British Columbia’s forestry industry is pushing back against the province’s plans to defer logging in 2.6 million hectares of old-growth forests.
According to the plan announced Tuesday, provincial officials will work with First Nations on the deferral plan while B.C. overhauls its approach to sustainable forest management.
Susan Yurkovic, president of the BC Council of Forest Industries, said the deferral plan will result in the shutdown of 14 to 20 mills and the loss of up to 18,000 jobs, four times what the province has estimated.
“Obviously we’re going to be doing a very thorough review of this by region, because we’ll want to know exactly where on the map which mills will be going down in which communities,” she said.
“It’s not just the mill jobs that are lost. People lose their homes, real-estate markets collapse, people move away, schools close — it has a lot of knock-on effects.”
The council also estimates the deferral would result in a $400-million loss in government revenues, and says the panel that came up with the recommendations was stacked with environmentalists.
The province says the deferrals are necessary to protect biodiversity while it develops its new forestry approach, building on recommendations from the 2020 Old Growth Strategic Review.
It says it is “bringing together strategically coordinated and comprehensive supports” to help affected communities “with the necessary supports to offset job and economic impacts.”
But the move has not been well received by labour representatives.
“(It’s) a devastating gut punch to our industry and I think, quite frankly, it’s going to be difficult for us to recover from,” said Jeff Bromley, chair of the United Steelworkers wood council, which represents more than 12,000 workers.
“These are highly paid, community-supporting jobs that are largely in the rural areas of B.C., but also we have lots of operations and loggers down here on the coast and on the Fraser. It’s going to have far and wide-ranging impacts across the province in all forestry sectors.”
A map of the old-growth deferral areas can be found on the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development’s website, updated Tuesday.
The 11 areas identified include the Seven Sisters in the north, three in the Kootenays, one in Upper Southgate, one at Skagit Silverdaisy and five on Vancouver Island.
The amount of pristine old-growth forest left in B.C. remains a subject of dispute between the forest industry, government and environmentalists.
The Council of Forest Industries says an independent study it commissioned found 75 per cent of B.C.’s old-growth is already protected or outside the timber harvesting land base.
The province touts some 13 million remaining hectares of old-growth forest, while environmentalists point to a 2020 report from the Sierra Club, which found just three per cent of that area actually supports large trees.
The province has given First Nations 30 days to indicate whether or not they support the deferrals or need further discussion.
Once the two-year deferral period ends, the province says some portions identified as at-risk will be permanently protected from logging, while other areas will be included for sustainable timber harvest under the province’s redesigned forest management policy.
The move comes as B.C.’s old-growth logging industry faces international scrutiny, and amid long-running protests near the disputed Fairy Creek watershed on Vancouver Island, that have resulted in more than 1,000 arrests.
In June, the province announced the deferral of the harvesting of old-growth trees in Fairy Creek and the Central Walbran Valley for two years at the behest of local First Nations.
-With files from Ted Chernecki and Emily Lazatin
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