This story is part of Generating Futures, a series from The Narwhal exploring clean energy sovereignty among B.C. First Nations.

Summary

• Haida Gwaii is one of 44 remote communities in B.C. that are not connected to the provincial electrical grid. For power, most rely on diesel, which has heavy environmental and human health costs. 
• Solar North, a two-megawatt solar project by Haida-owned Tll Yahda, came online in December — the first project of its kind to be built on a remote grid in B.C., and a big step forward in the First Nation’s plans to transition off diesel.
• Whether operating independently or with BC Hydro, remote projects require funding to get off the ground. However, a key federal grant program by Natural Resources Canada to fund diesel reduction will end next year.

On a hot, sunny day in 2023, a flatbed truck sidled up to the flat patch of grass at the Masset airport on Haida Gwaii. Kevin Brown, Patrika McEvoy and Sean Brennan had rushed to the site when they heard the solar panels had arrived. After decades of advocating, planning and waiting, the Haida Nation’s first utility-scale solar energy project — the first of its kind on a remote grid in B.C. — was ready to be built. 

All three remember the moment when Brown, energy coordinator for Old Massett Village Band Council, reached out his finger to touch one. 

“Shit just got real,” he says.

Across much of the province, B.C.’s mostly hydropowered centralized electricity system blurs into the background, delivering easily accessible, relatively affordable power at the flick of a switch.

But Haida Gwaii’s archipelago off the Pacific Coast is truncated from B.C.’s grid, making it one of around 44 remote communities in B.C. most of which rely on diesel for their power. There, diesel is delivered perilously by trucks and tankers, and leaves toxins lingering in the air. It remains a problem that the province has promised, but so far failed, to fix. In 2017, B.C. announced a target to reduce diesel on remote grids by 80 per cent by 2030, a goal that currently appears far out of reach.

But this past December, Tll Yahda Energy, an independent power producer and a partnership between the Council of the Haida Nation, Skidegate Band Council and Old Massett Village Council, made a sizable leap when their two-megawatt solar project, Solar North, officially came online. It marks the first time in B.C. that an intermittent energy source like solar has made a sizable dent in a diesel-driven remote grid. 

“We expected to have to do some trailblazing,” Brennan, manager at Tll Yahda and a lead on the project, says. “But it was basically reinventing that entire trail.”

If all goes as planned, Haida Gwaii’s project will soon be joined by a stream of others, including the Ulkatcho First Nation’s completed four-megawatt solar farm in the Chilcotin Plateau, the Nuxalk Nation’s run-of-river hydroelectric project on the Central Coast and the Uchucklesaht Tribe’s efforts on western Vancouver Island to build a 750-kilowatt solar and battery-storage project, among many others. Many are in development and partially funded, but require more support to move forward.

But as federal and provincial governments’ priorities shift, there are signs the window could begin to close again. That could spell trouble for communities with in-between projects, and for Haida Gwaii, whose journey to displace diesel still has a long way to go.

‘This is not something we want to risk anymore.’

Since the first electric light in the Pacific Northwest beamed out over a harbour near Victoria almost 150 years ago, power and access to it have developed asymmetrically. Wires and transmission lines quickly fanned out across the province, etching their way across Indigenous territories, targeting congregations of settler populations and the bursts of resource extraction they tended to follow.

Elsewhere, and in many First Nations communities, electric power was scarce until it came by way of diesel generators, which use diesel-fueled pistons to produce a magnetic field, generating electricity. But diesel power comes at a high cost for ecosystems and communities.

In the early hours of October 13, 2016, the Nathan E. Stewart tugboat ran into one of the many rocks tracing the shoreline in Heiltsuk territory. By around 10 a.m. the next morning, the tug had sunk, spilling more than 100,000 litres of diesel fuel and other pollutants into nearby Gale Pass, leaving a rainbow-coloured sheen across the water.  

The tug was among many that haul diesel to generators along the coast, including to Haida Gwaii. 

It was yet another alarm bell that propelled the nation’s resolve to get off diesel, Brennan says. “That was really what led to us saying ‘This is not something we want to risk anymore.’”

On a regular basis, Haida Gwaii is visited by barges carrying diesel up through the Inside Passage and then through the Hecate Strait, which has been called the most dangerous water body on Canada’s coast, threatening ocean ecosystems and the nation’s coastal economy that depends on them. Even on land, diesel fuel tends to splatter and spill despite its handlers’ best efforts, leaving contaminated soil at loading docks and generating stations.

In the air, combusted diesel fumes produce pollutants like nitrogen dioxide and fine particulates, known to exacerbate asthma, cancer and risk of premature death. It also releases copious amounts of carbon dioxide. Haida Gwaii represents around three per cent of the province’s electrical emissions.

The Haida Nation’s work to shift from diesel galvanized in the mid-2000s, Brown explains. Community members tallied data across communities and realized the true scale of their diesel demand.

Inertia, political will posed challenges for transition away from diesel in B.C.

In theory, the province was also concerned about the amount of diesel being burned in remote communities.

Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government made the first move, directing BC Hydro to take over energy provision in additional remote communities, including some remote First Nations that had been operating their own energy systems with federal funding. Ideally, BC Hydro would help communities bring more clean energy to their grids. 

But that’s not what happened. 

The utility housed some deep-rooted inertia, according to Nick Hawley, a former manager on remote community electrification for BC Hydro at the time.

“They had diesel mechanics and diesel electricians,” Hawley, now an energy consultant, says. He describes an institution that was risk-averse and reticent to change. “They knew diesel.” 

As a monopoly utility, BC Hydro decides where and when it buys power, and from whom in the regions it services. It held prospective renewable projects to a strict test: It would only consider those that could beat the price of diesel fuel, not including the substantial costs of maintenance and replacing things like generators. They also required that projects cover the often sizable cost of connecting to the remote grid. Under those circumstances, says Hawley, it was difficult to get new renewable projects through.

In 2012, BC Hydro put a call out for energy projects on Haida Gwaii. Old Massett Band Council was one of many renewable projects that applied with a proposal for a 5.6 megawatt wind project. None were accepted.

The Haida Nation had begun moving forward anyway. 

“We’ve been on a long journey,” Nangkilslas Trent Moraes, deputy chief councillor of the Skidegate First Nation, says. Communities started out working on smaller changes, beginning with things like solar water heaters and heat pumps. Soon, solar panels popped up on roofs across the islands, including the Haida Heritage Centre built in 2017 — B.C.’s largest community-owned renewable energy installation at the time. 

“That was the beginning of how we got into the power field,” he says. 

Still, the communities’ long-held goal of owning and operating a larger-scale renewable project remained out of reach. 

That changed when, beginning in 2019, Haida Gwaii’s southern band council, Skidegate, and northern council, Old Massett, began meeting to discuss energy issues with the Council of the Haida Nation. 

Together, the bands and nation pooled their efforts and resources, enabling them to pursue a project that wouldn’t have been possible in isolation. This allowed the nation to remain the project’s sole owner and decision-maker, absent the influence of investors or other companies. 

“I was thankful that we were able to acquire ownership for this project and not have third parties involved,” McEvoy, former chair of energy on the Tll Yahda board of directors and energy consultant for the Council of the Haida Nation, says.

BC Hydro had long argued that its ability to spend more on remote grids was constrained by the utility regulator’s legal requirement that new projects not unduly impact other ratepayers, a challenge for some renewable energy projects. As the plans for Solar North came together, McEvoy worked with a group of remote First Nations communities advocating for legal change, designing an amendment to remove that potential obstruction: for a temporary period, cabinet could now direct the utility regulator to accept these projects, even if they came at a higher cost than diesel.  

“That was a lot of blood, sweat and tears,” McEvoy says. The regulatory amendment was finally passed in 2024, and will remain until the end of 2029.

BC Hydro now had a clear legal runway to support renewable projects in the 14 remote grids — called “non-integrated areas” — it services. But the clock was ticking: the amendment was passed six years after B.C. set a target to reduce 80 per cent of its diesel emissions by 2030, and no projects in BC Hydro’s service regions had been achieved. Last December, Haida’s project became the first, soon to be followed by a solar farm in Anahim Lake led by the Ulkatcho First Nation, which is set to come online this year. Meanwhile, remote communities who had operated their energy systems independently had collectively reduced their diesel use by 84 percent since 2019, mostly through small hydroelectric projects.

In an emailed statement, BC Hydro said that it “took time” for the utility to incorporate new communities into its operating practices, to “ensure that the levels of reliability are brought to utility standards” adding that the remote grids they service tend to be larger and more complex to decarbonize than independently operated remote energy systems. It also added that since 2018 BC Hydro has been working with new sources of federal and provincial funding “to support a more cost-effective transition from diesel to renewable energy.” It also added that the province’s 2030 diesel reduction target is “not BC Hydro’s target.”

But by the time the legal amendment came in 2024, Tll Yahda’s work on Solar North was already well underway, having decided on a utility-scale solar farm on the north grid in an already-disturbed area near the airport. They ensured training opportunities were available for members, and hired 16 solar installers on the island, says Brennan.

Then they began to build.

The invisible wall

Even as the panels were placed and the wires hooked up, there was another problem to solve before Solar North’s diesel-replacing potential could be fully realized: it needed a place to store its energy. 

Electricity is notoriously finicky, requiring a steady stream of electrons delivered through conductive wires at all times to work well. When these electrons falter or pile up, lights flicker, clocks fall out of date, or, in more severe cases, the power can drop or surge, frying appliances.

Remote grids like Haida Gwaii’s are particularly hard-pressed to avoid such swings.

Imagine a concert-goer attempting to crowd-surf in a room of just three people: if one person trips or someone else decides to pile on, the effort could easily collapse. Similarly, a remote grid with just a few power sources can fail if one of its inputs suddenly drops out or an entire community turns on their dishwashers at once. On the other hand, B.C.’s large, interconnected grid has the resilience of a packed concert hall — disruptions like these are almost imperceptible. 

On-again, off-again renewables like solar and wind are particularly unpredictable, whereas the on-demand qualities of diesel fuel are more likely to hold weight when needed. 

Luckily, solutions have arrived. “The technologies have evolved very rapidly,” Mark Mitchell, global lead of distribution and smart grid at the consulting firm Hatch, says. Mitchell adds that, in remote communities, storage systems like lithium-ion batteries and microgrid controllers are newly equipped to smooth out such dips and surges. 

“It’s really been one of the main enablers for bringing more renewables online.”

For BC Hydro and for the Haida Nation, grappling with these cutting-edge storage systems was new: they had to decide who would own the battery and control systems — BC Hydro would in the end — and who to buy it from, a challenge thanks to limited supply chains for systems scaled to the needs of small, remote communities. 

“BC Hydro had never done a project where it’s connecting a renewable energy project to a diesel grid before,” Brennan says. 

“We didn’t realize all the implications that went with that.”

Today, Solar North is still waiting for its battery system to be installed. In the meantime, it’s displacing around 70 per cent of the diesel it is capable of. 

And when it’s expanded to match the size of its battery and grid upgrades, Solar North has the potential to displace around six per cent of the island’s electrical diesel consumption. The Nation is currently working with BC Hydro to determine the sizing for an expansion of Solar North that could push that displacement higher still.  

In many remote regions, displacing 100 per cent of the diesel brings challenges that batteries alone still can’t fix, Mitchell says. Today’s batteries are ideal for short-term storage, which can help even out daily dips and lows in solar power, but not longer seasonal shifts like Haida Gwaii’s stormy winters, when the sun is in short supply. 

“Essentially, what we’re going to do here is run into an invisible wall with solar,” Brennan says. At that point, solar energy will produce diminishing returns. 

Tll Yahda is studying ways to make solar work better for their communities, including a pilot project to test how solar panels matched with small-scale batteries could make the system run more efficiently. It’s also conducting analyses to test out how hybrid combinations of renewables behave on the grid.

In renewable electricity, the right kind of complexity is key, Garrett Russ, climate action coordinator with the Skidegate Band Council, says. “I’m looking at this whole system as a whole complete project.” 

He’s seen the consequences of siloed efforts, including the nearly 50 heat pumps in his workshop that need fixing — thanks in part to a lack of trained workers on the island to keep them in good repair. Russ has since launched a training program, teaching Haida and other remote community members in B.C. how to maintain the systems while providing needed employment. 

A birds-eye view is a challenge because of project-by-project funding cycles and governments that tend to move in slow, incremental steps, Russ says. But he’s making the most of the opportunities he can create, and studying how wind and solar could work together. 

Whether operating independently or with BC Hydro, remote projects require funding, and Russ worries that the door may be about to close. Already, a key federal program has not had its funding renewed. In an emailed statement, Natural Resources Canada confirmed that funding through a key diesel-reduction grant program will end next year, but added that there are other “ongoing programs” that will continue to support the effort. 

“I believe there’s going to be a very significant cut possibly coming up,” Russ says. In preparation, he is working on as many projects as he can “in a very short time.”

“If that does happen, then at least I changed as much as I could.”

‘We have to keep going.’

A ten-minute walk from the arrow-shaped panels of Solar North sits B.C. Hydro’s diesel generating station, ringed in the spring by salal and salmonberries that McEvoy makes sure to avoid. 

Diesel still helps power Haida Gwaii’s grid, but the work to reduce it continues.

McEvoy and others across the islands have been asking their community members what kind of energy transition they’d like to see. Meanwhile, BC Hydro has begun to do energy planning with remote communities — for the first time in its history. The process design for those plans fell short of what many nations had hoped for: it doesn’t have legal standing, and remains, in many ways, on the utility’s terms. McEvoy says it remains an important step.

McEvoy likens the process to paddling a canoe in a stormy ocean. “All we can see is dark, black clouds ahead,” she says. “We have to keep going.” 

At some point, she says, the clouds will break. 

“That’s us, and the work we’re putting in.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This story is part of Generating Futures, a series from The Narwhal exploring clean energy sovereignty among B.C. First Nations.

Summary

• West Moberly First Nations has limited access to fresh foods, due to long supply chains, cold winters and environmental contamination that has made many traditional foods unsafe to eat.
• The First Nation believes a greenhouse could boost food security and food sovereignty, and plans to tap a geothermal reservoir — which holds scalding hot water buried deep underground — to heat it.
• Their geothermal project could be the first of its kind in the province, which boasts major geothermal opportunities but has no commercial-scale projects in operation.

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Moldy strawberries, wilted lettuce. A forlorn cauliflower pocked with brown. West Moberly First Nations Councillor Clarence Willson jokes that produce available in nearby stores is sometimes “compostable” before it hits the shelves.

