay Street in Toronto, a small group will demonstrate outside Brookfield Asset Management Corp., the parent company of Western Forest Products.

"It's part of an international day of action for Vancouver Island's ancient forests," said Ken Wu of Western Canada Wilderness Committee, who will be at the Toronto demonstration.

The scattered actions are an indication of growing concern about intensive logging of private forest lands on Vancouver Island and land sales by forest companies.

Soaring land values and recent provincial decisions allowing forest companies to pull private lands out of tree-farm licences -- meaning more lenient logging rules and fewer restrictions on log exports -- are leaving communities with unexpected development pressures, clearcuts on their doorsteps and fears about the safety of community watersheds. The companies say they need to sell valuable land to keep their operations viable and save jobs.

Vancouver Island is more vulnerable to the sale of private forest lands than the rest of B.C. because of the 1883 E&N land grant to the Dunsmuirs, which put 23 per cent of Vancouver Island's land base into the hands of private companies.

"That's the genesis of so many of the problems Vancouver Island is now looking at," said John Horgan, Malahat-Juan de Fuca MLA. "In my constituency, TimberWest is the largest landowner, second is Western Forest Products, and Island Timberlands scoots in between and does rapid-fire cutting."

As the public is faced with multinational companies trying to better their bottom lines, disparate groups are banding together to object.

"The south Island is chockablock with these conflicts. People are not opposed to logging -- they are opposed to logging companies determining the future of lands in their communities," Horgan said.

The north Island is struggling with decisions such as the 2004 withdrawal of 77,000 hectares of private land from TFL 44.

The goal of today's legislature rally, organized by the Save Our Valley Alliance, is to ask auditor general John Doyle to include the deletion of Weyerhaeuser's private lands from TFL 44 in his investigation of whether the public interest was met in allowing Western Forest Products to remove private land from tree-farm licences without paying compensation.

Port Alberni residents say private forest lands in the Alberni Valley are being scalped, leading to flooding and lack of protection for deer and elk winter ranges.

In January, Western Forest Products withdrew more than 28,000 hectares of private land from tree-farm licences. Although public outcry has focused on land between Sooke and Port Renfrew, some of which has been provisionally sold to a developer, 16,000 hectares are on northern Vancouver Island in areas around Port McNeill, Cape Scott, Gold River and Tahsis.

Those areas are now being operated as managed forest, but there is no guarantee that will continue, said Western Forest Products' chief operating officer, Duncan Kerr.

"None of it is on the market, but it would be inappropriate to comment on future plans. It comes back to issues around the financial health of the company and the state of the markets," he said.

Qualicum Beach council has passed a resolution asking the province to put an immediate moratorium on sales of forest land.

"Forestry is still, for many communities on the Island, the backbone of the economy, so for these companies now to clearcut the lands and sell them for real-estate development is the wrong approach," said Qualicum Mayor Teunis Westbroek. "We think it will affect our aquifers and quality of life and lead to urban sprawl."

Council, which plans to bring its resolution to the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities and Union of B.C. Municipalities, wants better protection for sensitive ecosystems, wildlife corridors and watersheds in private forest lands.

This week, the Dogwood Initiative added its voice to requests that the auditor general's office expand its probe into the tree-farm licence issue to look at six deletions, going back to 2004.

The submission says the province's contention that deletions were needed to help Western Forest Products with its debt "is nonsensical."