This article was originally published on The Tyee.

Anyone reading about proposed amendments to B.C.’s Land Act might believe there are major changes afoot.

Private property is at risk. Outdoor recreation is threatened. Water access, mining, forestry and agriculture all now hang in the balance as the BC NDP threatens to quietly take away every land-use right that British Columbians currently enjoy.

It’s a move meant to “cripple” society, according to commentary in the National Post by conspiracy-prone commentator Bruce Pardy later republished by conservative think tanks the Fraser Institute and the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

B.C. Premier David Eby is “preparing to bring his province to its knees.”

The government, the analysis goes, is about to quietly pass control over the vast majority of its land base to the First Nations who stewarded it for millennia.

Except it isn’t.

The furor erupted last month following a blog post by law firm McMillan LLP.

B.C., the lawyers wrote, was laying the groundwork for agreements that would give Indigenous groups “veto power” over decisions about Crown land, which covers 94 per cent of the province.

As commentary became increasingly frenzied, pundits and politicians talked over First Nations leaders who called the claims “inaccurate and unhelpful.”

BC United Leader Kevin Falcon wrote in a Feb. 5 statement that the proposed changes were secretive, misleading and undemocratic. They would give “veto power” over most of B.C.’s land to “five per cent of the population.”

Conservative Party of BC Leader John Rustad went a step further, suggesting B.C. repeal the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), which passed unanimously in 2019. Rustad voted in favour of the legislation.

Rustad, like Falcon, also argued that the changes could mean “returning all traditional lands.”

Except the changes wouldn’t do that — they are less radical, and more about creeping bureaucracy.

What is the Land Act?

Mainland B.C. became a colony in 1858 and, shortly after, passed a series of proclamations asserting control over the land and its resources. The 1859 Land Proclamation granted the Crown authority over “all the lands in British Columbia, and all the mines and minerals.” It referred to those lands as “unoccupied.”

These proclamations laid the groundwork for what is today’s Land Act — the primary legislation used to manage the land base and issue land tenures such as leases, licences, permits and rights-of-way.

B.C. has historically based both its economy — mining, forestry and agriculture, to name a few examples — and its identity on this large land base.

Why the changes are coming

But B.C. was, of course, occupied prior to becoming a province. In recent decades, court cases like Calder, Haida and Tsilhqot’in have affirmed First Nations’ rights on their traditional territories and the government’s need to consult.

When B.C. passed DRIPA several years ago, it was a step toward incorporating those rights into law and avoiding lengthy and costly legal battles. The province has described DRIPA as a framework to move forward on reconciliation. It’s meant to eventually bring all laws in the province in line with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

DRIPA’s implementation is meant to be incremental and the proposed Land Act changes are the anticipated next step. They would “allow the government to enter into agreements with First Nations on what is likely very specific, large-scale projects,” Lands Minister Nathan Cullen told The Tyee. “A lot of the fear-mongering and disinformation has attempted to say everything across 95 million hectares of public lands is changing tomorrow, which is not the case.”

What the changes also wouldn’t do is affect the province’s 40,000 existing land tenures or the 2,500 renewals it issues on an annual basis, Cullen added.

What the changes would do

DRIPA introduced wording that gives B.C. authority to “negotiate and enter into an agreement with an Indigenous governing body.” The wording in sections 6 and 7 opens the door to joint decision-making agreements with First Nations. But in order to do that, existing legislation needs to be brought in line with DRIPA by adding similar wording to each act.

While the changes have been described as “radical,” they are basically procedural. Any future agreements on decision-making facilitated by adding wording from DRIPA’s Section 7 to existing legislation would be subject to public consultation and cabinet approval.

If anything, the changes are creating more red tape for First Nations, said Jessica Clogg, executive director and senior counsel with West Coast Environmental Law.

“In my view, B.C. has been incredibly conservative, narrow and bureaucratic in its approach to DRIPA sections 6 and 7.” Rather than pave the way for First Nations decision-making, the changes could actually present more roadblocks, Clogg said.

“That’s what has gotten a bit lost in the inflammatory rhetoric,” she said. “If anything, my worry is that it will be too incremental.”

Others agree that the proposed changes would not grant sweeping authority to First Nations.

Writing in the Times Colonist, lawyer Roshan Danesh called the process for entering into any future decision-making agreements with First Nations “public, transparent and frankly a bit onerous.”

“The day these Land Act amendments are passed in the legislature, nothing will change about land tenuring in the province,” Danesh wrote. “What they will do is create space so that if an agreement is ever completed under Section 7, that agreement can be implemented.”

Is the Land Act the first legislation to change due to DRIPA?

In a word, no.

In recent years, B.C. has made similar changes to forest, child welfare and emergency management legislation, all of which now accommodate Section 7 agreements.