That produce arrives by way of a very long supply chain, and their northeastern B.C. territory, a three-and-a-half hour drive northeast of Prince George, is often the end of the line. And thanks to the compounding effects of hydro dams, seismic lines for oil and gas, forestry and coal mines, traditional foods the nation has long harvested or hunted have grown increasingly scarce or unsafe to eat.  

“We have to start looking at how we sustain ourselves,” Chief Roland Willson of West Moberly First Nations says. “Not just West Moberly, but the people in the northeast.”

“The idea of the greenhouse is, to me, where I think we have to go.” 

Growing fresh food year-round in greenhouses could improve food security in the community and across the region, but it would take a lot of energy, too. Fortunately, the First Nation has a serendipitous asset buried deep underground: scalding hot, salty water. 

Thanks to B.C.’s lively tectonic faults, it has an abundance of this underground water, a key ingredient in what’s known as conventional geothermal energy. Hot water is pumped to the surface, using tools like turbines and heat exchangers to generate renewable electricity or direct heat. Elsewhere, companies are working to design so-called “unconventional” geothermal technologies to extract the earth’s heat from places without such reservoirs, but the drilling required makes it much more costly. B.C.’s geothermal opportunities, in other words, are a relatively low-hanging fruit — one that could literally yield fruit, and other fair-weather crops like tomatoes and peppers, even in winter’s subzero temperatures. 

“British Columbia has a world-class geothermal resource,” says Emily Smejkal, a geologist and policy lead for the Cascade Institute’s geothermal energy office. “We’re just not using it.”

Geothermal energy supplies consistent power, making it similar to the hydro dams and natural gas B.C. currently relies on.   

If the nation’s project succeeds, the West Moberly direct heat geothermal greenhouse project would be the first of its kind in Canada. Such innovation brings risks to its trailblazers, but Clarence, a longtime lead on the geothermal project, says the potential outcomes are worth it.

“When we learned about this geothermal availability, it fit right into our idea of food sovereignty,” he says. 

“We want to be in control of our supply of food, knowing what goes into it and what’s good about it.”

Fragmented food systems have impacted food security, territory

Fresh food used to be abundant in West Moberly’s territory.

“If you needed meat, you’d go to the mountains and get yourself a caribou,” Roland says. Fish came easily, too: rivers were once plentiful enough that you could catch them by hand. The nation’s members travelled throughout their territory with the seasons, maintaining balance and keeping their impacts in check.  

Over a century ago, Canada signed Treaty 8 which promised signatory First Nations would retain the right to hunt and fish as they always had.

But that’s not what happened. 

To supercharge resource extraction in the north, former premier W.A.C. Bennett dammed the Peace River, bisecting the once-expansive migration of transient caribou that fortified the residential herds. “Caribou that roamed throughout the territory got fragmented down into these small, little pockets,” Roland says, “and then wolves came in.”

Wolves and other predators made use of roads — and seismic and power lines etched across the territory, offering them an easy-access escalator to the caribou’s mountain hideaways. As logging and mining further depleted caribou habitat, the herds plummeted. In 2014, the nation launched a breeding pen program with the Saulteau First Nations, and yet herds remain in critical condition.

Other foods suffered, too: moose and elk populations fell, thanks in part to habitat loss and to new hunting pressure in the caribou’s absence. Berries throughout the territory were sprayed with glyphosate, a chemical now deemed “probably carcinogenic” by the World Health Organization. 

For decades, fish remained relatively plentiful — and critical to diminishing food security. 

Every year in May, Clarence and his family would gather at a special spot along the Crooked River to fish for char, sometimes setting up barbecues to cook by the river as they worked. But worries began to surface, thanks in part to a sign in the Hudson’s Hope post office warning of elevated mercury levels in the Williston Reservoir. The nation knew that fish travelled through the reservoir, and initiated a study in 2015 to determine whether they were safe to eat. 

“I was in tears when we got the results back, because I knew my family had been eating those fish for years,” Clarence says. 

Ninety-eight percent of the samples had mercury concentrations above B.C.’s health guidelines. Women of childbearing age could safely eat only a Hershey’s Kiss worth of fish every other day.

Before it was flooded, the community learned that BC Hydro’s new dam project, Site C, would bring mercury contamination closer to home. The reservoir is downstream of the Moberly River, which threads through the nation’s territory and flows into Moberly Lake directly facing their community. Just as the Crooked River carried the reservoir’s toxins upstream, the Moberly River is poised to do the same. “A lot of us eat fish directly out of the lake,” Clarence says.

“They went ahead with Site C with the full knowledge that it was going to do the same thing there.”

Clarence added that selenium pollution from nearby coal mines also impacts the region’s watersheds. “All the river networks in our region are affected by something,” he says.

With many traditional food sources depleted or contaminated, West Moberly has taken action over the years to regain access to fresh foods. The nation funded community members to build garden beds, but short growing seasons mean they offer limited respite to a year-round problem. 

A greenhouse could bridge the seasons, but West Moberly First Nations has no natural gas service in its community. And according to Michael Keefer, president of the ecological restoration consultancy Keefer Ecological, the added costs of using electricity to power a greenhouse year-round would make the prospect a non-starter. 

“It’s very energy-intensive to heat a greenhouse,” he says.

That is, unless the nation has another energy source to draw from. 

Energy from an ancient sea-floor

Hundreds of millions of years ago, the earth’s supercontinent broke up along the border of northeastern B.C. and Alberta, turning it — and what would become West Moberly’s traditional territory — into a shallow tropical sea, populated by giant reptilefish.

Eventually, sediment and rock covered it over, leaving little holes underground where that sea-floor had been. 

“If that buried sea-floor doesn’t hold air anymore, it holds salty water or oil or gas,” Smejkal says. Known as “brine,” that water is more plentiful than its fossil fuel cohabitants. “Oil and gas are hard to find,” Smejkal says. “Water is actually pretty easy.”

In addition to that ancient sea-floor, B.C.’s geothermal potential also abounds beneath the chains of volcanoes tracing its coast. There, hot water comes from rain that trickles underground through porous rocks, heated by the volcanoes’ pimple-like proximity to the earth’s molten core.

Some B.C. buildings use a geothermal-lite technique called “geoexchange” to supplement their energy needs by heating water in shallow underground pipes, but to date no projects have successfully tapped the potential of deep-buried water. 

Glen Clark, chair of the BC Hydro board, told The Narwhal he thinks B.C.’s lacklustre geothermal industry is due in part to an abundance of cheap hydropower and gas. “You’ve got these inexpensive fuel sources that have impaired, in a way, the kind of experimentation you’d have if the price were higher,” he says. But Clark says geothermal is “a really, really important resource,” that could play a key role in B.C.’s energy system in the future. 

Producing electricity from underground water is also finicky: it needs to be super hot, at around 120 C. But industrial sites like greenhouses can easily skip the electricity step, using geothermal heat directly in their operations, creating a less risky project. When West Moberly realized the heat in their geothermal resource was ideal for greenhouse conditions, it seemed like an obvious conclusion, Clarence says. 

“That’s been a topic we’ve discussed for years.” 

Next phase of geothermal project is risky, requires substantial new funding

If all goes as planned, West Moberly’s geothermal greenhouse will bring fresh produce and fish back to the territory. 

Using a system known as aquaponics, the nation plans to raise fish in tanks and use their waste to fertilize vegetables in the greenhouse, cutting down on or eliminating the use of synthetic fertilizers. 

“The waste from the fish is excellent fertilizer for the greenhouse products,” Clarence says. “They work together very well.” 

So far, the nation plans to raise fish like tilapia alongside produce like tomatoes, strawberries, greens and peppers in a 40,000-square-foot greenhouse — enough to provide food for its members and surrounding communities. Keefer is working with the nation to develop a business plan, including reaching out to local grocery stores. He’s confident their products will be in high demand — as long as everything goes according to plan. 

Even though the project is designed to produce a more forgiving form of direct heat, the enterprise still brings risk. “For our project, flow is our big worry,” Ben Lee says. He’s an operations engineer and heat transfer specialist with Calgary-based company Raven Thermal Services, which is helping to design the geothermal project with the nation. If the company doesn’t find enough water in the reservoir it targets, it won’t be able to bring enough heat to the surface, and may need to drill farther into the rock to access it, upping the project’s costs. 

Lee says they chose to locate the project next to an abandoned oil and gas well near the community, which can serve as a pre-drilled test plot to assess subsurface conditions they might encounter. This is among the many conservative decisions made, Lee says, to reduce risks inherent in the project. “When you’re talking about a community-based project, risk management becomes absolutely critical.”

Having received early feasibility funding from federal and provincial governments, the project now requires substantial new funding to take on the next big step of drilling the hole to determine how much water is there. 

In countries where geothermal energy has boomed, Smejkal says that risk-taking has often been a shared enterprise. For example, in what’s known as the “glass city” — the Westland region of the Netherlands — geothermal-powered greenhouses produce food for distribution across Europe. There, governments agreed to help compensate for the cost difference between geothermal power and natural gas, and offered an insurance program to reduce risks for geothermal projects. By removing the consumer carbon tax and failing to provide consistent support for geothermal energy, Smejkal worries Canada is heading in the opposite direction. 

Clark sees a role for the utility to advance geothermal in the province and help to reduce risks for developers. But, he warns, it faces competing demands for funds and time, including major substation investments to replace aging infrastructure. He says he wasn’t aware of West Moberly’s geothermal greenhouse project, but added that the utility generally enters into equity agreements with First Nations to share ownership of the energy system, like transmission lines, “as opposed to more historic reparations.” He added that he didn’t know enough about the mercury issues related to Site C to comment on them.

Speaking to The Narwhal from his home alongside Moberly Lake, Clarence says those responsible for the community’s collapsing food system are indebted to help. 

 “Some of these people that are poisoning our food supply, they should help us with trying to have good food here,” he says.

Generating Futures is made possible with support from the Real Estate Foundation of BC. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization has editorial input into our stories.

Updated on March 9, 2026, at 6:53 a.m. PT: This article was updated because a previous version incorrectly attributed a quotation to Roland Willson in a caption. The quotation has been deleted from the caption, but remains unchanged in the story’s main text, where it is correctly attributed to Clarence Willson.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

B.C.’s NDP government has recently lent a steadying hand to its beleaguered forestry sector, pausing stumpage fees, expediting permits and investing in mills to prevent its looming fall — but some say to no avail. 

“Why does it keep getting worse?” Prince George-Mackenzie Conservative MLA Kiel Giddens asked during the spring legislative session, voicing a question that continues to echo months later. 

A new report commissioned by the Sierra Club BC points to a theory: B.C.’s supply of unlogged, high-value trees that industry has long relied on is dwindling, rendering short-term fixes and freebies inadequate.

As report co-author and forester Dave Daust puts it, “If you have a car with a broken engine, fixing the flat tire is not going to fix the problem.”

Pressure on B.C.’s most at-risk forests appears to be intensifying. The report says the province’s efforts to temporarily pause logging in rare forests through old-growth deferrals have failed. Instead, B.C. forests were four times more likely to be logged inside recommended deferral zones than outside over the past four years. With industry pressure exacerbated by escalating wildfires, the report suggests B.C.’s century-long feast on big, old trees is approaching its end. The question is how many of them will be left. 

Since being elected in 2017, the BC NDP has taken a Janus-faced approach to forest management. In 2020, it committed to a “paradigm shift” that would transform its forest management system from one that prioritizes logging fast and furious to logging only what ecosystems can handle. More recently, they’ve seemingly cooled on such commitments; at the beginning of the year, Premier David Eby instructed his forest minister to aim to raise logging levels by roughly 50 per cent compared to 2024. 

“The failure to fully deliver on old growth commitments is a profound betrayal of trust in First Nations, the public and future generations,” Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, said in a statement. 

“As the climate crisis deepens, allowing these irreplaceable forests to be logged is reckless and short-sighted.” 

‘The deferrals failed’ 

In 2021, Daust and co-author Karen Price, an ecologist, were among a five-person panel that mapped and recommended 2.6 million hectares of at-risk old growth forests be deferred — a temporary status that would keep them from getting cut down as longer-term land use planning decisions took place.

“It was intensely disappointing to see how badly they failed,” Price says. Their report found that in four years, around 113,000 football fields worth of old-growth deferral zones were logged. Wildfires deepened the loss further, burning almost the forest equivalent of 206,000 football fields. Drawing on the province’s forest inventories and GIS mapping software, the report identified the highest deferral logging rates in the dry interior regions and in sub-boreal forests in the province’s central interior.

The trees were able to be logged because the province made deferrals optional, pending approval from First Nations. But groups like the BC Assembly of First Nations and the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs described the province’s approach as a “hot potato,” passing difficult decisions to First Nations without involving them in the decision-making process or providing adequate transition funding to support potential revenue shortfalls. 

Price says B.C.’s approach to deferrals and the still-nascent change they were meant to precipitate are telling. 

“This analysis confirms what we suspected,” she says. “The paradigm hasn’t shifted.”

By email, B.C.’s Ministry of Forests said that logging across the province has fallen by 40 per cent since 2021, while logging in at-risk old-growth forests has fallen at a higher rate of 50 per cent — a finding that reflects different numbers than those identified in Price and Daust’s research. 

“We are accelerating action on multiple fronts to protect and restore old growth while supporting First Nations, communities, and workers,” the ministry added. It also said its joint $300-million conservation financing mechanism with Parks Canada “will fund First Nations-led permanent protections for old-growth forests.”

The problem with planted forests in B.C.

Core to the forest industry’s long-term conundrum is that, so far, it isn’t logging the vast blanket of planted forests it has created. 

For one thing, these forests are young, with around 80 per cent less than 40 years old, according to the Ministry of Forests, meaning the majority of the province’s logging happens in unlogged forests. But even when they mature, they may prove to be shoddy stand-ins for the forest they replaced. 

Price describes planted forests as towns with only “one type of people with one type of skill.” Lacking the forest equivalent of doctors, teachers, artists and farmers, their lack of genetic and structural diversity succumbs more easily to disease and disturbances like fire and adds fewer nutrients to the soil. They tend to grow smaller, weaker trees. It’s a bad situation for industry and for ecosystems. 

B.C. has never analyzed how much unlogged forest — also known as “primary” forest — it has left. Instead, it divvies up its forests into two main categories: old-growth trees that are beyond 140-250 years, depending on their location, and everything else. ​​

In other words, the forests B.C. categorizes as “old growth” are generally considered “primary,” but “everything else” includes primary and planted forests. 

Price says there are reasons to pay attention to that broader category of primary forest and how much remains. 

