British Columbia’s gov­ern­ment proud­ly announced this week that log­ging of old-growth forests in the province, once nick­named “Brazil of the north” for its vast clearcuts, has declined to a record low in the past six years.

Not low enough, crit­ics responded.

The move­ment against cut­ting ancient forests has seen protests and sit-ins from Fairy Creek on Van­cou­ver Island – 1,200 peo­ple have been arrest­ed – to Arg­onaut Creek north of Rev­el­stoke in B.C.’s inte­ri­or rain forests.

An enchant­i­ng for­est in British Colum­bia:
Cloud on the ridge with old growth yel­low cedars (Pho­to: Dru, repro­duced under a Cre­ative Com­mons license)

The cen­ter-left New Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty gov­ern­ment has launched an Old Growth Strate­gic Review, promis­ing change. It has deferred, for at least two years, log­ging in such places as the incom­pa­ra­ble Incomap­pleux Riv­er val­ley, where storms from the coast run up against 10,000-foot peaks of the Selkirk Range.

“Our vision for forestry is one where we bet­ter care for our most ancient and rarest forests: First Nations are full part­ners in sus­tain­able for­est man­age­ment and com­mu­ni­ties and work­ers ben­e­fit from secure, inno­v­a­tive jobs for gen­er­a­tions to come,” B.C. Forests Min­is­ter Katrine Con­roy said in a statement.

The gov­ern­ment reports that log­ging of old growth has declined 42 per­cent, from 63,500 hectares in 2015 to 38,300 hectares in 2021. The cut, it says, amounts to .03 per­cent of the esti­mat­ed 11.1 mil­lion hectares in the province.

A hectare equals 2.471 acres.

The B.C. Wilder­ness Com­mit­tee, which suc­cess­ful­ly fought to save Canada’s tallest trees in the Car­manah Val­ley on Van­cou­ver Island, is not reas­sured. “The NDP gov­ern­ment has been asked repeat­ed­ly to tell the pub­lic where old growth log­ging is tak­ing place and they have refused, instead pro­vid­ing mis­lead­ing updates like the one we got yes­ter­day,” said Tor­rance Coste, leader of its old growth campaign.

“At the end of the day, there are only two num­bers that mat­ter: the amount of planned log­ging in threat­ened old growth forests that’s gone ahead, and the amount that’s been stopped,” he added.

“We spent the sum­mer dri­ving out to sites where log­ging plans over­lap with at risk forests the gov­ern­ment says it intends to defer: In almost every instance, we found mas­sive clearcuts filled with giant stumps.”

Along with Alaska’s Ton­gass Nation­al For­est, British Colum­bia is home to the world’s great­est remain­ing tem­per­ate rain forests. Old growth is defined as trees more than 140 or 250 years old along the B.C. Coast, and 140 years old in the inte­ri­or, depend­ing on the type of for­est. Old growth cov­ers 12 per­cent of the province and – after years of cut­ting – 20 per­cent of the for­est base.

British Colum­bia vir­tu­al­ly gave away vast tracks of ancient for­est dur­ing the peri­od of 1950–90. Cana­di­an and multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions were grant­ed “tree farm licens­es” in exchange for the promise to build pulp mills.

“Air pol­lu­tion is the smell of mon­ey,” B.C. Cab­i­net min­is­ter Phil Gaglar­di declared.

What result­ed were sights appeal­ing only to con­nois­seurs of ugli­ness. Erod­ing, ocean-to hill­top clearcuts were the scene at Kyuquot Sound on Van­cou­ver Island. An enor­mous clearcut in the Bowron Riv­er was vis­i­ble from space.

Ham­ber Provin­cial Park, on west slopes of the Cana­di­an Rock­ies, was reduced by 95 per­cent and giv­en over to logging.

The val­leys of Depot, Slesse, Tami­hi and and Masel­pan­ic Crees adjoin­ing our North Cas­cades Nation­al Park were stripped to tim­ber­line and the border.

The cur­rent gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to an old growth man­age­ment sys­tem that “pri­or­i­tizes ecosys­tem health and com­mu­ni­ty resilience,” in words of Josie Osborn, B.C.’s Min­is­ter of Lands, Forests and Resource Stewardship.

The New Democ­rats, when in pow­er, have vast­ly expand­ed British Columbia’s provin­cial parks and pro­tect­ed areas.

Cre­at­ed after protests – the Wilder­ness Com­mit­tee estab­lished a research sta­tion high in the for­est canopy — the Car­manah-Wal­bran Provin­cial Park pro­tects the country’s tallest trees. Ancient forests of the Megin Riv­er were added to Strath­cona Provin­cial Park on Van­cou­ver Island.

