BCTS review intentions barking up the wrong tree claims local environmental group

Photo: Wikimedia, Creative Commons

Log driving near Vancouver.

The province’s recent decision to launch a review of B.C. Timber Sales (BCTS) is based on a false contention the industry is running out of wood because of allowable annual cut reductions, says a West Kootenay environmental group.

Valhalla Wilderness Society (VWS) — based in New Denver — said the Ministry of Forests’ Jan. 15 announcement that it would review BCTS to ensure the province’s forestry sector “is continually evolving to overcome challenges and create a guideline for a stronger, more resilient future” is barking up the wrong tree.

VWS’ Anne Sherrod said the province’s intention to protect more old-growth and reform forestry in a more environmentally beneficial manner lasted only until the forest industry applied enough pressure.

“Logging companies have not been cutting their whole cut allowance because there isn’t sufficient economically viable forest available,” she stated. “So the province continues talking about a more eco-friendly way to log when most of the old-growth has already been logged by brutal, conventional logging practices with few laws to protect watersheds, biodiversity, wildlife and climate,” she said.

In her research on the issue, Sherrod — recipient of the Glen Davis Conservation Leadership Prize awarded by World Wildlife Fund and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society — found that the Old Growth Strategic Review (2020) did indeed recommend that the government initiate deferrals, and gave “implementation advice” about how to do it, including, “Instruct BCTS to cease development and defer selling timber in old growth areas.”

Sherrod said the province does not mention that in its press calling for the review.

“All of the goals of the review amount to ‘logging as usual’ and more disappearing logging deferrals,” she explained. “It’s terribly deplorable how the U.S. is extorting Canada with potential tariffs, but I also feel that the public has been abused by decades of lies about our forests.”

Logging companies were already moving their mills and jobs out of B.C. long before U.S. President Donald Trump was elected, said Sherrod, and claims the province continues to reduce the allowable annual cut, or isn’t signing permits fast enough and environmentalists are depriving them of wood, are just excuses.

“They will never say that they have already logged most of the most lucrative forest; it’s just a matter that the government won’t let them have enough,” she said.

According to the province, the launch of the review “recognizes the significant pressure the forest sector is under, from declining allowable annual cuts, difficulty accessing fibre, global economic conditions and heightened environmental and trade-protection efforts.”

The review will be led by the Ministry of Forests with support from the newly formed expert task force. It will use the Provincial Forestry Forum, a group that brings together some interests in the forestry sector, including contractors, value-added manufacturers, industry and labour.

“Action will be taken within six months of launching the review,” the provincial press release declared.

But the government has previously set up various expert panels on forestry, to promise to change the logging system, to be more friendly to the environment, to protect more old-growth forest by creating logging deferrals that could potentially be permanently protected, to increase protection of B.C. to 30 per cent of the provincial land base, said Sherrod.

“Yet, even as these promises were being reeled out, it was becoming apparent that a large part of it was just political rhetoric meant to pacify the public while the logging of remaining old-growth continued,” she said.

Sherrod pointed to Ben Parfitt’s articles in The Tyee in late 2024 where he exposed that the companies were not logging their full annual allowable cut. That contention, with the article about the impacts of the potential new tariffs on logging companies, is very real and the tariffs put very deplorable pressure on the situation, she stated.

“But in a classic case of disaster capitalism, the crisis of Trump’s threats is being cited as potentially causing massive job losses, mill closures and corporations moving when, in fact, these things have been going on powerfully for decades,” Sherrod said.