For one thing, that’s because unlogged forests in B.C.’s classification system lose “old growth” status when they’re burned in a wildfire or beset with pest infestation like the pine beetle, events that set back their official age clock as if they were just clear cut. But the likeness stops there, says Price. “Naturally disturbed forests still have functionality that plantations do not,” she says. 

In a changing climate, those wildfires and pest infestations are growing more frequent — almost four per cent of the province’s remaining old growth burned in the last four years, according to Price and Daust’s analysis. In the last decade, fires across the province burned seven times more than historic average. Meanwhile, companies are ramping up wildfire salvage logging in burned forests. Companies also target primary forests when logging for biopellet producers like Drax, which export wood pellets to places like the U.K. and Japan, where they’re burned for electricity. All told, Price says pressure on non-old-growth, primary forests is increasing. 

How much of B.C.’s old-growth forests are left?

For the first time, Daust and Price provide data on the kinds of primary forests that remain. Their findings indicate a shrinking map of primary forest, particularly in easier-to-log areas and in the bigger-treed stands. 

They found a third of B.C.’s forests have been degraded by planting or deforested to make clearings for things like private land, pipelines and roads. The remaining two-thirds is primary forest, but much of that is located in the province’s northern regions, where trees tend to be smaller and difficult to access. They also found large tracts of primary forests, including those with bigger trees, in limited protected areas and in small patches next to degraded forests. 

That patchy picture is an ecological problem, Daust says, because each ecosystem type requires a certain threshold of intact, unlogged forest to thrive. When those thresholds are crossed, generally considered to be anything less than 30 per cent of what was there originally, ecosystem collapse begins to loom. 

“The continued decline of primary forest indicates our inability to have an industry that is sustainable on a set footprint,” Peter Wood, a lecturer and coordinator in international forestry at the University of British Columbia says. “We’ve always been able to go a little further”

Besides the ecological consequences of exhausting primary forests, Wood says Price and Daust’s report has a stark message for industry too: “There’s actually very little left in terms of the really economically viable primary forest.” 

Wood laments what he sees as an information “vacuum” obscuring the supply challenges behind the industry’s growing crash. “Why are we only getting this from an NGO report?” he says, noting announcements like this week’s mill closure in 100 Mile House shouldn’t come as a surprise. “This is stuff that I would hope government should be not only aware of, but should be communicating to the public.”

Price and Daust hope the industry’s current crisis moment accompanies a turning point, aligning it with the kinds of forestry ecosystems can sustain, and including efforts to restore the province’s vast and struggling planted forests, and to protect 30 per cent of the province’s ecosystems by 2030. 

But, despite its purported commitments to paradigm change, Price says B.C.’s forest management continues to harbour major blind spots about ecosystems and what they need to thrive. “If you have an ecosystem perspective, all these things fall into place nicely,” she says. “The government doesn’t have that.”

Updated Nov. 14, 1:39 p.m. PT: This story was updated to include a statement sent following publication by B.C.’s Ministry of Forests

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This story is a collaboration between The Narwhal and IndigiNews. It is part of Generating Futures, a series from The Narwhal exploring clean energy sovereignty among B.C. First Nations.

Deep in a clear-skied valley in B.C.’s Southern Interior, a vast array of identical black solar panels stretches into the distance, digesting invisible meals of sunlight.For the occasion, Oregon Jack Creek Band Chief Matt Pasco holds one end of a giant, make-believe power outlet with a cotton rope for a wire, a lighthearted decoy to celebrate B.C.’s first grid-scale solar project at an event on Oct. 16. But the real thing is already hooked up and buzzing in the background. “We got it built ahead of schedule, by quite a bit,” Pasco says.

For Pasco, chair and title protector at the Nlaka’pamux Nation Tribal Council, the quA-ymn Solar Facility is a reminder of how quickly things can move under the right conditions. And how long it can take for them to arrive. 

Built atop a reclaimed tailings pond on the Highland Valley Copper mine near the town of Logan Lake, the project’s 39,000 solar panels span the equivalent of around 80 football fields, capturing enough sunlight to power 2,400 homes annually.

The project is a partnership between the tribal council and BluEarth Renewables and was financed by the Canada Infrastructure Bank. At the project’s outset, the Nlaka’pamux council included the Oregon Jack Creek (Nteqem/Snapaa), Lytton, Skuppah, Boothroyd and Spuzzum member communities, though the latter is no longer part of the council.

“It’s taken a real extraordinary effort to get here,” Tom McCarthy, B.C. deputy minister for policy and coordination, said in a speech at the event. “I also know this wasn’t a sure thing.”

It took a court case and snarling bureaucratic delays over a period of 14 years, a saga that concluded in victory for the Nlaka’pamux Nation as the assembled crowd toured the facility. 

Globally, solar capacity has ballooned in recent years, driven by technological innovations and economies of scale — but B.C. has lagged behind. Now that this project is complete, the nation already has plans for more. 

“We want to build a new reality and work together in our shared homelands,” Pasco says.

The politics of getting things done in B.C. are undergoing a transformation. Under a new wave of fast-track laws and coming regulations, long-held processes are being scrapped in the name of speed. These changes include Bills 14 and 15, laws that remove environmental assessment requirements and other guardrails from projects including wind farms, transmission lines and new mines. 

But as Nlaka’pamux surveys the view from B.C.’s sole foothold in large-scale solar generation, Nadine Hoehne, a title implementation specialist with the tribal council, has another approach in mind.

“There are ways that the province can be, I think, doing a lot more to support the building of an economy that does include Indigenous people,” she says, of her personal views. 

“They’re just not there yet.”

‘They had no choice’: Nation has fought to have a voice in provincial projects

Nlaka’pamux Nation has seen its fair share of projects pushed through. 

From above, its territory is carved by a web of razor cuts, including two major transmission lines carrying power from the Interior’s dammed rivers to the densely packed urban centres to the west. 

The lines have been there for decades, built without First Nations’ consent despite the wide-open tracts of permanently deforested land they would require.

In 2006, the British Columbia Transmission Corporation, soon to be BC Hydro, hatched a plan to build a third line, stretching between Merritt to Coquitlam.

Pasco says BC Hydro failed to properly negotiate with the nation to address the line’s impacts.

“They wouldn’t sit with us,” Pasco recalls. “So we had to go to court for them to take us seriously.

“Then they had no choice.” 

The province’s utility regulator claimed it had no responsibility to intervene when affected nations raised concerns, but the B.C. Supreme Court found that decision to be an “error in law,” revoking the project’s approval.

In the negotiations that followed, former Chief Melvin Bob of Spuzzum First Nation helped ensure Nlaka’pamux communities worked together as a nation, which Hoehne says was a diametric approach to BC Hydro’s tendency to negotiate with band councils in isolation.

In an email to The Narwhal, BC Hydro says it “consulted extensively with First Nations” on the transmission line’s potential impacts, adding that “BC Hydro has included band councils to take an inclusive approach and been guided by their directions on how, including collectively, they wish to be consulted.”

The process led to a commitment from BC Hydro to develop an ongoing relationship-based approach to development in the territory, and an agreement to buy power from a future energy project of the tribal council’s choosing. 

At the time, such opportunities were scarce. That’s because for most First Nations in the province, BC Hydro’s monopoly system and its vast powerlines are behind a locked door. It chooses when, if ever, to add power to its system. 

Brief openings came in fits and starts, including in the ’80s, when the tribal council’s late Grand Chief Bob Pasco, Chief Matt Pasco’s father, negotiated a partial, rights-based share of a run-of-river project in the territory. Another window opened in the 2000s, when then-premier Gordon Campbell, intent on privatizing everything from energy to health care, created the largest call for independent power producers in the province’s history. As private companies scrambled to place bids, First Nations began to assert their rights over projects in their territories, with many eventually gaining equity stakes in what was then mostly run-of-river hydro projects. 

It wouldn’t last long. By 2010, Campbell announced his government had a new plan: a megadam called Site C. Opportunities for First Nations, many of them still vying to enter the industry, would begin to dry up. 

That meant Nlaka’pamux’s court-assigned agreement with BC Hydro, signed in 2011, was a rare chance.

The nation decided on a solar project situated on the reclaimed tailings pond site. It would “tick all the boxes,” Pasco says, both for its ready-made access to high voltage transmission built for the mine, and because the already-disturbed site would incur a lesser impact. And then, they waited.

Solar project stymied by years-long provincial delays, barriers

For almost a decade, the project was idle, waiting for the B.C. Ministry of Finance to devise a tax policy that would allow the province’s first grid-scale solar project to pay its dues. “It’s pretty clear they didn’t care to do it,” Pasco says. In meetings, he recalls the province told the nation to build the project on its reserve, a prospect both insulting and spatially impossible: the reserve simply did not have the space. “That was their answer multiple times.” 

Nine years into the waiting game, a tax code was finalized at last. But the celebration was short-lived, because the policy’s fine print included a death knell. 

To capture tax revenue, the town of Logan Lake includes Highland Valley Copper mine in its municipal boundaries. Under the new tax policy, quA-ymn’s location on the mine’s reclaimed tailings pond meant the project would pay substantial taxes to both the municipality and the province. 

“It sinks the project,” Hoehne says, remembering the analysis delivered by the nation’s tax consultants.

The district of Logan Lake worked to remove the obstacle, lobbying the provincial government and bringing a motion to the annual conference of municipalities, calling on the province to adjust the rate. But the province refused to budge. 

“Why wouldn’t you support something like this?” Wade Archambault, chief administrative officer at the district of Logan Lake, says. He adds that development projects like quA-ymn offer the town a chance to build its relationship with the nation and an opportunity to diversify its own economy, currently yoked to the mine. In the final hour, the town identified a stop-gap solution, gnarled in the recesses of B.C.’s tax codes, which allows municipalities to provide a decade-long tax-free grace period to special projects. But that means the municipality can’t collect taxes from the project. It’s not a long-term solution, Hoehne says, but “we have 10 years here to deal with it.” Archambault is hoping to find a permanent solution before the 10-year window runs out for his own town, and for others. Without that, future solar projects, including on reclaimed mines, may be stymied. “You’re not going to see any projects happen within municipal boundaries,” he says. 

By email, the finance ministry told The Narwhal change is unlikely, writing, “At this time, the province is not considering the creation of additional property tax classes.” 

How much energy? 

After a decade of bureaucratic inertia, Pasco bristles when he thinks about B.C.’s recent efforts to fast-track major projects and insinuation that consent processes with First Nations are what’s slowing the province down. “I find it gross,” he says, “They’re masking the real problems.” 

Among them, he says, is the province’s disregard for the nation’s jurisdiction that long-sidelined the quA-ymn project, and its failure to plan for the energy needs of the future, which include a growing industry of power-hungry data centres.

When B.C.’s NDP government came into power in 2017, it re-committed to finishing the long-delayed Site C Dam and formally scrapped the long-closed windows for renewable producers,

“B.C. has actually been a bit of a dead zone for renewable energy development,” Arthur Bledsoe says. Bledsoe is a senior analyst on the renewables in remote communities team at the Pembina Institute, yet another group that has long warned of a coming power deficit.  

Then in 2023 BC Hydro pulled a U-turn on its energy forecast, announcing that its anticipated surplus was now an expected deficit, equivalent to roughly half the size of the Site C dam. The fine print reveals that this estimate, too, was conservative, excluding future power required to electrify liquified natural gas (LNG) and the energy needed to meet the province’s climate goals. 

Meanwhile, other threats to B.C.’s energy supply loom, including record droughts impinging on its hydropower supplies, which the province stopped disclosing in 2019 after showing a steep downward trend. 

With B.C.’s energy shortfall on the horizon, Pasco says the province is long overdue for an influx of solar. “It shocks me that solar has taken this long,” he says.

Globally, solar is booming, doubling in capacity in the last two years alone. 

“People are really talking seriously about a future where solar is one of the dominant power sources,” Sara Hastings-Simon, an associate professor in the department of earth, energy and environment at the University of Calgary, says. 

That rapid growth is thanks to falling costs in panel and battery technology and economies of scale. One of solar’s main selling points, Hastings-Simon says, is its relative simplicity compared to complex systems like gas or nuclear plants. It can be scaled up or down, to a balcony or hundreds of football fields, to meet demand. 

Compared to sun-rich provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan, B.C.’s reputation for notoriously cloudy, rainy skies suggests less-than-ideal solar conditions, but that deficiency isn’t province-wide: in the sunny Interior, for example, quA-ymn’s solar conditions match those of Ontario, which currently leads among Canadian jurisdictions for installed solar capacity. 

Even in places with less sun, Hastings-Simon still sees opportunities for solar. “It doesn’t mean that solar is uneconomical,” she says. “It just means that it’s slightly more costly.” As costs for solar continue to fall, she says opportunities for cheap solar power will only widen. 

Nlaka’pamux already developing larger solar project

After years of closed doors, the opportunity for First Nations–owned renewable projects is opening again. 

After a 15-year pause, B.C. announced its first call for bids from power projects last year, and issued a second call this summer. “It’s a time when we can’t build enough,” Cole Sayers, executive director of Clean Energy BC and a member of the Hupacasath First Nation, says. “First Nations leadership is a significant part of that work.”

This time, the province is only accepting bids from big energy projects: a minimum capacity of 40 megawatts, almost three times larger than quA-ymn. 

Thanks to its experience building a smaller project, Nlaka’pamux Nation Tribal Council was ready when the call came, Pasco says. It landed the only solar contract awarded. Once complete by around 2030, it’ll be roughly seven times the size of quA-ymn. 

“We will crush the current largest solar project with our own,” Pasco says. 

As a project developer, Hoehne says the nation intends to do the kind of business it wants to see in the territory. 

The nation plans to dedicate revenue from the projects to build an assisted living facility so that Elders can live near their families. Already, the quA-ymn project has installed rooftop solar systems in eight communities, providing communities with secure power for emergency communications during the worsening years of floods and fires ahead. 

As it develops the next solar project, the tribal council is carrying out its own approach to environmental assessment that prioritizes First Nations’ jurisdiction.

“We’re going out and meeting with the communities and understanding what processes they want to use to decide on the project,” Hoehne says. 

It’s an approach she says the tribal council brings to its meetings with the province. 

“This is the vision,” she says. “This is what we can do when we’re getting it right.”

Updated on Oct. 30, 2025 at 5:00 p.m. PT: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Arthur Bledsoe’s name, and to clarify his professional title.

Generating Futures is made possible with support from the Real Estate Foundation of BC. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization has editorial input into our stories.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

A morning fog has cleared at the Kelsey Bay log sort near the town of Sayward, B.C., on Vancouver Island. Thick drifts of pulverized cedar bark pile against the loading dock, evidence of the millions of trees that departed from here across the ocean, never to return. 

