B.C. government has yet to announce significant funding to support the complex process for nations to consider how to preserve old growth while developing alternative sources of revenue and economic opportunities aligned with stewardship goals
British Columbia has asked First Nations if they want old-growth forests set aside from logging, allowing time for long-term planning of conservation and sustainable development, but it has yet to fund the process on a large scale, advocates say.Several years before the B.C. government launched the process last November to defer logging in old-growth forests at risk of permanent biodiversity loss, Ahousaht First Nation was developing the land-use vision for its territory on Vancouver Island.
Ahousaht was in favour of deferral because the nation believes “very strongly preservation of old-growth systems … not just for the potential economic benefits of protection, but for the ecological and cultural benefits,” Atleo added. Conservation comes with economic costs, said Atleo, especially in communities that depend on forestry revenues. It must be paired with some kind of compensation or support for sustainable economic diversification, he said.
In response to a request for the total area set aside in the first year of the deferral process, the ministry said it’s working toward an update in the near future. Watt’s photos from the Caycuse watershed on southwestern Vancouver Island show massive trees, then their stumps after they were cut. Some were logged a few months before they were identified as part of the deferral process, he said.
Teal-Jones, the forestry company that holds the rights for cut blocks in the Caycuse watershed, said in a statement it is not harvesting in areas that have been deferred. In an email, the Forests Ministry said B.C. is currently working to establish a new conservation financing mechanism to support permanent old-growth protection.
B.C. provided just shy of $12.7 million over three years to support First Nations through the deferral process, amounting to about $20,000 per year for each nation.
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