Clear-cut of Vancouver Island ancient trees shows faults in B.C.'s deferral system, says conservationist

A clear-cut is seen in Quatsino Sound (Ancient Forest Alliance)

“Heartbreaking” photos of a clear-cut of ancient trees on Vancouver Island show faults in the provincial government’s deferral agreement, conservationists say.

The images of the fallen enormous western red cedars in Quatsino Sound on the north end of the island were captured by conservationists with the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA), which said the trees should have been protected under the old-growth forests deferral agreement.

AFA said some of the old growth trees measured upwards of 3 metres wide in a 25-hectare cutblock, the area equivalent to over 50 football fields, located on public lands in Tree Farm Licence 6, which is held by logging company Western Forest Products. The group says the area was not deferred from logging due to a mapping error.

“Knowing that this irreplaceable ancient forest could potentially still be standing today if the B.C. government was using field verification to identify and defer old-growth forests missed due to mapping errors is a punch in the gut,” said TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance photographer and campaigner.

Under mounting pressure in November 2021, the B.C. government agreed to implement temporary logging deferrals in 2.6 million hectares of the most at-risk old-growth forests in the province. The priority deferrals were identified by the Technical Advisory Panel (TAP), an independent old-growth science panel, to prevent irreversible biodiversity loss while a long-term land use plan was developed.

The group said “this particular grove — and likely hundreds of others — was not included in the TAP’s original deferral recommendations due to the forest being incorrectly labelled as 210 years old in the province’s forest inventory database (40 years younger than the province’s 250-year-old threshold for being considered old-growth on the coast and to be included in deferral mapping)”.

According to AFA, this loss of old-growth shows the issues of inventory errors TAP specifically mentioned in its report, and that it made clear the B.C. government should use on-the-ground assessments to identify and defer big-tree old-growth forests that were missed in their preliminary analysis.

“Witnessing the disappearance of the last unprotected stands of old-growth forests on Vancouver Island leaves one with a profound sense of ecological grief,” said Watt.

“The B.C. government can and must use its vast resources to help pave the path toward the protection of what still remains.”