“We’ve seen our territories decimated,” Wei Wai Kum Chief Christopher Roberts explains. Behind him, five freshly cut, old-growth cedars line the warming pavement. 

These trees, Roberts says, help explain why the nation is here today. 

After watching trees vanish from their territory for more than a century, nations are claiming sizable stakes in an industry that has long excluded them. Wei Wai Kum is one of four First Nations to purchase a $36-million stake in La-kwa sa mukw Forestry Partnership, a joint operation with logging company Western Forest Products Ltd. Their partnership came after companies including Western Forest Products agreed to leave the biggest, canoe-carving trees like these in their communities. A sign, for Roberts, that the industry was willing to change. 

“If it wasn’t for that, I don’t think Wei Wai Kum would have had the confidence to enter into the purchase agreement,” Roberts says, addressing the small crowd before him, some seated on fold-up chairs for the day’s events celebrating the partnership.

Their purchase last year adds to a wave of new First Nations-owned forestry tenures in B.C., which jumped from 10 to 20 per cent of the province’s logging allowance in the last four years. According to the Ministry of Forests’ budget notes, tenure transfers to First Nations are “occurring at a faster rate than anticipated.”

But the long-awaited opportunity comes at a turbulent time: B.C.’s major logging companies are liquidating their mills and licences, and moving much of their operations to the southern U.S. It’s a trend that, according to industry testimony at the U.S. International Trade Commission, is “highly unlikely to reverse itself in the foreseeable future.”

Reasons for the upheaval are varied, but Garry Merkel, a professional forester and a member of the Tahltan Nation, points to a pervasive, underlying factor: most of the highest-value big trees are gone, and many of B.C.’s mills are built to process lots of trees at once. “Everybody is competing for the last little bit,” he says. 

That puts some First Nations-owned tenures in a pressure cooker, trying to supply the wood to keep forestry-reliant communities going while working to steward ecosystems under growing strain. 

Right now, Roberts remains uncertain whether that high-wire act is achievable. 

“I’ve always believed that when First Nations are the ones that take over the ownership of licences and tenures in their territory, it would be a different value set they would have used,” he says. 

“I’m just not seeing that yet.”

B.C. forestry: a flawed system

First Nations had been using and stewarding the province’s forests for millennia when 27-year-old Henry Reginald MacMillan — better known in B.C. as H.R. MacMillan — a third-generation Canadian settler with roots in Scotland, arrived in Victoria in 1912 to launch the province’s first forest service. He came with a radical plan, learned in the continent’s new fleet of forestry schools, to transform B.C.’s forests into a planted crop of trees, like peas or potatoes. Major forest companies would be the foot soldiers of this revolution, and were granted long-term licences from the British Columbia government to log First Nations’ territories, without their input or consent.For decades, companies bought and sold access to First Nations’ land like trading cards. 

First Nations people, meanwhile, were forced onto reserves. “You couldn’t go off a reserve,” Merkel says. “You couldn’t own land.” Under the Indian Act, they also couldn’t hire lawyers, preventing them from advocating for their rights in the bustling resource economy. 

Many First Nations people worked in the industry, but they were excluded from decision-making or ownership. In 1991, nations held less than one per cent of the province’s logging tenure. 

The largest ten companies in the province, including MacMillan’s own company, MacMillan Bloedel Ltd., held almost 70 per cent.

Meanwhile, the industry supersized its tools to cut forests faster, including megamills and mechanized logging machines. B.C.’s companies refined their approach to high-volume, low-value forestry and companies saw their incomes skyrocket. 

Many First Nations resisted the growing scale of forestry in their territories. 

Landmark legal victories for the Haida, Gitxan and Wet’suwet’en and other nations throughout the 1990s and 2000s prompted B.C. to change its approach to forestry in the province. “They realized they had to figure out how to work with the community,” Merkel says. In 2010, B.C. introduced a suite of new policies, including a revenue-sharing program to allocate a share of its logging proceeds to impacted nations, many of which remain in place today. 

But those agreements also came with strings, including clauses restricting nations’ ability to contest companies’ logging in their territories. 

“We think they’re a flawed system,” Chief Councillor waamiiš Ken Watts of Tseshaht First Nation says. The nation owns various forestry tenures on southern Vancouver Island. “It’s just saying, here’s our colonial laws you have to live by, sign this agreement, we’ll give you a bit of change at the end of the year from what we’ve made off of your territory,” he says

Those agreements came with some new opportunities for First Nations-owned tenure, but many of the licences came with caveats: unlike major forest companies, licensees had a limited window to log wood, and some were limited to pine beetle-killed areas. Many of the licences were never fully utilized. 

Opportunity in the B.C. forestry crash

Now, after years on the margins, First Nations’ tenure opportunities have exploded as B.C.’s biggest forest companies sell off major parts of their long-held licences. 

“We’re seeing fire sales all over the place,” Merkel says.Companies like Interfor and Canfor have sold up to half of their timber licences to First Nations. Western Forest Products has taken a more incremental approach, entered into co-owning arrangements, including with the Huu-ay-aht First Nation and through La-kwa sa mukw Forestry Partnership.

But the opportunity comes with a bitter pill: the industry is in freefall. Merkel sees some multinational corporations are jumping ship. “As long as they get something out of it and get out of the liability, that’s cash they can take and go buy, I don’t know, a shrimp farm in Africa or something.”

U.S. softwood lumber tariffs, which rose to 45 per cent this month, are the latest shock. And Merkel points to other, more insidious causes for the crash: namely, that H.R. MacMillan’s forest project didn’t work as planned. Planted forests haven’t grown into the old, big trees industry made its fortunes from. 

“Now we’re dealing with a lot of scrub in that corner that we didn’t get to before,” Merkel says. Mills, meanwhile, are often designed to log lots of wood — often the big, old stuff. 

Some nations who paid handily for their recent tenures are in “tough situations,” Merkel adds. “They’re bound economically.” That crunch can incentivize faster, cheaper, clear-cut logging, even though old growth is often scarce. 

For some nations, the situation may worsen. As logging declines across the province and the price of wood falls, B.C. has warned that revenue sharing on forestry with First Nations will see a sizable drop, with “the first major decline in payments” beginning this year.

Meanwhile, federal funding cuts loom for Indigenous Services Canada. The department provides key services like health care, drinking water and education — things non-Indigenous communities have had disproportionate access to, thanks in part to forestry revenue.

Those vacillating government funds underscore Chief Ronnie Chickite’s desire to establish financial independence through tenure ownership. “I think we got in at the right time,” says Chickite, whose community We Wai Kai First Nation is one of the four nation members of La-kwa sa muqw Forestry Limited Partnership and owns other forestry companies. 

 But dividing the shrinking pie may become more difficult. 

The La-kwa sa muqw partnership, for example, faces ongoing job action from United Steelworkers, which disputes the company’s intent to hire a segment of non-union workers. And it surfaces another tension: the Ma’a̱mtagila Hereditary Chiefs claim rights to territory where the partnership is licensed to log, and have called for a halt to the company’s operations, which includes logging in big-treed, old-growth forests. Canada and B.C. currently do not recognize the Ma’a̱mtagila nation after its amalgamation with the Tlowitsis, one of the La-kwa sa mukw partnership-owning First Nations. “The Ma’a̱mtagila never gave their land away,” said Chief Nelson Bruce of the Hayalikawayi namima clan, in a press release.In recent estimates notes, the B.C. Ministry of Forests acknowledged that tenure sales can trigger unique conflicts when First Nations tenures extend across other nations’ territories. Elsewhere, other configurations of these tensions have erupted: a co-owned tenure between Western Forest Products and Huu-ay-aht First Nation faces a blockade protesting the company’s logging led by Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones — who opposes his own nation’s decision to consent to old-growth logging in its territory. 

“There is very little left,” Jones said in an August press release. “We must save it for our children and all the children to come.”

‘It is possible’: First Nations charting alternative paths in forestry

Over the years, Merkel says many nation-owned tenures have been leading the charge by managing forests in a way that doesn’t tax their future. 

“We’re seeing much higher standards of land care and a lot more focus on ecological health and the relationship to the land,” he said. 

“It is possible,” Naxginkw Tara Marsden, Wilp Sustainability director with the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs says. Besides adhering to the Gitanyow Lax’yip Land Use Plan, which protects 51 per cent of the territory, Marsden says the nation’s own tenure exceeds the land use plan’s standards, and it is researching different approaches to leaving trees standing in cutblocks.

By sending their wood to a local, value-added mill which employs many of the nation’s members, Marsden says Gitanyow can get more for their trees, creating more breathing room to innovate. 

Marsden wants to see B.C. address decades-old deregulation that let companies close their local mills in the first place, by restoring appurtenancy rules, which required logs to be milled in the regions where they were cut. 

Marsden, Watts and Roberts are among those looking for change in B.C.’s log pricing system, also known as stumpage fees. That could mean reducing stumpage rates for certain types of forestry, like logging in second growth or selective harvest.Currently, Watts says, it’s not affordable to do that kind of logging. “If it’s not affordable to go out, we can’t do those really creative [cutblocks] that everybody wants us to do … The value of it all through the whole chain has got to make sense for everybody.”

Alexandra Thomas, a member of the Tlowitsis Nation with shíshálh ancestry and a forest stewardship coordinator with the Nanwakolas Council, one of the La-kwa sa muqw partners, is interested in using forests to harvest other, non-tree products, like medicines and foods. 

“Here’s how you get more people into the forest, into the places that they should be observing and paying attention and spending time,” she says. Deepening communities’ relationships to forests, Thomas says, is critical to shift away from B.C. forestry’s long-held tunnel vision that prioritizes economic values over ecological and cultural ones. 

“We have paths before us, and we get to choose the path,” she says. 

Changing the system

The late afternoon’s sun beats down as Chief Roberts finds a place to sit by the sidelines. 

He gestures to the nearby Salmon River, which, true to its namesake, once housed an abundance of the fish, and which has almost disappeared, in part, he says, due to the impacts of widespread logging across the watershed. 

Back when the fish were abundant, a young, college-bound H.R. MacMillan was holed up on a boat a few miles upriver, nursing an axe wound to his left hand as his colleagues staked out timber licences throughout the watershed. He was there when the first logging equipment arrived on wide boats. That fall, the watershed’s trees began to disappear. 

Roberts is waiting for a sign that tenure ownership will usher in the forest’s new chapter. 

 “I often find myself really conflicted,” Roberts says of his involvement in the industry today. “It’s really hard to change a system … It’s just like the train is going and you can’t stop it.”

But Roberts remains cautiously hopeful for what’s ahead.

“It’s just finding the right balance and levers to pull,” he says. 

“Right now in B.C., it’s not even close to equitable.” 

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A short walk down the beach from the marble-gilded interior of the Trump Hollywood luxury condos in Florida, a throng of suited executives and investors gathered in late February for the annual Bank of Montreal mining and critical minerals conference. The vibe was buzzy.  

“You can feel that optimism in the air,” Josh Goldfarb, managing director of the metals and mining group at BMO Capital Markets, said in a podcast taped at the event. 

After years of muted investment, the mining industry is seeing a resurgence, as demand soars for minerals deemed “critical” by governments for everything from weapons to renewable energy.

“Metals are the new oil,” John Steen, an associate professor and a distinguished scholar in global mining futures at the University of British Columbia, tells The Narwhal. “That’s the situation we’ve arrived at in 2025.”

U.S. President Donald Trump’s desire to annex Canada and acquire its critical minerals in the process is a “real thing,” according to former prime minister Justin Trudeau — and the U.S. has also set its sights on Ukraine’s largely untapped supply. 

As B.C. responds to fast-changing geopolitics and the U.S.-Canada trade war, the province is wielding critical minerals as a power tool, promising to expedite mining projects to buffer against the economic shocks of U.S. tariffs, focusing on new trading partners now that the U.S. has gone AWOL. Amidst all the uncertainty, one thing is clear: much more mining is on the horizon for B.C.

According to the Mining Association of BC, the province has 17 new critical mineral mining projects in the works, including for copper, nickel and molybdenum, which is used to make steel alloys. Seven projects will mine gold, which the federal government doesn’t include on its list of metals deemed “critical.”

As Trump angles to weaken the Canadian economy and gain access to Canada’s water and minerals, B.C. is using critical minerals as a climate-friendly political football of its own. But there’s no guarantee the province’s critical minerals will be used for the energy transition instead of for weapons manufacturing. And some observers are worried the B.C. government’s new plan to fast-track B.C. mining projects will hinder environmental scrutiny and the province’s commitment to uphold Indigenous Rights. 

B.C. has ‘unlimited’ potential for mining: Eby

In February, a hard-hatted Premier David Eby stood in front of a ship filled with copper concentrate mined in B.C. and destined for Asia. Eby described the load of copper as “an example of the kind of work we’re going to expand.” 

“There is unlimited potential,” he said. “We have what the world needs here.”

The next day, on Feb. 4, the B.C. government released a list of 18 energy and mining projects it will expedite, including four mines in various stages of development. 

They include the expansion of two existing gold and copper mines, building a new gold and silver mine and expanding the Highland Valley Copper mine, Canada’s largest copper mine, southwest of Kamloops, B.C. Eby has also hinted the government will soon expedite more mining projects.

Eby’s fast-tracking announcement didn’t sit well with some First Nations, including Tahltan Nation, whose territory will house two of the fast-tracked mines. In a statement, the Tahltan said the province didn’t engage with the nation before announcing projects will be expedited. 

“If you want certainty and you want it quickly, the only way you can achieve that is with free, prior, informed consent of the First Nations that are impacted,” Allen Edzerza, a Tahltan Elder and advisor on mining reform, said in an interview. “There’s no shortcuts in that regard.”  

Edzerza is concerned B.C.’s expedited approach could have a negative impact on First Nations’ rights and the environment.

One mine slated for fast-tracking in Tahltan territory, the Red Chris Porphyry Copper-Gold project, was flagged in a report about B.C.’s highest-risk mines for tailings dam failures. The mine’s owners, Denver-based Newmont Corporation and Vancouver-based Imperial Metals, are proposing to switch to underground mining, which requires careful planning to avoid potential ground collapse. 

On March 18, the government also announced the Gibraltar copper-molybdenum mine in south-central B.C. will not undergo an environmental assessment for its expansion plans, a decision opposed by Xatśūll Nation, whose territory faces lasting effects from the Mount Polley tailings dam failure in 2014. 