When B.C. passed its new Environmental Assessment Act in 2018, it pre-emptively built joint decision-making with First Nations into the legislation in anticipation of DRIPA.

The province has already signed its first two Section 7 agreements with the Tahltan Nation, both relating to the expansion of mines on the nation’s traditional territory. As he signed the second agreement in November, B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman described the work ahead as collaborative.

Rhetoric calling the Land Act changes “unprecedented” appears to reference industry’s calls for regulatory certainty. While alarmists have said the changes will make things less predictable for business in B.C., there’s ample evidence that the opposite is true.

The Supreme Court of Canada has repeatedly upheld the duty to consult with First Nations. The more clearly governments set out a legal process to do that, the more certainty there will be — as well as fewer costly court cases and unexpected interruptions for industry.

“Working together, coming to common agreements, increases predictability. Period,” Cullen said. “Rather than going through more court cases, going through more conflict, why not enable the possibility of coming to a shared understanding over proposed projects, to give that predictability and to know early on if something is just not viable?”

Last week, BC Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Terry Teegee wrote in the Vancouver Sun that “the path to consent-based decision-making signifies an essential step toward greater certainty, shared prosperity, and a more just relationship between constitutional partners.”

Even Geoff Plant, former B.C. attorney general under the BC Liberals, weighed in, saying the Land Act amendments could replace the current atmosphere of uncertainty with “fair, principled, transparent and accountable shared decision-making agreements.”

How is ‘consent-based decision-making’ different from a veto?

So, is it a “veto”? The word has become politically charged, suggesting that First Nations aren’t capable of making fair assessments about land-use decisions.

“The word ‘veto’ has taken on this connotation of a racist assumption that nations wouldn’t be reasoned and adhere to their own legal orders and make informed decisions as governments,” Clogg said. “For example, we don’t say, when B.C. fails to issue an environmental assessment certificate, that they ‘vetoed’ that project.”

In its recent statement, the B.C. First Nations Leadership Council also expressed concern, saying many reactions to the proposed Land Act amendments “rely on outdated, mistaken, and regressive views” on First Nations rights.

“Contrary to comments that have been made about the proposed Land Act amendments, they will not grant a ‘veto’ to First Nations governments, and they will not immediately alter the existing land tenure system in British Columbia,” the statement added.

When The Tyee asked about the leadership council’s statement, a spokesperson for BC United doubled down on the party’s statement that the proposed changes would give veto power to a small percentage of the population over the vast majority of the land base.

“We would encourage everyone interested in this issue to look at the government’s slide deck,” the spokesperson wrote, adding that changes would affect “everything from grazing leases and rights-of-way, to all land tenure-based decisions on public lands.”

Cullen countered that BC United recently set out a very similar policy to the proposed Land Act changes at the BC Natural Resources Forum. The policy was titled “Enable Indigenous participation and ownership in B.C.’s natural resource projects.”

BC United disagreed. “The policy we set out is designed to foster direct economic partnerships and enable Indigenous participation and ownership in B.C.’s natural resource projects,” their spokesperson wrote.

Why am I just hearing about this now?

There is one thing everyone does agree on — that the BC NDP could have done a better job of introducing the changes. Cullen acknowledged the government’s failure to adequately inform the public, saying, “We’re now correcting and resetting the consultation process.”

While there are many ways the province could have launched its consultation process (it didn’t, for example, issue a news release), it is standard practice that the wording of any proposed changes are kept confidential during the drafting process and are made public only once they are tabled in the legislature, Clogg said.

The province is currently accepting written submissions from the public. Asked if he would consider extending the March 31 deadline to provide comment, Cullen was noncommittal.

The current plan is to introduce the new legislation during the spring legislative session — which begins April 22 — and finalize it prior to the fall election. The province hopes to begin negotiating agreements with Indigenous governments by late spring.

What’s the impact on First Nations and reconciliation?

Ultimately, it is Indigenous communities who are caught in the crosshairs of a debate that’s become rife with fear-mongering and racist undertones.

In a video posted to social media last week, BC Green MLA Adam Olsen, who is a member of the Tsartlip First Nation, called on politicians to “stop using First Nations people as a political football.”

“I’ll start by asking Kevin Falcon and John Rustad directly to stop dragging First Nations into their political fight,” said Olsen.

“It guts me that the BC NDP created the space for you and that you are all too happy just making stuff up,” he said. “As difficult as it is for many to understand, the BC United so-called economic reconciliation and the B.C. Conservatives’ promise to scrap the Declaration Act are aggressive approaches that deny First Nations rights and title.”

As for whether the dispute could actually result in DRIPA being repealed, Clogg doesn’t believe that it could, because the underlying Indigenous rights that led to its being passed would remain, leaving governments, industry and First Nations to hash out their differences in court.

