The Money Huggers Want All The Old Growth

How much of Canada's old growth forests do the money huggers want to cut down? 

All of it. Each and every massive, ancient, beautiful tree, wherever it may be. 

Where we see dendrological miracles, they see only bags of cash. They want to convert all the old growth to those bags that they clutch to their chests as they chuckle maniacally in the wreckage.

And they will get all of it, if we don't stop them. And we can, if we want to bad enough, stop them. They are, after all, our trees.

A recent example of our power to save the old growth concerns the sale of remnant old growth forests near Port Renfrew. No one, other than the money huggers, thought it was a good idea, and said as much quite loudly.

The NDP/Green government, that never should have put the old growth up for sale in the first place, have relented, and the auction never took place. For now.

The cashoterrorists will be back, though. They will keep on coming until all the old growth is gone, or until we get up off our couches and stop them.

What happened in the Port Renfrew forest shows that more of us are up and ready to fight for what is left.

Tree hugging, good. Money hugging, not so much.

The Man Who Saved Big Lonely Doug

Dennis Cronin standing in front of the giant tree he saved.
Photo credit: Lorraine Cronin

In 2014, just as I was moving from Vancouver Island, BC to Nova Scotia, the tree which has become to be known as Big Lonely Doug was discovered by big tree protectors in a former stand of old growth not far from Port Renfrew. 

The giant Douglas fir tree was not hard to find - it was the only tree left in a clear cut block that used to be an ancient grove, and it was hard to miss.

As it turns out, the tree still stands due to the efforts of Mr. Cronin, an industry engineer, that may have been the first person to ever see it. 

To read the fascinating story of how this amazing specimen, the second largest fir in Canada, was saved, click here.

The only Douglas fir tree larger is the Red Creek Fir. This is another significant tree that was also destined for destruction, but was preserved by a logging crew that could not bring themselves to cut such a gigantic tree down.

There goes the neighbourhood.
This is why Big Lonely Doug is so lonely. 
But, better lonely than dead.
Photo credit: TJ Watt

I have never seen the tree that Dennis Cronin, who after decades in the woods and marking untold numbers of giant Pacific Forest trees for removal, decided to save. But the next time I am in Canada's big tree country again, I will.

And when I do, I will think about the man who chose to save Big Lonely Doug, one of the tallest trees (70.2 metres, 230 ft - the height of an 21 story building) he had ever seen, and I will give thanks for his decision.

On a final note, Mr. Cronin died shortly after retiring from his forestry job. By that time he could see that the end of the big trees had come. 

Perhaps his signature tree was one small (or big, depending on how you look at it) way of making amends.



Click here to see the Ancient Forest Alliance Big Trees Map "created with driving directions to Avatar Grove (home to Canada’s “Gnarliest Tree”), Big Lonely Doug (Canada’s 2nd largest Douglas-fir), the Red Creek Fir (the world’s largest Douglas-fir tree), San Juan Spruce (one of Canada’s largest spruce trees), Harris Creek Spruce (another giant sitka spruce), and more!"

Canada #1 In Ancient Forest Destruction

Industrial liquidation clear cut on Vancouver Island.
Photo: Garth Lenz

Move over Brazil, Canada leads world in forest decline says a new report. The world’s virgin forests are being lost at an increasing rate and the largest portion of the degradation is in Canada, according to the report.

No longer is Brazil the main villain in the struggle to stop forest destruction. We are the global leaders when it comes to driving entire forest ecosystems to extinction, such as the Douglas fir ecozone. That primal forest, which once produced some of the largest trees on the planet, has been reduced to a fraction of 1% remaining. 

And the cutting of ancient trees continues unabated.

“Canada is the number one in the world for the total area of the loss of intact forest landscapes since 2000,” Peter Lee, of Forest Watch Canada, said in an interview.


“There is no political will at federal or provincial levels for conserving primary forests,” he said. “Most logging done in Canada is still to this day done in virgin forests.”

This is not news to those that have witnessed first hand the last grand old forests of Vancouver Island be liquidated for short term profit. But it is not just here that forests are being degraded and destroyed - it is everywhere in Canada where there are trees to be exploited by the greedy grabbers.

It is way past time to stop the destruction wreaked on our forests by callous and calculating pinheads in government and business that just don't know when to stop. The forest can not defend itself against the onslaught - that task is up to us.


“Business as usual will lead to the destruction of most remaining intact forests this century.” 