And then there’s the question of how B.C.’s critical minerals will be used. On one hand, they’re vital for helping the world reduce dependence on fossil fuels — renewable energy technologies like wind and solar are voracious mineral consumers. The International Energy Agency estimates critical mineral production will need to quadruple by 2040 to keep global warming below 2 C.

But Thea Riofrancos, strategic co-director of the U.S.-based Climate and Community Institute think tank, says those demands aren’t set in stone. Riofrancos’ research found U.S. lithium demand could be reduced by up to 92 per cent by 2050, through actions that include using smaller electric vehicles, better battery recycling and reducing car dependency.

There’s absolutely no guarantee critical minerals — found in a vast array of products from iPhones to bombs — will be used for renewable energy projects that help the world reduce reliance on fossil fuels. “There’s a whole set of questions that are immediately pretty obvious when we start unpacking this term,” Riofrancos, who is also an associate professor of political science at Providence College in Rhode Island state, says in an interview. “Whose economic needs are being prioritized here?”

Riofrancos, whose research focuses on resource extraction, climate change, the energy transition and the global lithium sector, says the term critical minerals is being thrown around “without a lot of attention to what it means.” Under the term’s ubiquitous banner, goals of national security, economic growth and climate action tend to get jumbled together. 

“There’s no questioning of what is critical for whom,” she says. 

Critical minerals used for weapons as well as renewables

There’s nothing inherently “critical” about critical minerals; they’re a label governments use to identify mined products that dovetail with national interests. 

“There’s a Venn diagram between ‘really need it’ and ‘could potentially be scarce,’ ” Bentley Allan, an assistant professor of political science and an affiliate of the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute at Johns Hopkins University, tells The Narwhal.

Canada lists 34 critical minerals, with a special emphasis on lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt, copper and a universal category of 17 magnetic minerals known as “rare earth” elements. So far B.C. hasn’t created its own critical minerals list, but last year it produced an atlas documenting its mineral resources and the countries that want them. 

Minerals deemed critical are perhaps best-known for their use in renewable energy. An average wind turbine, for example, requires an elephant’s weight in copper. Solar panels use minerals like cobalt, lithium and chromium, as do electric vehicles and their batteries. 

But critical minerals are also used to make tech products like semiconductors, which are the building blocks of chips in iPhones and the “picks and shovels” of the artificial intelligence boom. 

And then there are military uses; B.C. has significant inventories of minerals used to produce many tools of warfare. Molybdenum hardens armour, while tungsten creates weapons that can pierce through it. Cobalt can be used to strengthen jet engines. Germanium, a black and white metal, is used in infrared-detecting drones and night vision goggles. 

The fast-tracked Highland Valley copper mine is already producing molybdenum, while Vancouver-based Happy Creek Minerals plans to mine tungsten in south-central B.C. Along with China, the province is one of the world’s few exporters of germanium, which it imports from Alaska and processes at Teck Resources’ refinery in Trail, B.C. 

Thanks to B.C.’s geological position alongside shifting tectonic plates, many of B.C.’s critical mineral reserves bubbled up through the earth’s crust over time, forming deposits in places like the Golden Triangle in northwest B.C., mainly in Tahltan territory, where gold, silver, copper and molybdenum are abundant. B.C. is Canada’s largest supplier of copper, a critical mineral on the federal list. Of Canada’s 34 listed critical minerals, B.C. has significant potential to mine 14, according to the provincial government. 

For companies that extract and process minerals, getting on Ottawa’s coveted “critical” list can be advantageous. Inclusion on the list provides access to Canada’s $1.5 billion fund that invests in infrastructure like highway expansions around mines. “There’s more money available if you’re on the critical minerals list,” Allan says. Last year, for example, mining advocates succeeded in getting Canada to add high-quality iron ore to the list, but attempts to add steelmaking coal did not succeed. 

U.S.-Canada plans for shared mining projects soured as tariffs hit 

Although mining has long been part of B.C.’s history, like many other regions the province has grown increasingly reliant on products mined and processed elsewhere. 

China’s ownership of the critical minerals supply chain has exploded — it extracts about 60 per cent of the world’s rare earth minerals and hosts 85 per cent of the factories required to turn them into usable products. Kristen Hopewell, a professor and director of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia, says China could decide to cut off that supply.

“There’s growing concern about the fact that China is so dominant,” Hopewell, the Canada Research Chair in Global Policy at UBC’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, points out. 

Concerns about critical minerals supplies in Western countries grew in the 2010s as Trump’s first administration created an early wave of protectionist laws. Former U.S. president Joe Biden continued the trend, imposing trade limits on U.S. computer chips, while China responded with its own tariffs. “This [was] ratcheting up in the background,” Allan explains. “There’s this tit for tat.”

At first, Canada and the U.S. buddied up, signing an agreement to help keep each other stocked. The two countries even made joint investments in a Northwest Territories mine producing the critical mineral bismuth, a rocket propellant, and a plant turning graphite into battery materials in Quebec.  

As a supplier of 17 minerals the U.S. deems “critical,” Canada launched its critical minerals strategy in 2022, with a $3.8 billion investment in the sector. B.C. followed suit last year with its own critical minerals plan, including the establishment of a new critical minerals project advancement office and a commitment to expand the sector through investments in power infrastructure, training and subsidies, among others. 

Those plans soured when Trump threatened 25 per cent tariffs on all Canadian exports after he returned to office in January, triggering fears of an economic recession. After two last-minute, one-month reprieves, some tariffs are still slated to take effect on April 2. “This is an existential threat for Canada,” Hopewell says. “The potential impacts are totally devastating.”  

Yet it’s unclear if the B.C. government’s commitment to fast-track mines will get those projects off the ground any sooner. A study in FACETS journal found recent B.C. mines were delayed because of economic factors and commodity prices, not regulatory red tape.

But industry groups like the Mining Association of BC argue otherwise. “It takes too long to permit and authorize a mining project in B.C.,” the association’s president and chief executive officer Michael Goehring says in an email in response to questions from The Narwhal. The association said recent mine approvals took eight to 11 years to complete, and expediting projects supports “small, medium and Indigenous businesses and communities, workers and families throughout B.C.”

Modern mining is also not particularly labour-intensive, and companies tend to overstate job opportunities in their assessments — the same FACETS study found a group of B.C. mines employed roughly half the people they’d promised. 

Details lacking about how four mining projects will be fast-tracked

There’s also the question of whether Eby’s announcement will indeed herald sweeping changes. Many tools to speed up project approvals had already been introduced prior to the announcement, so it’s still unclear how B.C.’s new fast-track commitment will impact how mining projects are assessed. Three of the four mining projects Eby moved to the fast-track lane were already undergoing environmental assessments. 

The Eskay Creek gold and silver mine, slated for Tahltan territory, is a new open-pit operation. Two other fast-tracked projects are existing mines seeking to expand: the Red Chris Porphyry copper and gold project wants to switch from an open-pit mine to underground caving — a method to help extract metal from deep underground that comes with added risks of dam failure, according to proceedings from the Eighth International Conference and Exhibition on Mass Mining. 

The Highland Valley copper mine is also seeking an amendment to its environmental assessment certificate so it can expand. The mine’s owner, Teck Resources, is currently in a dispute resolution process with Stk’emlupsemc te Secwépemc Nation, which opposes the expansion, while other nations like the Kanaka Bar First Nation and the Lower Nicola Indian Band have consented.

The Mount Milligan copper and gold mine in Fort St. James, which rounds out the quartet of fast-tracked projects, has not yet announced any expansions or proposed amendments to its environmental assessment certificate. In an email, B.C.’s Ministry of Mining and Critical Minerals said it anticipates receiving applications for such changes “shortly.”

In B.C., major mining projects must go through an environmental assessment process and receive a government-issued certificate as well as permits. Typically, those permits wouldn’t be granted until the environmental assessment is complete. But B.C.’s new processes mean they’ll happen in tandem. “They both will go parallel, in other words,” Jagrup Brar, B.C.’s new minister of mining and critical minerals, says in an interview. 

The province also introduced a single application process for both environmental assessment and permits. In its email, the ministry said this will help “reduce duplication.” 

Brar says B.C. has launched a concierge service within its new critical minerals project advancement office for early-stage mining projects “with a significant potential to boost the economy.” So far, the office’s sole project is the Baptiste Nickel project, a mine proposed by FPX Nickel in Tl’azt’en Nation’s territory in north central B.C. The nation terminated its memorandum of understanding with the company in 2023, stating it does not consent to the company’s activities.

The mining ministry said it has recently convened a group of deputy ministers involved in mining approvals to “clear obstacles” and move projects forward faster and will put a “greater focus” on its new processes of pairing up permit reviews and environmental assessments. 

Meanwhile, the ministry’s recent service plan hints more overarching changes are in the works — among them, a commitment to set fixed timelines for mine approvals and “dramatically reduced” permit wait times.

B.C.’s new focus on fast-tracking mines leaves some observers asking if the plan will hinder environmental scrutiny or B.C.’s commitment to uphold Indigenous Rights. 

“My simple answer is no,” Brar says. “Our focus is streamlining.” 

But it’s difficult to square how the government will meet the fixed deadlines it has promised to implement with only tweaks to existing processes. 

Nasuʔkin (Chief Councillor) Cheryl Casimer, with the First Nations Summit political executive, worries Eby’s focus on fast-tracking speaks to a culture of jamming projects through. 

“Whenever I hear the word fast-tracking, it worries me,” Casimer, a citizen of the Ktunaxa First Nation, tells The Narwhal. “That means that you go ahead and you do it no matter what.” 

Casimer is also wary that fast-tracked mining will steamroll over Indigenous Rights. 

B.C. has committed to changing laws to align with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, but it still allows companies to explore for minerals and apply for environmental assessments without the consent of First Nations. Companies aren’t required to include First Nations in the early stages of project planning. 

“There’s a lot of things that could be done right at the outset to make sure that there’s that level of certainty,” Casimer says.

Concerns raised about environmental impact of fast-tracking mining projects

Casimer’s territory in southeast B.C. has suffered the aftermath of mining gone wrong. Selenium pollution from coal mines in the Elk Valley has leached into the waterways and the eggs of female fish, sometimes deforming their spines and heads or killing them before they hatch. 

Acid rock drainage occurs when blasted rock is exposed to oxygen and water, causing it to leach heavy metals like selenium. It’s not limited to coal mining — mining for critical minerals can trigger acid rock drainage, too. Both waste rock and tailings — the ground-up bits of rock left over from mineral extraction — can leach into waterways if left untreated. 

Teck Resources, until recently the owner of the Elk Valley coal mines, was fined for its pollution, but Casimer says she has seen little change. “All they do is pay their fine and carry on.”

Nadja Kunz, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia who is the Canada Research Chair in Mine Water Management and Stewardship, is also concerned by fast-tracking commitments. 

Kunz says companies often provide subpar information on issues like water quality during the environmental assessment process, and mining’s long-term risks to water make it critical to get the details right. 

“It is really important that we don’t encourage government to shortcut on this, because the legacies from mining are felt so widely in Canada already.” 

“There are plenty of mines in B.C. or Canada where we’re going to have to be treating that water forever,” Kunz, who is jointly appointed across UBC’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and the Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering, points out.

Tailings pond stability presents another major risk. Just over a decade ago, the Mount Polley copper and gold mine’s tailings pond breached, spilling roughly 10,000 Olympic swimming pools worth of toxic tailings into Polley Lake in B.C.’s Interior. 

B.C.’s auditor general prescribed a list of actions to avoid similar disasters, including using the best available technologies to reduce or eliminate water in tailings. But B.C. still doesn’t require companies to use those technologies, which are more expensive to implement.

“You’re still getting economics as the main driver,” Nikki Skuce, a director of the non-profit Northern Confluence and co-chair of the group BC Mining Law Reform, says in an interview. 

For new mines, those waste rock piles and tailing ponds are likely to be even bigger, compounding the problem, Skuce says. “We’ve mined all the easy stuff first.” As sites with the highest concentration of minerals get mined out, she says companies increasingly target sites where minerals are more spread out, meaning there will be more waste material. 

“The waste dams in British Columbia are bigger and taller, and therefore there’s more risk,” Skuce says. 

Casimer says it’s important to have a conversation about the needs and benefits of critical minerals. 

“If somebody needs critical minerals, then yes, let’s take a look at what that means,” she says. 

“But we need to be decision-makers at the table.”

Updated on March 24, 2025, at 4:57 p.m. PT. This story was updated to say Canada is a supplier of 17 minerals the U.S. deems critical, as per an email from Natural Resources Canada that was received following publication.

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Light pushes through the cloudy October afternoon as George Harry walks up to Malahat Nation’s community freezer on southern Vancouver Island. Behind the silver padlock is a cherished supply of sockeye salmon that “you don’t really get that often,” he says of the red-fleshed fish whose populations fluctuate.

The freezer is just one of the nation’s tools for making future use of nature’s plenty. 

Another will soon sit steps away in an unremarkable grey shed the size of a small kitchen. If all goes as planned, the shed will soon house the nation’s new battery storage system, built to store electricity from the community’s growing fleet of solar panels for darker days.

The battery system will be made in the community, a 10-minute walk up a footpath.

That’s where the nation plans to build a 9,000-square-metre battery storage assembly plant in partnership with the Vancouver-based technology company Energy Plug. The plant will import ready-made lithium iron phosphate battery cells to be manufactured into storage systems designed for electricity systems in B.C. and beyond. 

Canada has seen a boom in battery manufacturing plants in recent years, particularly in Ontario and Quebec. But most focus on making batteries for electric vehicles. The Malahat Nation’s project will make batteries specifically for buildings and power grids.

The $75-million project, which will create about 210 jobs, aims to manufacture enough batteries to store one gigawatt-hour’s worth of energy, roughly enough to supply backup storage capacity to 91,000 homes. Those batteries could provide power during blackouts, or store power from home solar panels. The project will also build larger-scale storage options, helping utilities like BC Hydro balance power demand. 

“We want to be able to produce things that help people,” says Harry, community energy coordinator for Malahat Nation and former chief, who sees battery storage as a key part of a resilient energy supply.

Battery storage can act like a Swiss Army knife for electricity grids, a handy tool for fixing problems. It can smooth out fluctuating power from renewables like wind and solar, making them more efficient. 

The nation will be the majority owner of the battery storage plant. It’s in the process of securing funding and credit agreements, aiming to begin operations later next year. 

Kwatuuma Cole Sayers, executive director of Clean Energy BC, an industry association promoting clean energy use, says the project reflects “the evolution of Indigenous equity.” 

“First Nations want to be owners of industrial projects in their territories and they also want to be leading projects,” he says. “When that happens to be leading us to a new clean economy, it’s even better.”