“Those rights are here to stay,” she said. “Do I think there will be a lot of political fear-mongering? Yes, I think that’s what we’re seeing. It makes me very sad.”

“Ultimately, I believe that Canadians are better than that.”

The public has until March 31 to provide input about proposed Land Act amendments through the province’s website. 

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The province didn’t track the course of COVID-19 cases as they left work camps in northern B.C. and travelled into nearby communities, despite ongoing concerns over the impacts of allowing the camps to operate during the pandemic.

That’s according to an updated response to a freedom of information request The Tyee filed with the Northern Health authority a year ago.

“As for the information relevant to in-community transmissions traced back to work camps, Northern Health has no responsive records,” the health authority said in the response provided last week following complaints to B.C.’s Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner over incomplete records provided previously. 

“We did not look for in-community transmissions associated with the camps/worksites as part of our process and the camps did not do contact tracing for in-community cases,” it continued.

The health authority added that anyone who tested positive for COVID-19 and identified as working at industrial camps in the north was referred by Northern Health back to their employer’s health-care provider for contact tracing. It also said it had directed workers from outside the region to connect with health-care providers in their home community for followup.

The response, which comes more than a year after The Tyee first sought the contact tracing data through the province’s freedom of information laws and after two complaints to the OIPC, appears to contradict previous statements that the health authority could not release the data. 

A spokesperson for Northern Health authority said in an email to The Tyee that it worked closely with industrial work camps, which typically have in-house contact tracing, but did not have the capacity to conduct extensive contact tracing or establish patterns of COVID-19 transmission from work camps in the region. 

Fears that the camps, which house hundreds of resource industry workers in proximity to northern communities, could spread the virus date back to the earliest days of the pandemic. 

In March and April 2020, open letters from the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, David Suzuki Foundation and former Northern Health authority chief medical health officer David Bowering all called on the province to close work camps associated with industrial projects, citing undue risk to workers and nearby communities, which often lack sufficient health facilities. 

Instead, the province declared large industrial projects like the Site C dam, Coastal GasLink pipeline and LNG Canada terminal in Kitimat, which are all under construction in the north, as essential services during the pandemic, allowing the camps to remain open.

Fears rose over cases from Coastal GasLink project

By late 2020, northern communities were beginning to see the effects of that decision. In November, Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs wrote letters to provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, calling on her to close the camps as COVID-19 began to make appearances in the nation’s communities. 

In December of that year, Elders in the Wet’suwet’en community of Witset reported that a cluster of cases there could be directly linked to workers travelling between home and work camps for Coastal GasLink. 

Days later, on Dec. 20, 2020, Northern Health declared an outbreak at two of the pipeline project’s work camps. The company responded by saying that as a “proactive measure and out of an abundance of caution” it was closing three of its work camps and sending workers home, just before the holidays.

On Jan. 22, 2021, the outbreak was declared over, a total of 56 people having tested positive. But that number doesn’t capture the spread of COVID-19 into communities, information asked for by The Tyee in FOI requests that the province has been slow to respond to. 

The revelation that Northern Health does not keep contact tracing data appears to contradict previous statements from Northern Health, in which it had said that while the health authority collects and stores COVID-19 data, it’s under the control of the Ministry of Health, which approves its release. “We were told that we’re not to be releasing any data for COVID,” Northern Health’s privacy office said last year. 

The health authority suggested the request be filed with the ministry and BC Centre for Disease Control, which had previously directed the request to Northern Health.

Fact-finding met B.C. government friction

The Tyee first asked for complete camp COVID-19 cases — not just those associated with an outbreak, which have been publicly reported by the province — in addition to contact tracing data through a freedom of information request to the Ministry of Health on Jan. 4, 2021. The ministry responded by saying the records were best sought from the BCCDC, through the Provincial Health Services Authority. The Tyee made its request to PHSA that day. 

Repeatedly, the freedom of information request was pushed over to provincial public relations staff despite many efforts. The Tyee was never able to review complete COVID-19 work camp numbers or contact tracing data. (See sidebar.)

B.C.’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act does not specifically lay out how a government body should process a request or specifically prevent it from involving communications staff. As such, the OIPC says it does not get involved with how a request is processed, only whether the outcome is in accordance with FIPPA.

However, Ann Rees, a former journalist with the Vancouver Province and professor at Kwantlen University College, says the practice of involving communications people, whose role it is to polish responses before they’re released to media, is concerning. 

“It absolutely is interference in the FOI process to put it in the hands of communications people,” she says, adding that the job of a communications person is different from that of an information analyst. “One is a political job to spin the story in a way that reflects well on government. When you mix that with FOI, which is essentially providing records to the public in accordance with the law, there is an obvious conflict of interest there. But increasingly, that’s happened.”