- Dr. Nigel Sizer, World Resources Institute

Bark Beetles: Beauty And The Beast

Sitka spruce on the beach showing evidence of bark beetles

Bark beetles are an important part of the life cycle of forests. These small, cylindrical insects are about the size of a rice kernel, but when they work together they can wipe out billions of trees. They breed in downed wood and stressed trees, but can also attack and kill healthy mature trees. And they are on the rise along with global temperatures.

These tiny insects survive by boring through the bark of host trees, and excavating tunnels through the phloem - the layer between the bark and wood of a tree. This layer consists of living cells that transport sap which is rich in sugars made by the needles of the tree. Eventually the flow of food and water between the roots and needles is disrupted, and the tree dies.

Bark beetles have been big news in British Columbia over the past few years, as pine beetle attacks in the interior of the province have completely devastated forests. Over 5.7 million hectares have been affected, involving 108 million cubic meters of timber. Resulting clear cuts exceed 250,000 acres in size, representing a second environmental catastrophe, this time human-caused.

South-central Alaskan Sitka spruce forests have been under attack by spruce beetles since a major infestation started there several decades ago. In the current outbreak, spruce beetle activity in Alaska was mapped on over 1.3 million acres in 1997. Cumulative beetle activity now totals over 3 million acres statewide since 1989.

Tracks show where bark beetles have eaten
the phloem layer under bark

BC's coastal forest is also affected by the activities of bark beetles, and although they leave beautiful patterns on the wood they feed off of, their activities are decidedly deadly.

Warming temperatures due to climate change are making it easier for bark beetles to overwinter and mature, which is causing numbers to explode.

 

Bark Beetles in British Columbia

The main species in B.C. are the mountain pine beetle, spruce beetle and the Douglas-fir beetle.

• Spruce beetles attack Englemann spruce, White spruce and Sitka spruce trees from late April to early May. These insects have a two-year life cycle.
• Douglas-fir beetles attack trees from late April through May and have a one-year life cycle.
• Mountain pine beetles attack Lodgepole pine, Ponderosa pine and White pine trees from mid July to mid August. Mountain pine beetles have a one-year life cycle.

These insects inhabit forests throughout British Columbia. Like forest fires, bark beetles have always played an important role in our forests.

Amazing patterns under the bark of this Sitka spruce

10 Facts about Bark Beetles and North America’s Infestation

1. Other than human beings, no creature on the planet can change a landscape as fast as the bark beetle.

2. Bark beetles are not pests. They collapse and renew forests on time frames inconvenient for humans. For tens of millions of years they have been pruning or collapsing ailing, aging or drought stricken forests. A bark beetle can probably hear the distressed song of a drought stricken tree.

Spruce beetle

3. Climate change triggered the epidemics and allowed the mountain pine beetle, in particular, to expand its empire into a larger geography: mountains, northern latitudes and the boreal forest.

4. The beetles also took advantage of human engineered landscapes where decades of fire suppression has created a seemingly stable base of scenery that is really volatile.

5. Bark beetles prey on large trees in packs and behave much like wolves and killer whales attack when hunting. These highly social creatures also communicate by sound and chemical perfumes.

6. The great bark beetle epidemics of the last decade killed more than 30 billion conifers from Alaska to New Mexico.

7. Beetle epidemics are like hurricanes. Spending billions of dollars to control them is like putting up fans along the coast of Louisiana to stop another Katrina.

8. Novel sound experiments with bark beetles in Arizona have turned the creature in cannibals and may revolutionize insect control.

9. Canada used to have one of the world’s best insect monitoring programs on the planet. The federal government killed the program in 1996 to save money just as the pine beetle emerged in British Columbia and did $50-billion worth of damage.

10. The bark beetle, says Canada’s greatest living ecologist Buzz Holling, are really harbingers of things to come: collapse and renewal. He reckons that the extreme, the small and the improbable will decide our future.

- from: Empire of the Beetle

B.C. Forest Service No Longer Geared Toward The Public Interest

Things are not going well in B.C.'s Forest Service, or in B.C.'s forests. 3/4 of the logging in the coastal forest is of old growth, and over 3/4 of that is by clear cutting. Whole log exports ship trees and jobs overseas. Mismanagement by successive governments has meant that our public forest lands are in grave danger.