Malahat Nation needs more power for economic growth 

As we head south down the road, walking parallel to the Saanich Inlet, Harry points to the large buildings to our right, their entrances framed by thick cedar posts. Among them are a health centre, a daycare, a gymnasium and a building that houses the nation’s environmental team, which recently started tracking whale populations with underwater microphones installed throughout the inlet. Each building sports a band of gleaming black solar panels on its roof. 

None of these buildings were here a decade ago, signalling the Malahat Nation’s booming growth. A newly opened 18-hectare business park now houses a French defence technology firm, a construction company, a fuel retailer and a company making biodiesel.

For Harry, the business park represents a critical step toward the nation’s broader goals, including creating long-term housing in the community. The nation currently has around 370 members, and roughly half live on reserve. Housing investments are critical if more members are to move there, combined with infrastructure upgrades to water, sewage — and electricity, since transmission lines hooked up to the community are almost at capacity.

“We’ve identified electrical servicing as one of the main bottlenecks for development plans,” Tristan Gale, Malahat Nation’s director of economic development, tells me. A major hurdle, he says, is that BC Hydro estimates it would cost the Malahat about $10 million to upgrade the powerline system that carries electricity to the community so it can receive more power. (BC Hydro was unable to respond to detailed questions from The Narwhal before a new government takes office following the final results of the B.C. election.) 

All electricity grids are subject to a golden rule: they need to supply enough power to meet demand. Failure leads to brownouts and blackouts, something utilities work to avoid. So they design the system to handle “peak demand” — often during the evening in B.C, when people get home from work and turn on appliances. 

Batteries can help smooth out the peak by stashing power during non-peak hours. They also assist in other ways. By lowering the grid’s peak energy use, batteries can help utilities avoid costly transmission upgrades that might otherwise be required — making power cheaper. 

Think of battery storage like a rapid transit system added to a major highway; it gets more people — or in this case, energy molecules — where they need to go while reducing congestion on the highway, or the transmission line.

When the nation started to look at more affordable options to increase its electricity capacity, battery storage seemed promising. 

Gale says that’s partly because battery storage is aligned with the nation’s long-held plan for the sustainable use of its natural resources. 

“That means not relying on finite resources like fossil fuels, and finding ways to make use of the natural resources that are available on the lands,” he says. 

That’s when the nation started having conversations with Energy Plug, which was interested in opening a battery plant in Western Canada. “When we were introduced to Energy Plug we instantly recognized those aligned values,” Gale says. 

In August, the nation’s new partnership with Energy Plug, Malahat Battery Technologies Corp., broke ground on the future battery storage plant, including a blessing ceremony from Elders in the community. 

The future plant will import ready-made battery cells made in Asia, sourced in partnership with the Taiwanese company Enwind Power. From there, it will assemble those cells into five- and 100-kilowatt battery packs, which will be built into storage systems, ready to be used by homes, businesses or utilities. Broderick Gunning, Energy Plug’s president and CEO, says the company is working with BC Hydro to develop a new storage tool called the energy pole, which will attach directly to power lines. 

“We’ve got a lot of utility interest in that product on the global scale,” Gunning says. “Utilities have this light bulb go off and they’re like, ‘Wow, this can help us.’ ” 

Battery storage is still relatively new across Canada 

Keith Brooks, programs director for the non-profit group Environmental Defence, says adoption of grid-scale battery storage is “still in its infancy” across Canada. Yet that might be about to change. Ontario completed the largest battery storage procurement in Canadian history in the spring, purchasing more than 2,000 megawatts of storage capacity. Globally, battery storage in the power sector doubled last year, and the International Energy Agency expects another sixfold increase will be needed to reach global 2030 climate targets.

In the ecosystem of tools that utilities have at their disposal to meet customer demand, battery storage is among a growing contingent of smaller, more localized options. Sometimes called “distributed energy resources,” they include things like home solar panels, or water heaters set to activate during the night when power demand is low.

The distributed approach is a departure from historic energy planning in places like B.C., which has relied on costly, centralized, often controversial megaprojects like large hydro dams to store and generate energy. By localizing electricity systems, utilities can also cut down on energy loss that results from transporting power over large distances through transmission lines. Losses in Canada average about nine per cent, according to the International Energy Agency. 

“More demand-side solutions are key in terms of making our grid smarter,” Sayers from Clean Energy BC says, adding that a more responsive grid could play a key role in cutting carbon emissions by making renewables more reliable.

A report from the David Suzuki Foundation found Canada needs far more low-emission power to achieve its commitment to a net-zero electricity grid by 2035. 

Renewable energy sources like solar and wind are often the cheapest, fastest ways to make up the shortfall, but they come with a drawback; they only supply power when the conditions are right — when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. Fossil fuels like gas and coal can supply power anytime.

Adding a battery storage system to a solar farm or a wind power facility can help smooth out power fluctuations. “Battery storage makes the renewables more valuable,” Kate Harland, research lead in mitigation for the Canadian Climate Institute, says in an interview. When attached to a battery, renewables like solar and wind achieve many of the benefits offered by fossil fuels, but without the greenhouse gas footprint. TransAlta Corporation, for example, runs a battery storage facility next to one of its wind farms in Alberta. 

According to the International Energy Agency, batteries could play a major role in ratcheting down global carbon emissions; it estimates that under a net-zero scenario, 60 per cent of emissions reductions in the energy sector will be associated with batteries, “making them a critical element to meeting our shared climate goals.”

Malahat Nation will use house-made batteries to expand solar system 

The Malahat Nation plans to use its house-made batteries to expand its solar power system. So far, the nation has sent its excess solar power into BC Hydro’s grid through the utility’s self-generation program, but the nation’s solar power production will soon exceed the program’s limit of 100 kilowatts, and that leftover energy currently has nowhere to go.

“If you have solar, you need storage,” Harry says, “and you need to be able to run constantly with no worries.”

Harry says the nation is also interested in creating its own microgrid — a local electricity grid with enough power and storage to sustain itself, and potentially the businesses and communities surrounding it.

To support that vision, Gale says the nation plans to upgrade its own infrastructure to bring more power to its microgrid. The nation has a right of way to a decommissioned high-voltage power line, he says, and they plan to bring it back. 

“That’s a large project that’s probably next on the docket,” he says, “but the batteries really provide the bridge between what we need right now and having the resources to build out the larger scale infrastructure long-term.”

Because batteries can help lower the cost of clean energy, they could help make the transition from fossil fuels more affordable. 

According to the International Energy Agency, battery costs have fallen by 90 per cent since 2010. The agency expects costs for lithium ion batteries to fall by another 40 per cent by 2030. During Ontario’s call for battery storage capacity this year, a storage project powered by gas cost 40 per cent more than the battery projects.

Despite their climate benefits, batteries still have global consequences for people and ecosystems. 

The lithium iron phosphate batteries Malahat Battery Technologies plans to use for its battery packs, at least for now, are “somewhat new to the markets,” according to Jason Wang, a senior analyst with the non-profit Pembina Institute. The formulation doesn’t require cobalt, a critical earth mineral whose mining process is often linked to human rights abuses.  

But the project’s batteries will use lithium, whose supply chain has been linked to human rights abuses in China, including instances of forced labour in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. “We’re trying to steer clear from that,” Gunning says, adding Energy Plug has not yet announced which battery suppliers the project will use. Gunning notes transparency issues make it difficult to confirm entire supply chains.

New technologies are emerging, including batteries that use sodium instead of lithium and batteries that replace conventional batteries’ liquid electrolytes with ones that are solid. If combined, these technologies could reduce or eliminate the use of lithium and potentially mean batteries last for decades. But they’re not at a commercial scale yet. Gunning says his company is committed to researching novel technologies and figuring out how to use them over time. 

“Things change quickly, and we’re very on the pulse in respect to technology,” he says. 

Nation sees battery storage as step toward self-sufficiency 

Seen in the late afternoon, the Malahat battery storage plant site is a vast expanse of freshly tilled dirt and some rocks, set against the striking backdrop of Yos, also known as Malahat Mountain. A thin line of clouds circles the peak. The stillness contrasts with the flood of activity underway below. 

The nation has recently finished negotiating its treaty agreement with B.C. through the Te’mexw Treaty Association. It’s been a long, tough path, Harry says, but he’s hopeful changes will ensue. 

“We’re still run by the government,” he says. “Once treaty comes, we’ll be the government.” 

Harry sees battery storage as another step on the path toward self-sufficiency, in part because of the revenue it brings, but also for the energy options it offers. “Solar has come a long way,” he says. 

“My parents, they’re not worried about what I will have,” Harry says. “They’re worried about what their grandchildren will have.” 

“They look towards the future. I think that’s what really drives this place.”

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This story is part of In the Line of Fire, a series from The Narwhal digging into what is being done to prepare for — and survive — wildfires.

A relatively new industry is taking off in British Columbia, as forestry companies set their sights on logging burn zones after wildfires.

It’s called salvage logging — and it may disrupt forests’ abilities to naturally recover from fires. 

B.C. rules allow companies to remove the last remaining living trees from burn zones. Those trees can offer critical support for healing ecosystems. Now some experts and affected communities, including First Nations, are raising the alarm and calling for more selective logging practices.

Despite these concerns, logging companies are not required to address the ecological risks of salvage logging. And the provincial government is clearing the way to make salvage logging even easier, giving companies a slew of profitable perks for harvesting areas burned in B.C. wildfires, including logging the remaining living trees at a discounted rate.

Here are five things you need to know about salvage logging in B.C.

What is salvage logging? And how much is it on the rise?

Wildfire salvage, or salvage logging, typically means clear cutting burned areas. 

In almost every year since 2018, logging cutblocks in five wildfire zones in B.C.’s Interior were each larger than the land-mass of the city of Vancouver, according to The Narwhal’s analysis of provincial data. According to an email from B.C.’s Ministry of Forests, wildfire salvage logging in 2022 made up about 10 per cent of the province’s annual cut — a 100-fold increase over the past decade.

B.C. is making it faster, easier and cheaper to log fire-damaged forests

As mills close around the province and workers are laid off, the B.C. government has announced policies to make it cheaper and faster for companies to access salvage logging licences. 

Under B.C.’s wildfire salvage logging rules, forestry companies can often get premium wood — including green patches inside a cutting area — at a substantial discount. 

Companies pay a “stumpage” fee to the government for logging on public land.  They  can qualify for discounted salvage stumping rates for an entire cutting area as long as some of the wood is considered to be “fire damaged” — ranging from mild, superficial burning to severe charring. The more burned wood in the area, the higher the discount companies can receive.

But fires are patchy, and they often leave sections of green, surviving trees amidst the burned ones. Those patches play an important role in a burned forest’s recovery.

“It can be in their DNA that they’ve withstood the fire,” said fire ecologist Kira Hoffman says in an interview. “They can have species that are going to be really good at creating the next generation of forest.”

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The Narwhal’s data analysis found one company, Tolko Industries, paid just 25 cents per cubic metre — a cubic metre is roughly an average wooden phone pole — for mostly construction grade live wood harvested from the White Rock Creek fire zone near Vernon, B.C.

That’s 99 per cent less than the rate Tolko would pay for trees just outside the burn zone. Typically, the 25-cent rate is reserved for the lowest-quality wood.

‘Salvage’ isn’t quite the right word for this kind of B.C. logging

B.C. doesn’t track how many live or green trees are logged within wildfire zones. But the provincial forests ministry does keep tabs on the quality of wood companies log. 

The Narwhal’s analysis of provincial data for active logging in five wildfire areas in B.C.’s Interior found more than half the logs harvested — including from old-growth forests — were classified as construction grade, meaning they could have come from trees that survived the fire.

Not all burned trees die. Whether they survive depends on many factors, including the thickness of its bark, and how far the burn travelled into a tree’s living layer. 

Even if they eventually die from fire damage, burned trees can still play a key role in the ecosystem for the years they remain standing, Phil Burton, a biologist at the University of Northern British Columbia, told The Narwhal.

Many species and ecosystems evolved in tandem with fire and benefit from a landscape left undisturbed after a burn. Lodgepole pine trees produce special, waxy cones that wait for the melting power of wildfire to release their seeds. Green trees in fire zones can offer refuge for wildlife, and burned, dead trees provide nesting spots for birds like tree swallows. They also hold water in the soil and shield the earth from the drying effects of wind and sun. 

Some of the environmental consequences may be irreversible

When water hits salvage-logged ground, it can take the soil’s structure and nutrients with it as it flows away. 

A study of wildfire salvage in the Rocky Mountains in Alberta found salvaged watersheds had 28 times more sediment than forests that burned but weren’t salvage-logged. That sediment can suffocate fish eggs and transport pollutants. The study found some areas had not recovered after 11 years. 

B.C.’s former chief forester Diane Nicholls cited those findings in a 2018 guidance document for forest professionals. She said salvage logging impacts “may require long timelines for remediation (i.e., decades) or they may be irreversible in the context of forest management time horizons.” 

“Live trees must be left on the landscape, wherever possible, even if they are within the [timber harvesting land base],” Nicholls wrote. 

According to an internal briefing note, the B.C. government is aware of the impacts of salvage logging. The note, released through a freedom of information request, acknowledges “salvage operations may damage natural regeneration” in forests not as severely burned by B.C. wildfires.

The B.C. government does not have regulations that compel companies to address the ecological risks of salvage logging, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Forests told The Narwhal.

Salvage logging may increase future B.C. wildfire risk

Wildfire ecologist Robert Gray says salvage logging “may be exacerbating” the risk of wildfire. It can contribute to the build-up of dead wood and debris that act as fuel for wildfires.

In areas that have historically experienced low-intensity, frequent B.C. wildfires, such as the dry forests of the province’s Southern Interior, Gray advocates for removing the small stuff — younger trees and brush — to reduce the risk of “reburn” where a fire burns hotter and more intensely a second time. 

But he says taking out the bigger trees, which are often more fire-resistant, doesn’t add up. 

— Compiled by Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This story is part of In the Line of Fire, a series from The Narwhal digging into what is being done to prepare for — and survive — wildfires.

It’s not quite 7 a.m. and Michelle Nortje is engaged in her daily ritual, hiking the switchbacks and curves of the trails in the woods behind her house on the water’s edge of Gun Lake, about 100 kilometres north of Whistler, B.C. 

Her dogs — two giant Alaskan Malamutes, Grizz and Slim — amble beside her. The colour of their thick coats, in variants of white, brown and pitch black, matches the newly burned forest surrounding Nortje.

Last summer, the out-of-control Downton Lake wildfire devoured the forests behind Nortje’s lake-side home, burning almost 10,000 hectares. It destroyed 43 properties and damaged 11 others. Within a week, Nortje was out searching for her trails. “At first it was hard,” she says. 