In 2002, Rees was the recipient of the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy, which allowed her to spend a year researching the effectiveness of Canadian freedom of information laws. She says there’s a long history of information officers sharing requests with communications staff, a practice that initially started with the federal government. 

But that practice has slowly become the habit of the B.C. government, where she says the FOI process has become increasingly politicized and opaque over the past 25 years. 

“Government, as they began to realize the power of access to information and FOI, increasingly tried to monitor it,” she says, adding that the governments were looking for a heads up on the public response that was coming. “That’s how they brought the communications people in because they’re responsible for political reaction and response and managing the message.”

Northern Health contact tracing overwhelmed by Omicron

As The Tyee filed its original FOI request with the province in early 2021, the north was experiencing a wave of COVID-19 cases. Outbreaks had recently occurred at work camps for LNG Canada and Coastal GasLink and the provincial health officer had just announced a phased return to work for industrial projects across the region. 

At the same time, the province had just completed a months-long program to add hundreds of contact tracers to its provincial monitoring program. CBC reported that contact tracing in the region would focus on tracking the spread of COVID-19 “in health-care workers, schools, long-term care homes, industrial projects, First Nations and known clusters or outbreaks.”

By early 2022, due to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, contact tracing had again become overwhelmed. Again, the province said contact tracing was being focused on high-priority settings — among them, work camps and Indigenous communities.

But while managing COVID-19 cases at industrial camps has been a priority during the pandemic, epidemiology teams did not have the capacity to conduct “extensive or systematic” investigations into the links between industry and in-community cases, Northern Health media relations manager Eryn Collins said in an email to The Tyee.

“The priorities of contact tracing are both to track the spread of illness for an understanding of where transmission events are occurring, and to stop the spread — regardless of where exposure occurred,” Collins said. “When COVID-19 safety measures were at peak implementation in industry settings, there were often very few if any reported close contacts.”

Collins added that in late 2020 and early 2021, Northern Health was providing supplementary contact tracing for COVID-19 cases associated with work camps, including cases that didn’t reside onsite. 

“This was however the minority of cases associated with industrial camps, and as a result Northern Health does not have a comprehensive picture of transmission patterns,” she said.

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Stretching across northwest B.C. lies a 663-kilometre scar on the landscape, an ill-fated infrastructure project that governments sunk millions into before pulling the pin in the late 1970s.

During a brief three-year stint in office in the midst of a 40-year Social Credit Party reign, the NDP had the power to stop it.

It didn’t.

More than 40 years later, the disintegrating remains of a planned rail line built on promises of economic prosperity have been described as B.C.’s greatest environmental disaster, creating a barrier to salmon at one end and an open door to overhunting and industry at the other.

The dream of opening the province’s north to rail transport dates back to the 19th century, with visions of connecting Alaska to the Lower 48 U.S. states and B.C.’s resources to international markets. The province’s 25th premier, the infrastructure hungry W.A.C. Bennett, tried to turn those dreams into reality after taking power in 1952. The province had owned a railway since 1918, but Bennett launched a major expansion, extending it northeast from Prince George to Dawson Creek and Fort St. John in the Peace River district, and south to North Vancouver, then to northern communities including Fort St. James.

Then the premier — known, generally fondly, as Wacky Bennett — in 1969 launched his biggest rail venture, setting out to build a new line to Dease Lake, a community of a few hundred people a couple of hours from the Yukon border.

The hope was that the rail line would open the region to resource development.

Work pressed ahead to clear hundreds of kilometres and level a path from Fort St. James to Dease Lake.

But only a few miles of track had been laid when Dave Barrett’s NDP government took power in 1972. It commissioned a feasibility report that showed the original budgeted cost of $69 million — about $497 million in today’s dollars — had ballooned to about $720 million in current dollars.

The report suggested the province proceed, based on a promised grant from the federal government.

By three years later, the estimated cost had more than doubled to $232 million — about $1.7 billion in today’s dollars. The cost overruns were blamed on a lack of engineering studies, newly-raised ecological concerns, design changes and Crown corporation BC Rail’s misrepresentation of the task’s magnitude.

It was an era of dawning environmental awareness. Dave Bustard, fresh out of a master’s program at the University of British Columbia, was hired in 1974 as the Skeena Region’s first habitat protection biologist. He was tasked with overseeing the rail project’s risks and impacts.

“I used to go and spend a couple days up there and I’d come back and I’d be literally in tears, it was such a mess. You could see the desecration of these beautiful valleys,” Bustard says.

Throughout construction, the railway was embroiled in conflicts and court proceedings with its contractors. Among them was Bob Keen, described in the 1973 National Film Board documentary Catskinner Keen as “one tough little bugger.”