Grave danger of being turned into biocide-sprayed rows of non-native tree crops. Danger of being taken over by a ‘professional reliance’ management model in which there is essentially no government oversight. Danger of of being privatized, sold off, and rendered off-limits to the people that collectively own it.

The B.C. Forest Service took its modern form in April of 1945. At the time it was the steward of the timber, range and recreation resources of B.C.'s Crown forest land, which covers 2/3 of the province. The Forest Service mandate was to manage the land for multiple uses including recreation, forage, timber, heritage, and wilderness. Those days are officially over.

The Forest Service has seen such extensive budget cuts in recent years that it is no longer able to protect Crown forests for the public good. The brave new world of forestry has as its objectives the maintenance and enhancements of an economically valuable supply of commercial 'fibre' (they're not even TREES anymore), as well as to protect investor value. Therefore, the Forest Service is being systematically disbanded, paving the way for the fibre managers.

Since coming to office, the B.C. Liberals have slashed almost 1,100 forestry workers’ jobs in eight years — the very people who ensure our public forests are sustainably managed and harvested. From 2002-2004, the Campbell government eliminated 800 jobs in the Ministry of Forests and Range — 304 positions in compliance and enforcement alone. This year, 204 more forestry jobs are being axed — 62 per cent from compliance  and enforcement and field operations. Then on May 27, deputy forests minister Dana Hayden confirmed that an additional 42 positions would be eliminated, as the ministry moves forward budget cuts planned for next year.  May 27, 2010, BCGEU

If the people who have been looking out for our forests are no longer able to protect the public interest, who will? Throughout the massive changes to our forests and forest service, the government has ignored recommendations by government forestry specialists - the people that have been in our forests for the past 65 years, and know it best. Not only that, the Liberals have also restricted the opportunity for public input.

The Wilderness Committee has repeatedly reminded us that "75% of the original productive old-growth forests have been logged on Vancouver Island, including 90% of the valley bottoms where the largest trees grow. Only about 6% of the Island's original, productive old-growth forests are protected in parks."

A poll conducted in March, 2008 found that 88 percent of British Columbians polled agreed that protecting habitat for endangered species is important. But when the public indicates a desire for increased forest protection the government refuses to listen.

Maybe they will listen to artist/activist Briony Penn, who wrote "The Big Burn" (2010) after extensive research and investigation, and after interviewing those most knowledgeable about the state of our forests:

Since 1978, the Forest Service’s mission statement has stressed integrated management of the many values we ascribe to our forests, with a commitment “to manage, conserve and protect the province’s forest, range and outdoor recreation resources to ensure their sustainable use for the economic, cultural, physical and spiritual well-being of British Columbians, who hold those same resources in trust for future generations. In respecting and caring for public forest and range lands, the ministry is guided by the ethics of stewardship and public service".

Apparently, that’s now all history.

A recent internal Ministry of Forests and Range document titled “Response to the Changing Business Environment” lays out the new mission for the ministry as “To provide a superior service to resource stakeholders by supporting competitive business conditions” and gives priority to “Enhancing industry competitiveness” and “Identifying clear outcomes for investors.” An earlier internal memo dated June 9, 2009 from Jim Gowriluk, regional executive director, to his district managers, titled “Re: Advocating for the Forest Industry in the Coast Forest Region,” clearly articulates the new single-function mandate of the Forest Service of “fulfilling our role as advocates for the forest industry.”

Protecting the public interest has disappeared.

Penn's frightening article goes on to uncover a plan to privatize large sections of our public forest lands at the request of private industry. They are seeking a new forest tenure classification that would allow them long term leases to grow Frankentrees (fast growing poplar hybrids) to eventually convert into pellets as a fuel source. Because of a Kyoto Accord loophole, these companies will not have to account for the carbon production of the entire process, including the burning of the carbon-intensive pellets.

It is easy to privatize what rightfully belongs to the people. All the politicians have to do is give away public property to their friends, then wait for the kickbacks to flow in. It is much more difficult to reverse such decisions.

Will our old growth forests and big trees end up being liquidated entirely to make way for non-native GMO tree plantations? Will our Crown forests end up benefiting only private companies for the next 999 years, similar to the BC Rail deal? Already a small army of government 'fibre officers' are combing our province looking for sites suitable for conversion to hybrid poplar plantations in long term leases with biofuel companies.

It is up to us, now. We must all be Green Rangers and fight for our trees and forests. Future generations, and hundreds of at-risk species, will be grateful.