In the sand-like soil she saw trees that were burned but still standing. Slowly, she began to make out her favourite paths. “The trees that were landmarks are still there,” she says, pointing towards a big fir tree at the edge of the fire zone wearing a hat of green needles above its burned trunk. 

At the edge of Nortje’s property, several trees bear a flash of red. Strips of dusty red flagging tape say “cutblock boundary” in capital letters. To Nortje, it’s a sign the forest’s upheaval may have just begun. 

Nortje’s rural neighbourhood is in the crosshairs of a relatively new industry in B.C., as logging companies set their sights on the burn zones of B.C.’s string of record-breaking wildfires. 

The industry, known as “wildfire salvage,” is on the rise. In almost every year since 2018, logging cutblocks in five wildfire zones in B.C.’s Interior were each larger than the land-mass of the city of Vancouver, according to The Narwhal’s analysis of provincial data. According to an email from B.C.’s Ministry of Forests, wildfire salvage logging in 2022 made up about 10 per cent of the province’s annual cut — a 100-fold increase over the past decade.

In B.C., wildfire salvage typically means clear cutting a burned area. Salvage logging offers an opportunity for companies to access discounted wood at a time when the forest sector is in crisis following a century of industrial logging, wildfires and the spruce beetle and pine beetle infestations. As mills close around the province and workers are laid off, the B.C. government has announced policies to expedite wildfire salvage logging, making it cheaper and faster for companies to harvest in burn areas. 

But “salvage” is not always the right word. B.C.’s logging rules allow companies to harvest living trees in wildfire zones. The Narwhal’s analysis of provincial data for active logging in five wildfire areas in B.C.’s Interior found more than half the logs harvested — including from old-growth forests — were classified as construction grade, meaning they could have come from trees that survived the fire.

Biologists say trees in burn zones can offer rare islands of habitat for wildlife, including species at risk of extinction like spotted owls and caribou. And even when dead or dying trees are harvested, salvage logging can also pose risks to biodiversity, soil health and water systems. 

“All this natural regeneration is starting,” Nortje observes. “If you come in with your heavy machinery and stir all that up, how is that good for rehabilitation?”

Salvage logging is a familiar practice in B.C. forests under stress; it was the primary way B.C. responded to the pine and spruce beetle infestations, leading to a sharp spike in the volume of trees companies could log in the province’s north and southern interior. Logging levels increased by about one-third overall, with a heavy focus on pine trees. Now, as beetle infestations subside, wildfire salvage is the new game in town. 

“We are working hard to remove barriers and expedite wildfire salvage,” the B.C. Ministry of Forests explained in an email to The Narwhal. 

Species and ecosystems evolved with fire-damaged B.C. forests 

B.C.’s forests are no stranger to fire. In damper places like the temperate rainforests on the coast and the interior wet belt, fire has been an infrequent guest, burning rarely and in lighter patches. To the north, in forests of spruce and pine, fires historically come more often and engulf larger areas. 

But many species and ecosystems evolved in tandem with fire and benefit from a landscape left undisturbed after a burn. 

Lodgepole pine trees produce special, waxy cones that wait for the melting power of wildfire to release their seeds. And while fire generally takes a toll on forest soil, it also provides nutrients from the carbon of combusted plant life, helping catapult a succession of plants and shrubs into growth. Burned, dead trees play an integral role in ecosystems, providing nesting spots for birds like tree swallows, holding water in the soil and shielding the earth from the drying effects of wind and sun. 

Fire zones get another leg up in the recovery process from the places where green trees remain. These patches might lie in wet gullies, or they might have been spared from the blaze thanks to a lucky gust of wind. Sometimes green zones are found in old-growth forests, where big trees’ thick bark protects them from what would otherwise be a fatal burn. Either way, green trees in fire zones can offer refuge for a plethora of wildlife and a jump start for regenerating the burned forest next door. 

“It can be in their DNA that they’ve withstood the fire,” fire ecologist Kira Hoffman says in an interview. “They can have species that are going to be really good at creating the next generation of forest.”

Added together, that mixture of dead and living forest is known as the fire’s “biological legacy.” It’s akin to a shock absorber, cushioning the forest’s landing after a fire blow and increasing the chances biodiversity — the mix of different living things in an ecosystem — makes it through. 

Experts say salvage logging has the potential to remove nature’s shock absorbers just when forests need them most. 

“All of the things that we want to see in our forests become really hard after you’ve salvage logged,” Jesse Zeman, executive director for the B.C. Wildlife Federation, tells The Narwhal. 

Predation is one example; species like elk and moose have been shown to avoid salvage-logged areas to avoid getting picked off by predators like wolves, which capitalize on the easy access afforded by logging roads. Salvage-logged forests may also possess fewer of the smaller species that together make significant contributions to biodiversity; a 2017 study found eight out of 24 species groups experienced “significant decreases” in population following salvage logging. Lichen, bird and beetle species fared the worst. Black-backed woodpeckers, for instance, favour burned trees for nesting. 

According to Phil Burton, a biologist at the University of Northern British Columbia and co-author of the study, losses are particularly pronounced if salvage logging targets rare ecosystems remaining in an area — for example, a burned old-growth forest surrounded by young, logged stands. 

If those older forests are clear cut for salvage, species that relied on their rich assortment of decaying wood may have nowhere to go. Longhorn beetles, for example, covet the dead wood that fires provide; some have sensors that detect smoke from far away. Salvage logging in southwest Oregon was shown to damage habitat for northern spotted owls, who nest only in big, old trees. 

Salvage logging can also change the way water moves through the forest. “Once you go in and salvage-log a big cutblock, the wind hits the ground and it dries the soil right out,” Zeman says. When water hits salvage-logged ground, it can take the soil’s structure and nutrients with it as it flows away. 

A study of wildfire salvage in the Rocky Mountains in Alberta found salvaged watersheds had 37 times more sediment in their water than unburned watersheds — and 28 times more than forests that burned but weren’t salvage-logged. That sediment can suffocate fish eggs and transport pollutants. The study found some areas had not recovered after 11 years. 

B.C.’s former chief forester Diane Nicholls cited those findings and others in a 2018 guidance document for forest professionals. “Beyond the effects of the wildfires themselves, the potential negative effects of post-fire salvage on some ecosystem values may be difficult to remediate,” Nicholls wrote. She said salvage logging impacts “may require long timelines for remediation (i.e., decades) or they may be irreversible in the context of forest management time horizons.” 

Nicholls called for “an environmentally focused and cautious approach” to planning salvage logging, saying companies should create plans that prioritize which trees to leave. 

“Live trees must be left on the landscape, wherever possible, even if they are within the [timber harvesting land base],” Nicholls wrote. 

She also noted the potential for damage to soil and water resources is high. It may be more effective and less expensive to protect source water than to deal with the impacts of salvage logging through “increased levels of post-logging rehabilitation,” she said.

But Nicholls’ guidance has no legal teeth. 

In an email in response to questions from The Narwhal, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Forests said it does not have regulations that compel companies to address the ecological risks of salvage logging.

The province also doesn’t require companies to leave live trees in burn zones, the ministry said. Nor does the B.C. government track how many live or green trees are logged within wildfire zones. 

“They’re not actually mapped in terms of what percent of trees remain alive,” Burton says, adding better salvage data “is important for conservation as well as timber supply protection.” 

But B.C.’s Ministry of Forests does keep tabs on the quality of wood that companies log. 

Of the salvage logging data The Narwhal analyzed from active cutblocks in the five wildfire areas, 16 per cent was classified as “grade 1,” or premium-grade logs, meaning the logs were mostly undamaged. To qualify for that high-value grade, at least three-quarters of the log must be undamaged by fire or other impacts. 

Because they’ve sustained such light damage, these trees are the most likely to still be alive and green. 

Of the trees included in The Narwhal’s analysis, nearly half were classified as “grade 2,” or construction-grade timber. Up to half of this grade of tree can exhibit damage from impacts like fire. Because B.C.’s grading system isn’t fire-specific, even construction-grade logs can be green and unburned but have other subtle issues such a curve in the wood or a knot.

Burton says trees in either of these grades may either live or die following a fire. “It’s important to distinguish between scorching and charring,” he says. A “scorch” just makes it into bark’s more superficial layer, while “char” means the burn went deeper into the wood’s living layer. 

That’s why trees with thick bark, like old-growth Douglas fir and Ponderosa pine, tend to have better odds of surviving a fire. Sometimes even charred trees can survive if a fire blazes through quickly, burning only one side of the tree. 

Even if trees eventually die from fire damage, Burton says they can play a key role in the ecosystem during the years they still stand. 

“That’s more or less intact solid wood,” he notes.

B.C. rules offers logging companies a discount for wildfire wood

A loophole in B.C.’s wildfire salvage logging rules means forestry companies can often get premium wood at a substantial discount.

The loophole is tied to the way B.C. calculates “stumpage” — the fee companies pay to the government for logging trees on public land, also known as Crown land.

As long as some wood in a cutting area in a wildfire zone is considered to be “fire damaged” — ranging from mild, superficial burning to severe charring — logging companies can qualify for salvage stumpage rates for the entire area. Those fire-damaged areas can include patches of green trees. The discount increases for every 10 per cent of the stand deemed to be fire damaged, meaning high-value, live trees can be logged at a lower stumpage rate. Sometimes that adds up to a significant discount.

Tolko Industries is one of an unknown number of companies engaged in salvage logging in B.C. This year, the Narwhal’s data analysis found one of Tolko’s salvage cutting permits in the White Rock Creek fire zone, near Vernon, B.C., paid just 25 cents per cubic metre — a cubic metre is roughly an average wooden phone pole — for the mostly construction-grade live wood the company harvested from the burn zone. That’s around $10 per logging truck — 99 per cent less than the rate Tolko would pay for trees just outside the burn zone. 

“One might question whether B.C. citizens are getting fair value for the cutting of largely sound public timber,” Burton says.

Tolko did not respond to The Narwhal’s request for comment. 

Typically, the 25-cent rate is reserved for the lowest-quality wood — trees “only good enough for pulp or worse,” according to Chris Gaston, associate professor of markets and economics at the University of British Columbia’s faculty of forestry.

In an email, the Ministry of Forests said the stumpage in a fire-damaged stand is calculated “based on the amount of damage in the stand as a total,” adding, “it would not be feasible to try and calculate damage based on individual logs.” 

Companies are often fined for leaving wood waste on a cut block. But in the case of fire salvage, wood “burned to a point that it can no longer be used to manufacture forest products” is not considered to be waste, according to the province’s fire salvage pricing guidelines. That means companies can access a salvage discount for clear-cutting in a highly burned area, without any consequences if they leave behind piles of severely burned logs.

Zeman says the stumpage rate incentivizes companies to double down on the last remaining green trees in a fire zone. “If you’re getting a discounted rate on green stuff, you’re probably going to focus on those spots,” he says. 

A pricing loophole known as the “grade 4 credit” system can also increase the amount of green wood companies are allowed to salvage log. That’s because companies receive credit for the beetle-killed or burned wood they bring to certain kinds of mills. Those credits allow them to log an equivalent amount of green wood without affecting their annual logging quota, known as their allowable cut.

Major licencees logging in their own tenure areas are also exempt from B.C. rules on cutblock size, meaning salvage logging clearcuts can be bigger than unburned ones. Additionally, they receive an exemption from “adjacency” rules that generally prevent companies from lining up cutblocks next to one another.

Zeman sees room to curb some of salvage logging’s worst consequences by leaving the green trees and big, burned trees and harvesting the smaller ones. He also wants to see companies log during the winter months to reduce damage to soil. 

“Is there a better way to do it? The answer is yes,” he says. “Are we doing it a better way? The answer is no.”

B.C.’s non-legally binding guidelines on salvage aren’t enough to change companies’ behaviour, particularly when they’re competing against one another to produce cheaper wood, Zeman says. 

“Unless you have laws and regulations that say, ‘This is how we do it,’ and unless you have enforcement of those laws and regulations, it’s meaningless. ” 

B.C. making it faster, easier to log fire-damaged forests 

B.C.’s policies on salvage logging are changing, but some say it is not for the better. 

Last year, B.C. released an updated version of Nicholls’ salvage guidance. It removed most of the references to “retention planning,” along with Nicholls’ advice to leave live trees standing. 

The Forests Ministry says its new guidance “remains consistent with previous years,” noting, “the guide was streamlined and updated to assist licencees in implementing salvage operations.”

Over the past year, the B.C. government has announced a series of policy changes that make it faster and easier for companies to access salvage logging licences. “We need to get the licences out and get the work done and the replanting beginning as fast as possible,” Forest Minister Bruce Ralston explained during budget debates. 

Ralston’s ministry says wildfire salvage logging helps reforestation efforts. 

“Removing burnt wood and reforesting quickly allows new trees to grow faster, decreasing the amount of time the site is without tree cover and increasing the hydrologic recovery of the site,” the Forests Ministry wrote in an email to The Narwhal. 

But an internal briefing note, released through a freedom of information request, complicates the picture. 

Severely burned forests can sometimes benefit from tree-planting to trigger regrowth, says the briefing note, prepared for Ralston in September 2023 by Forests Ministry advisor Garrett McLaughlin. The note says “salvage operations may damage natural regeneration” in forests not as severely burned by wildfires.

B.C.’s salvage logging rules for major forestry licencees don’t distinguish between heavily burned forests and lightly burned forests. “Major licencees are not required to only log in areas of moderate or severe burn intensity,” the forests ministry clarified in an email.

Even in highly burned areas, the briefing note warns against clear-cut salvage logging. “The standing dead canopy can enhance regeneration capacity,” it says, adding in some cases “underplanting” new trees beside dead ones might be a better option. 

But safety concerns make that difficult, Hoffman points out. “The problem is when you go in and replant something, you actually have to take away the overhead hazards,” she says, adding that sometimes intensely burned earth can’t support planted trees anyway. 

Hoffman’s solution is to consider letting the forest grow back on its own. “Nature will do its thing to recover,” she says. “Planting should be very intentional, and should not always occur in some places.”

In some severely burned regions, soils have been depleted and evergreen trees might not grow back for decades. That means tree planting could fail, Hoffman says, pointing out that intensely burned forests will often reseed themselves naturally. “These seeds are more likely to be resistant to future fire.”

Salvage logging can exacerbate future wildfire risk: ecologist 

According to an email from the B.C. Ministry of Forests, salvage logging can reduce “the risk of wildfire impacting these stands in the future.” Wildfire ecologist Robert Gray disagrees with such blanket claims. “If they use the term salvage in its traditional sense then no, you’re not really reducing the risk,” he says. 