The film’s narrator laments the toll taken by the project.

“Guardians of the environment, like fisheries experts, look on the big outfits with misgiving. Keen obeys the rules, but figures, if you want people, you’re bound to lose a few fish.”

Keen, from a rapidly disappearing era when the goal was to open up the North at all costs, viewed educated city types like Bustard as getting in the way of the job.

Bustard describes Keen’s construction practices as “horrific.”

On April 5, 1977, the province announced a pause in rail grade construction as a royal commission evaluated the line. In a submission to the investigation, Bustard and a colleague described the rail grade as an open wound on the landscape, with exposed slopes slumping into waterways, and clogging spawning beds and failing drainage structures that blocked fish migration.

The commission’s report, released in 1978, called the rail grade “an unplanned, reckless, astonishingly naive, in the end utterly disastrous mistake,” and put the new estimate for completion at more than $350 million — $2.3 billion in today’s dollars and five times original estimates.

By the end of 1976, BC Rail had invested $191 million into the Dease Lake Extension, according to a report to the royal commission. At least another $160 million was needed to complete the line.

The project was finally killed by Bill Bennett’s Social Credit government, which had returned to power in December 1975.

The province’s Fish and Wildlife Branch pleaded for a surgical approach to heal the wounds inflicted on the environment. It called for remediation of the grade by removing drainage structures, revegetating, stabilizing banks and recontouring the landscape. Its final request was the immediate removal of a bridge over the Klappan River that facilitated vehicle traffic from Highway 37 into the culturally important and ecologically rich Spatsizi Plateau.

“We submit that healing can only occur when the victim is given competent surgery and good post-operative care,” Fish and Wildlife’s submission to the royal commission reads. “A patient who simply remains on the table with the incision still open and bleeding profusely has little chance for ultimate survival.”

But that kind of remediation never happened.

The unfinished railway extension left a scar across the landscape of northwestern B.C. In recent years, First Nations including the Tahltan have taken it upon themselves to maintain access to traditional hunting camps. Photo: Jeremy Koreski / The Narwhal

A 1984 inspection by B.C.’s Environment Ministry found “severe environmental impacts to fish, wildlife and water quality,” including barriers to fish migration, environmental impacts from erosion, silt-loading of creeks, dysfunctional culverts and uncontrolled access resulting in overhunting.

“The patient was basically left exposed,” Bustard says.

Despite recommendations from the Fish and Wildlife Branch and the Environment Ministry to close access to the rail route, the province has granted permits to industry, leading to a 2005 standoff between Royal Dutch Shell and the Tahltan, who opposed drilling in the Klappan, which became known as the Sacred Headwaters.

But while the province has declined to decommission the grade, it has not committed to its upkeep either.

Shell did the last significant upgrades on the rail grade, investing $8 million in 2006. Since then, a local Tahltan community has done nominal work in an effort to maintain access to traditional hunting camps. Several years ago, the Iskut First Nation added a gate in an effort to control access to the area.

Shannon McPhail, executive director with Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition, calls the rail grade “one of the biggest environmental liabilities in British Columbia.” She calls for its restoration, something she says could provide green jobs while healing the environment.

That, she says, is what the NDP was elected on.

“Make it a mountain biking trail, a hiking trail, a horse packing trail. Green it up. Replant it. Get rid of all the shit that’s causing the harm,” she says. “Having access to the Sacred Headwaters up this trail, that would be huge. That would be a destination.”

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There’s an urgent need to increase the biodiversity of sockeye salmon stocks in the Skeena watershed if they are to adapt to challenges like climate change, according to a study published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

The Skeena River, Canada’s second-largest salmon-producing watershed, enters the Pacific just south of Prince Rupert. Its tributaries include major salmon-bearing watersheds like the Bulkley, Babine and Kispiox, which support commercial, Indigenous and sport fisheries.

Yet researchers, drawing on 100-year-old fish DNA, say some unique sockeye populations that return to their home tributaries generation after generation to spawn, are at risk of dying out. This could result in a loss of unique characteristics, such as body size and how long they spend in the ocean.

The lack of diversity puts sockeye at a disadvantage when it comes to adapting to their environment, said lead author and Simon Fraser University PhD candidate Michael Price.

“As water temperatures warm, it could be that those that returned slightly later actually are better adapted to withstand warmer temperatures, and they will successfully reproduce to pass on those variants,” Price said.

“These individual spawning streams will continue to wink out if we don’t turn things around.”

In order to support diversity in the Skeena’s sockeye salmon stocks, Price said there needs to be an end to coastal commercial fisheries and a move toward terminal fisheries upriver — those harvesting fish closer to where they spawn.

“We need to begin rebuilding the abundance of these wild populations that, in time, potentially could support terminal fisheries,” Price said. That means turning to local and First Nations fisheries, which are managed at the population level and harvest only healthy stocks.