The NDP defied the min­ing indus­try to cre­ate the Tat­shen­shi­ni-Alsek Park at the province’s north­west, a leg­endary raft­ing stream where two rivers carve a path through the world’s great­est coastal mountains.

The Pur­cell Wilder­ness Con­ser­van­cy, in south­east B.C., pro­tects inte­ri­or rain forests, alpine areas and griz­zly habitat.

Still, Coste rais­es an essen­tial ques­tion: What is being logged and where? The Wilder­ness Com­mit­tee was once a rag-tag out­fit, until a young car­tog­ra­ph­er-writer named Randy Stolt­mann dis­cov­ered trees of the Car­manah. A move­ment was born. A sum­mer-long sit-in cam­paign in the ear­ly 1990’s pre­served forests around Clay­oquot Sound, least logged of the five great inlets on Van­cou­ver Island.

Mear­es Island, off Tofi­no, drew Amer­i­can celebri­ties as First Nations activists fought to save its ancient trees.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was car­ried ashore on a native canoe. Tom Hay­den took his third (post-Jane Fon­da) bride on shores of the island.

The New Democ­rats have tried to accom­mo­date. The par­ty is polit­i­cal home to many of the province’s envi­ron­men­tal­ists, but also its for­est unions.

“I tell my guys if they see a spot­ted owl to shoot it,” crusty Inter­na­tion­al Wood­work­ers of Amer­i­ca leader Jack Munro told the New York Times.

The times, how­ev­er, are chang­ing. British Columbians have fall­en in love with the out­doors. Line­ups of cars along High­way 99 north of Whistler, at the Jof­fre Lakes trail­head, rival larch sea­son back­ups in the North Cas­cades. Quo­tas have been need­ed, from the Life­sav­ing Trail on the west coast of Van­cou­ver Island to the Berg Lake trail in the Cana­di­an Rock­ies, which cir­cles 12,972-foot Mt. Robson.

Incom­ing British Colum­bia Pre­mier David Eby has list­ed old growth man­age­ment as a gov­ern­ment pri­or­i­ty. The New Democ­rats still rep­re­sent pulp mill towns, but their gov­ern­ing cau­cus in the B.C. Leg­isla­tive Assem­bly con­sists large­ly of urban and sub­ur­ban mem­bers. Eby rep­re­sents tony Point Grey, a rid­ing (dis­trict) that includes the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia and Pacif­ic Spir­it Park.

As well, ancient forests are home to endan­gered species.

The Incomap­pleux is a migra­tion route for the crit­i­cal­ly endan­gered moun­tain cari­bou, a species now extinct in Wash­ing­ton. Just 1,200 south­ern moun­tain cari­bou remain, down from 2,500 in 1995 and 40,000 a cen­tu­ry ago.

The New Democ­rats have a new polit­i­cal com­peti­tor, at least on Van­cou­ver Island. Votes from the three Green Par­ty leg­is­la­tors put the NDP in pow­er as a minor­i­ty gov­ern­ment after the 2017 elec­tion. An old growth pro­test­er recent­ly tried to run against Eby for lead­er­ship of the gov­ern­ing par­ty. (Pre­mier John Hor­gan is relin­quish­ing pow­er a bout with throat cancer.)

Once obdu­rate, the tim­ber indus­try is now strik­ing an accom­mo­dat­ing pos­ture, point­ing to defer­ral of log­ging plans in crit­i­cal cari­bou habi­tat. But, it argues, we can­not go cold turkey on the log­ging of old growth.

“In the next 20 years, our har­vest­ing won’t include old growth,” Mike Cop­perth­waite of Rev­el­stoke Com­mu­ni­ty For­est Corp., told CBC News. “Our har­vest­ing is going to be sole­ly in sec­ondary tim­ber stands. But we’ve got this tran­si­tion peri­od where these younger trees have to get to a cer­tain age.”

Even in the resource-depen­dent B.C. Inte­ri­or, how­ev­er, the pres­sure is on. A Rev­el­stoke group called Old Growth Rev­o­lu­tion twice blocked the Trans Cana­da High­way at the Colum­bia Riv­er bridge this spring. A cit­i­zen-led block­ade, of locals and Abo­rig­i­nal First Nations, stopped log­ging in Arg­onaut Creek last year.

In Decem­ber, the provin­cial gov­ern­ment removed the three remain­ing cut­blocks in the val­ley, part of what’s called the Inte­ri­or Wet Belt and source of the lichens vital to moun­tain caribou.

All 14 cut­blocks in Arg­onaut Creek are now off the chop­ping block, at least until the gov­ern­ment decides what it will do to save the caribou.