“I argue that’s the most sustainable way to have a fishery,” he said.

Price’s research used DNA data from fish scale samples collected over more than a century. Most recently, the samples have been collected by Fisheries and Oceans Canada and First Nations monitoring programs over the past two decades.

But a goldmine of data was found in sockeye scales collected early in the 20th century through a project started by fisheries biologist Charles Gilbert, who initiated scale collection in 1912 to learn more about the economically valuable species.

By the late 1910s, the project was collecting data from about 125 fish every three days over the annual two-month commercial fishing season. The project continued until 1947.

Though Gilbert’s methods were relatively unscientific by today’s standards, the project preserved a wealth of knowledge about salmon in the Skeena watershed.

“Back in the day, they just used a butter knife and took a scraping on the side,” Price says. The scrapings would then be smeared into notebooks, their slime and gore sticking the scales to the page.

This rudimentary method nonetheless gathered DNA secrets that have allowed Price and his team to open up a rich history of Skeena salmon population dynamics and study how they’ve shifted over time.

Through the DNA collected from the earlier and later years of Gilbert’s data and the past 20 years from federal and First Nations sampling, researchers identified genetically distinct populations from 13 main tributaries of the Skeena. The team is waiting on new technology that will allow them to study those populations in even greater detail, breaking the rivers into smaller tributaries.

Michael Price, the lead author of a new study on salmon population diversity, says one way to support sockeye salmon diversity in B.C.’s Skeena River watershed, pictured here, is to end coastal commercial fisheries and move toward terminal fisheries upriver. Photo: Sam Beebe / Flickr

Unfortunately, that data could be even more discouraging, Price said.

“That’s where I think we have lost a lot of our diversity, unfortunately, and the adaptive potential that these fish would have had to influences such as climate change,” he said.

According to Price, overall sockeye numbers in the Skeena are roughly what they were a century ago, based on estimates collected from a variety of sources throughout the watershed. However, wild sockeye population diversity in the Skeena has declined an average 70 per cent.

The severity of those declines differs by tributary, ranging from a 56 per cent loss of wild salmon in the Babine River to more than 90 per cent in the more remote Motase, Sustut and Slamgeesh rivers. In the watershed’s most far-flung tributaries — those located in the headwaters — populations have declined most dramatically, at an average of 93 per cent.

“Historically, sockeye in large abundances went to every corner of the watershed, but now those abundances have really contracted,” Price said.

Sockeye produced through enhancement projects, like artificial spawning channels and hatcheries, account for 70 per cent of returning sockeye in the Skeena. That gives an advantage to certain populations and means that even when stocks in the watershed appear strong, some regions may not see those returns.

It’s the reason why the Babine River population has rebounded after an initial decline early in the 20th century.

A century ago, the Babine accounted for 68 per cent of all wild sockeye returning to the Skeena, according to the study. That number dropped to less than half by mid-century, likely because of their unique size, Price speculates.

At the time, gillnetting on the coast favoured larger fish, meaning that those spending more time in the ocean were more likely to be caught. Babine sockeye spend four to five years on the coast before returning to spawn. For sockeye in the Bulkley and Morice rivers, known to the Wet’suwet’en as Wetzin’kwa, it’s even longer.

It meant that smaller sockeye, those that return sooner, were escaping the gillnets while larger populations were being depleted. In addition, longer lifecycles slow reproductive rates for those populations, further contributing to their decline.

Today, the Babine wild sockeye account for 75 per cent of Skeena returns. That number jumps to 91 per cent when enhanced sockeye are included, those produced in spawning channels like Pinkut Creek and the Fulton River.

While they provide the numbers to justify a commercial fishery, they may also be contributing to a false sense of stability that further threatens diversity.

“Without the Babine population, there would certainly be no commercial fishery because of how wild populations have declined,” Price said.

Commercial, or “mixed-stock” fisheries on the coast harvest salmon indiscriminately, capturing primarily strong populations like those coming from hatcheries and spawning beds but also harvesting those from dwindling populations at risk of dying out, he said.

The Babine River sockeye salmon population has rebounded after a decline in the 20th century, but researcher Michael Price warns that current population numbers may contribute to a false sense of stability that further threatens diversity. Photo: NOAA Fisheries West Coast / Flickr

This means that some communities, like the Wet’suwet’en along Wetzin’kwa, have seen stocks plummet while commercial fishing on the coast continues. Some nations have had to suspend their food fisheries.

Donna Macintyre, fisheries director with Lake Babine Nation, calls the artificial spawning channels that flow into Babine Lake “a blessing and a curse.” While they feed Lake Babine’s people, they create a false understanding about the overall health of the watershed’s sockeye populations.

The nation has witnessed firsthand the loss of returns in small tributaries.

“We have our boots to the ground. I have three stream-enumeration teams that are out there counting the fish every eight to 10 days,” she said. “We count them basically one by one.”

Some years, there aren’t many to count, with barely 100 sockeye returning to smaller streams, she said. Last year, despite favourable weather conditions — cool and rainy — she said it was the lowest year yet for sockeye returns to tributaries on Babine Lake.

“I think Lake Babine Nation’s biggest concern is how the Department of Fisheries and Oceans manages the sockeye,” she said about the government looking at overall sockeye numbers, including those produced by enhancement projects. “Meanwhile, all of the fish that have fed everybody — miners, trappers, other First Nations, commercial fishermen, sports fishermen — those wild stocks are in the red zone, and we need to rebuild them.”

Terminal fisheries, those managing fish at the population level, are becoming more common, Price said, appearing in major salmon-producing watersheds like the Fraser and the Skeena. But in order for them to be a viable commercial alternative, those individual populations need to be revived.

“That would be the overall aim. You rebuild these populations to such an extent that you’re feeding local ecosystems, you’re feeding local communities and, yes, if there’s surplus then generate some economy based on the number of fish returning,” Price said.

“Locally based fisheries and Indigenous communities are best aligned to take that on, like their ancestors had done years ago.”

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British Columbia’s forestry watchdog is calling on the government to review its approach to old-growth logging around Prince George, saying biodiversity in the region may be at risk.

The B.C. Forest Practices Board report, released just before Christmas, is the result of a year-long investigation following an initially anonymous complaint by a government employee.

The board identified several concerns with the way government manages old forests in the Prince George timber supply area, the largest in the province, including its definition of old growth and use of outdated industry standards, which were last revised before the mountain pine beetle outbreak. It called on the province to update its objectives for old growth in partnership with Indigenous communities.

It’s a start, say those studying logging’s effect on old-growth forests in the province.

Judy Thomas was working as a stewardship forester with the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development when she filed the anonymous complaint with the Forest Practices Board. She said the news is a cause for celebration.

“They wrote a good report, and they really asked the ministry to get back to basics and redo their landscape order, so that is good,” said Thomas, who has since retired. “It hasn’t happened yet. We’re just at the words stage. However, the board carries a lot of weight and I believe that public opinion is changing.”

Thomas said she was alarmed by what she was seeing while working in the bush near her home in Prince George. On their own initiative, she and her husband, Rob Norwell, began researching the effects of increased forest harvest levels that were intended to reduce a spruce beetle outbreak that began in 2015.

Thomas, a former stewardship forester for the province, filed an anonymous complaint with B.C.’s forestry watchdog after witnessing high levels of logging around Prince George, B.C. Thomas warned the province against repeating past mistakes when dealing with invasive beetles. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Their study overlaid government data about spruce beetle-infected forests from 2014 to 2019 against cutblocks harvested within the same period.

It found a disconnect between the claimed objective of curbing the beetle’s spread and what was happening on the ground.

While logging was supposed to be focusing on salvaging dead timber that still held value and reducing the beetle infestations, Thomas said that wasn’t happening.

A document released this summer outlines the provincial chief forester’s priorities for spruce beetle reduction.

It says stands with greater than 50 per cent dead trees are the highest priority for logging and those with more than 30 per cent dead trees are moderate priority. Stands with less than 30 per cent dead trees were considered low or very low priority for logging.

In addition, the objectives focus on reducing the spread of the spruce beetle by logging forest stands where more than 10 per cent of trees have a live beetle infestation, also known as “attacked” trees.

However, Thomas said that aerial overview flights used by the province to determine the beetle’s spread only show dead or dying trees and don’t determine live beetle infestations.

In addition, her research showed that 70 per cent of the harvest in the Prince George TSA contained less than 10 per cent dead trees. In the entire district, 62 per cent of logging was in areas where there was no spruce beetle at all.

She said they typically saw two- or three-hectare clusters of infested trees — about one per cent — in a 200-hectare patch that had been logged.

“If you’ve got a spruce stand, and only 10 per cent of the stand has been affected, then there’s nothing wrong with that stand. It’s there for caribou, it’s there for fisher, it’s there for keeping streams clean, it’s there for future harvest,” said Thomas, who presented her findings through the University of Northern British Columbia this fall.

Clear-cut logging of spruce in B.C.’s interior. The B.C. government’s approach to logging in the province’s largest timber supply area repeats past mistakes, says whistleblower Judy Thomas. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Thomas added that the current approach to managing spruce beetle is similar to — and repeats errors from — the mountain pine beetle epidemic, despite the pests’ differences. That presents a risk to both biodiversity and to mid-term timber supply, which could lead to further mill closures, she said.

“The mistake of the large clearcuts appears to be repeated. The mistake of letting them go after anything is repeated,” she said. “Old growth is a non-renewable value, and we don’t have very much left.”

Forest Practices Board chair Kevin Kriese said only about 10 per cent of the roughly 60 complaints the board receives each year results in an investigation, but that it currently has several other similar investigations happening elsewhere in the province.

“This reflects concern across other parts of the province around the management of old growth,” he said. “It’s one of the most important values and probably one of the most controversial issues in forestry today. So, we do get other complaints on this topic.”

Kriese said several things make the Prince George TSA unique. For one, its size. At roughly eight million hectares, it is more than twice the size of Vancouver Island. Of that, about 50 per cent is dominated by lodgepole pine that has been heavily impacted by wildfires and the mountain pine beetle infestation.

The area is also one of the few in the province where specific areas of protected old growth aren’t identified on maps of the timber supply area. Instead, the management plan sets out a percentage of the TSA that must be maintained, which can mean important areas can be logged, he said.

Because of the area’s complexity, the board’s investigation focused on whether logging in the TSA was in compliance with a legal order that established landscape biodiversity objectives for the area in 2004. While the investigation found that forestry companies were in compliance with the 16-year-old guidelines, it added that the province needs to update the order following impacts like fires and mountain pine beetle.

According to Karen Price, an independent ecologist whose research informed a panel reviewing B.C.’s approach to old growth earlier this year, the finding that the forest industry is complying with legal requirements for biodiversity protection is misleading.

In B.C., most interior forests, and specifically those within the Prince George area, are defined as old growth if they are more than 140 years old. That’s different from coastal ecosystems, where old forests are defined as more than 250 years.

Read more: Canada’s forgotten rainforest

That distinction allows companies to increase the harvest with the assumption that forests will recover within a shorter time period.

Price said the approach amounts to mathematical smoke and mirrors.

“The legal requirements are based on incorrect math,” she said. “They are meeting legal requirements — or close to — where legal requirements say two plus two equals five.”

She adds that while the board’s direction to government is a start, it’s nowhere near enough to recover biodiversity in a region heavily impacted by industry.

The province should implement all 14 of the independent panel’s recommendations, which were released in September, she said.

In particular, Price points to the panel’s second recommendation — immediately after greater Indigenous involvement — that prioritizes ecosystem health and resilience.

“The damage to ecological integrity in the Prince George TSA is extensive and undeniable,” Price said, emphasizing the high risk to biodiversity in the area. “It’s worse than ‘at risk.’ Already much has been lost — moose, grizzlies, marten, salmon populations have dropped precipitously.”

Clear cut logging in the Anzac River Valley. Most B.C. interior forests, and specifically those within the Prince George area, are defined as old growth if they are more than 140 years old, rather than the typical 250 years for coastal ecosystems. This allows companies to increase the harvest since they assume forests will recover faster. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Also included in the panel’s recommendations, which the NDP promised to implement during the fall election campaign, are greater involvement of local communities, providing more information to the public and more robust monitoring — things that Thomas would have liked highlighted in the Forest Practices Board report.

“The board did say First Nations should be involved. Great, absolutely, but also the public should be involved — at the table, with their input,” she said. “It should be all public. It should be all on the web: the monitoring reports that happen, the recruitment strategies.”

“Recruitment strategies” are policies that let companies meet protection goals by counting stands that do not meet the old-forest definition but could contribute to long-term old-growth objectives.

The board’s report makes two recommendations to government. The first is to rectify shortcomings with old-growth mapping and “promptly” identify “old growth management areas where the immediate risks to old forest are the greatest.”

Secondly, it asks the province to review and update requirements for biodiversity in the region using First Nations partnerships, transparency and consideration for the implications of climate change on forest management.

“As old forests are depleted, the opportunities to address old forest contribution to biodiversity diminish,” the report concludes.

In an emailed statement, the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development said it will accept the board’s advice to review the current approach and ensure it reflects changes to the landscape, new information and current societal values.

“Our government understands that, for too long, there has been a divisive and patchwork approach to how old-growth forests were managed in our province. That’s why our government asked an independent panel to advise us on how we could do better when it comes to protecting our old forests,” it said, adding that it would work with Indigenous leaders, industry, labour and environmental organizations to determine the path forward.

The board has given the province until May 30 to respond. Kriese said it often gets a “mixed” response to complex policy recommendations.

“In this case, we provided a fair bit of time because it’s complicated. These are policy issues that they have to grapple with,” he said. “So, we’ll wait for the province to respond and then it’s up to them to decide to accept our recommendations or not, and to tell us what actions they plan to take.”

In the meantime, logging continues in the Prince George area under the existing regulations.

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