“You may be exacerbating it.”

In areas that have historically experienced low-intensity, frequent wildfires, such as the dry forests of B.C.’s southern Interior, Gray advocates for removing the small stuff — younger trees and brush — to reduce the risk of “reburn” where a fire burns hotter, and more intensely, a second time. But he says taking out the bigger trees, which are often more fire-resistant, doesn’t add up. 

“Just wholesale going in there and taking out the large trees, leaving a mess behind, that’s not going to help you answer that question of what happens if this burns again.” 

According to Darlene Vegh, a Gitanyow Elder and fire expert, salvage logging on the burned forests from the 2018 Mill Lakes fire, north of Kitwanga in Gitanyow territory, led to big build-ups of dead wood and debris. The fire burned about 360 hectares, but didn’t lead to any evacuations. “Now there is more fuel build-up there than there ever was before.” 

“We checked it out this summer and nothing is growing there,” she says. “Very few things are making their way through that.”

First Nation asks for green trees to be left standing

So far, the burned forests above Nortje’s house remain unlogged, but salvage logging is well underway nearby. Private lots close to Nortje’s cabin have been clear cut to the lake’s edge. Northeast of Gun Lake, the fire’s first four commercial salvage cutblocks are complete; fresh clearcuts dot the burned hills. 

Much of the salvage logging in the area has been carried out by Lillooet-based Interwest Timber. On commercial cutblocks, the company is working in partnership with St’át’imc Tribal Holdings, a company it manages on behalf of six co-owning members of St’át’imc Nations.

Travis Peters, lands manager for Xwist’en First Nation, a co-owner of St’át’imc Tribal Holdings, says the current cutblocks are an improvement over earlier proposals put forward by Aspen Planers, which owns mills in the region. “They roped in too many green stems,” he says, referring to the green trees the companies wanted to include in their salvage logging plans. 

Scott Fiddick, a development manager at Aspen Planers, tells The Narwhal the company is now in the process of proposing new salvage cutblocks in the region and is incorporating feedback from local nations. 

Peters says the nation has told Interwest to leave the remaining green trees standing, and to log only in the more severely burned areas. 

He’s hopeful salvage logging can help replant Douglas fir trees on which mule deer — a key species for the nation that is in decline — rely on for food and shelter.

“If we’ve done it right, we’ll get rid of the licorice sticks and get the trees growing back,” Peters says. 

According to B.C.’s forest billing database, 88 per cent of the salvage wood logged by Interwest for Stat’imc Tribal Holdings was sawlog-grade lumber. Of that, 26 per cent was the highest grade lumber — from trees most likely to survive the fire. Thick-barked Douglas fir is a dominant species in the area’s forests. And one of the logged cutblocks overlapped an area recommended for deferral by B.C.’s old growth technical advisory panel. 

The company has other cutblocks pending.

According to Mike Carson, Interwest’s forest manager, the company is logging only in highly burned areas and isn’t cutting live or green trees in the wildfire zone. 

The salvage logging underway leaves Gerald Michel, lands and resources liaison with Xwist’en, with many questions. “The research I’m reading is saying, ‘Leave it alone, let it regrow on its own,’ ” he says. He’s been unhappy with previous salvage operations carried out by Stat’imc Tribal Holdings and Interwest, saying it resulted in too many big, old trees being logged. This time, Michel has been on the ground at Gun Lake, telling Interwest which areas he’d like the company to leave intact. “We’re trying to lessen the impacts of salvage,” he says. 

“The downfall, basically, is that it [salvage logging] has to be a money-maker.”

Companies like Interwest face a predicament when they salvage — leaving the biggest, healthiest trees on the block might be better for the forest, but it means fewer profits. 

“For now, we’re keeping everyone working,” Chris Graham, from Interwest, which employs about 40 people from the Lillooet area, tells The Narwhal. 

Interwest is focusing on the burned trees while trying to bring in some profit, Graham says. “You’re not going to go into stands that lose money, unless governments can fund that kind of thing.” 

First Nations forestry group advocates for tailored salvage logging

New rules for fire salvage may be on the way. 

“You’ve got everybody in the room right now,” BC First Nations Forestry Council’s chief executive officer Lennard Joe says in an interview. He’s a member of the province’s newly formed wildfire salvage leadership committee, which brings together government specialists, the First Nations Forestry Council and representatives from the forest industry to make recommendations on how companies should salvage log and to oversee their implementation. “If there were rooms like that before, First Nations weren’t at that table,” he says. 

After the “economic net-return free-for-all” of B.C.’s pine beetle salvage logging operations, Joe is hopeful these processes signal the coming era of fire salvage will be different. “You’re going to see legislation crossing the floor to develop policies, acts and regulations that will reflect how we’re moving forward,” he says. 

In some cases, Joe thinks salvage logging could reduce pressure on areas unharmed by wildfires and financially support wildfire recovery, from tree planting to rebuilding infrastructure. 

“It’s got to be site sensitive,” he says. “You’ve got to manage a prescription that brings back the best forest.” 

Back on the trail, Nortje reaches out to inspect the newest pops of green bursting through what looks like ashen sand dunes on what used to be the forest floor. 

Next to yarrow and wild rose, Nortje holds the green leaf of a spirea plant. “It’s really not that attractive,” she says. But fire has given Nortje a new appreciation for unassuming things. “It’s now the rockstar plant, because it’s just everywhere.” 

Nortje has been documenting the forest’s recovery by sharing photos in a Facebook group shared with residents in the community. “It’s amazing how fast stuff comes back,” she says. “Their root systems are still there.” 

As she passes by strips of red flagging tape marking new cutblock boundaries, Nortje worries about sliding backwards. “I just think this disaster is so big,” she says. 

“Is salvage logging going to make it an even bigger disaster?”

Updated on Aug. 14 at 1 p.m. PT: This story has been updated to correct the number of hectares burned in the Downton Lake fire in 2023. The number of hectares burned was 10,000, not 1,000 as previously stated. 

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In 2017, long before this year’s summer of blockades shook the province, logging company Teal-Jones purchased two small ads in both the Lake Cowichan Gazette and the Cowichan Valley Citizen. Following B.C. law, the company was announcing its new forest stewardship plan, which set out how it intended to log in the region — including at the now-infamous Fairy Creek — and asking for public comment.

Because B.C.’s forestry laws were written in 2004, when print media was still considered more important than online media, Teal-Jones wasn’t required to post the ad online. If you didn’t get the paper those weeks or lived outside of the Cowichan Valley, you probably would have missed it entirely.

There were other problems, too. As per B.C.’s forestry laws, the plan was written and developed by foresters employed by the company, and though it required sign-off by the region’s district manager, it didn’t actually tell the public or the government where it specifically intended to log or build roads.

Four years later, a 17-year-old from Washington state stumbled across the plan to log Fairy Creek by studying satellite imagery, sparking one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in Canadian history, in one of the last intact old-growth watersheds on Vancouver Island.

While it might be tempting to point the finger of blame at Teal-Jones for not doing adequate outreach, the company’s approach was guided by the province’s own laws — specifically, the Forest Range and Practices Act.

The act is “the bible” on how B.C.’s forests get managed, said Torrance Coste, national campaign director for the Wilderness Committee. “A lot of the conflict that we see in B.C.’s forests is because of it,” he said.

Last month, following years of requests from First Nations, environmental advocates and local governments, the B.C. government finally introduced major changes to the act through Bill 23.

Katrine Conroy, minister of forests, lands, natural resource operations and rural development, said the proposed amendments will “put the government back in the driver’s seat” after decades of deregulated forest policy that put logging companies at the helm.

“This is reinserting a planning regime,” said Kevin Kriese, chair of the BC Forest Practice Board, an independent watchdog for B.C. forestry, who noted the province is one of the few forestry-rich regions across Canada and the U.S. with so many gaps in forest management. “We’re on the bottom quartile in terms of the kind of long-term planning that we do.”

Proposed amendments would scrap B.C.’s current industry-driven forest stewardship plans — like the one Teal-Jones outlined for the area containing Fairy Creek — in favour of forest landscape plans developed by the provincial government in consultation with First Nations and local communities.

But that’s only half of the puzzle, says Coste, who is still waiting to see how these amendments will impact forest ecosystems across the province. So far, those details are absent.

“Transferring power around, that’s an important half of the solution, but it’s only half the solution,” Coste said.

The amendments also raise critical questions about whether the province is taking its commitments to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act seriously.

They “didn’t go far enough on the recognition of inherent title and rights or the UN Declaration,” said Kukpi7 Judy Wilson, secretary-treasurer of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs and Chief of the Neskonlith Indian Band.

“We need better caretakership for our old-growth forest and our forest in general, and that can only be done by including Indigenous Knowledge and the proper title holders.”

What is the Forest and Range Practices Act?

First passed in 2004, the Forest and Range Practices Act was part of a wave of deregulation ushered in by the BC Liberal government under then premier Gordon Campbell. “Results-based” policies shrank the role of government in resource management by giving industries broad, government-sanctioned objectives they could decide how to fulfil.

The regime is often referred to as “professional reliance,” where government outsources oversight to professionals hired by the companies themselves. It extends beyond forestry, informing B.C.’s regulations around mining, fisheries, electricity and landfill management, to name a few.

A 2018 report on B.C.’s “professional reliance” regime found the act “bred a culture of deference” to the forest industry, reporting that some government staff felt it was inappropriate to challenge the professional foresters hired by logging companies.

“We are not aware of any other regulations in which the government has imposed upon itself such extensive restrictions to taking action to protect the environment,” wrote West Coast Environmental Law when it reviewed the act in 2004.

Replacing the 1990s-era Forest Practices Code, the act meant that the BC Forest Service was no longer responsible for approving or overseeing logging sites known as cutblocks. Instead, companies hired professional foresters to develop forest stewardship plans for “units” of forest where they planned to log.

Those units were often massive — in 2015, the Forest Practices Board found that the largest unit was about twice the landmass of Vancouver Island.

Within those units, companies were not required to disclose where they planned to log or build roads. Without those details, the province is hard-pressed to evaluate the cumulative impacts of logging.

Although the government assesses logging plans when it approves road or cutting permits for individual cutblocks, those permits are assessed one by one. “It’s hard to tell what the total impact is,” said Kriese.

In 2019, the government passed a FRPA amendment under Bill 21 requiring companies to disclose future roads and cutblocks through a publicly accessible app, but that app has yet to be introduced.

Within the act itself, the rules are notoriously flimsy, said Jens Wieting, senior forest and climate campaigner for the Sierra Club BC.

The act lists a set of provincial objectives for forestry, including protecting things like biodiversity, soils, water and visual quality. In the corresponding regulations, the government provides some guidance on how to meet those objectives, but only so long as the accommodation does not “unduly reduce the supply of timber from British Columbia’s forests.”

This clause, advocates say, is a loophole that can allow companies to disregard environmental considerations if they impact their bottom lines.

“This really opens the door to water down and weaken things until they become unrecognizable,” said Wieting.

Ultimately, said Kriese, forest stewardship plans aren’t designed to manage ecosystems. “It’s a logging plan, but it’s not a forest management plan,” said Kriese. “The model is that licensees propose, and the government basically approves.”

The current amendments proposed to the act under Bill 23 work to change that by replacing forest stewardship plans with 10-year forest landscape plans, developed through land use planning processes with government and “First Nations, local communities and other stakeholders.”

The province said those plans will provide opportunities for First Nations and communities to provide input on forest management and better manage the cumulative effects of forest activity.

Ministers will be required to sign off on forest operations plans that detail harvesting and road-building activities and will have more jurisdiction to say no to plans that don’t meet the government’s specifications. According to the province, this site-level logging information will also be made available to the public.

“This is a way of ensuring that the province is the landlord of the forests again,” said Conroy.

Indigenous rights and the new law

Bill 23, Conroy said, will align B.C.’s forest management with its commitments to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. The changes will give “Indigenous voices back to managing the forests on their traditional territory,” she said.

But Kukpi7 Wilson thinks the amendments still have “a long way to go” before the act is aligned with the recognition of First Nations’ inherent title and rights. Even under the updated act, the chief forester will hold a considerable amount of power over the fate of the forests.

The amendments indicate that if a nation doesn’t consent to a forest landscape plan in its territory, it must alert the chief forester within 60 days of receiving the plan from the government. The chief forester is then required to “meet with an Indigenous governing body and attempt to achieve consensus.”

The wording doesn’t meet the bar for First Nations’ rights to free, prior and informed consent, as enshrined in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, said Kukpi7 Wilson.

The process of drafting the amendments also came up short, according to Charlene Higgins, chief executive officer of the First Nations Forestry Council, who said the amendments didn’t take First Nations’ concerns into account, including protections for cultural values.

“The consultation process was flawed and doesn’t reflect changes to FRPA nations wanted.”

In an emailed statement, the Ministry of Forest, Lands and Natural Resource Operations said that based on First Nations’ input, it had added wording to the amendments around shared decision-making to help align the act with the Declaration Act.

Higgins acknowledged those additions but said that since the full implementation of the Declaration Act is still nascent, the changes will require additional legislation to enable First Nations’ consent. “The point is future down the road,” she said.

Nations also need to be equipped to participate in the forest landscape planning processes, Higgins added. Unless First Nations have developed relationships with the province through ties like government-to-government tables and have already planned out their own land use objectives, she worries that some nations’ interests will get ignored.

“Many Nations are going to be left out of this process, because they don’t have the resources and information they need to participate,” she said.

What does Bill 23 mean for old-growth forests?

So far, the bill doesn’t mean much.

While the amendments contained in Bill 23 signal a departure from the professional reliance regime, it’s still unclear what that means for the health of B.C.’s forests. That’s because the amendments continue to define ecological values in broad terms like “biodiversity” and “soils,” leaving out key details around how those values will be upheld by the regulations the government writes after the legislation is passed.

For example, B.C.’s Old Growth Strategic Review Panel found that ecosystems that fall below 30 per cent of their natural abundance with old trees present a high risk for biodiversity loss. It’s unclear whether the province intends to create regulations to protect biodiversity by preserving ecosystem types.

Meanwhile, the “unduly reducing supply of timber” clause — seen by many First Nations and environmentalists as a linchpin of B.C.’s deregulated forestry regime — remains.

BC Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau sees the tendency to offload critical decisions to regulations — which don’t get debated in the legislature — as a growing trend within government.

“What that means is, you’re being asked to debate and vote on a bill that you don’t fully get to see all of the implications [of], or all of the final legislation that’s going to be in it,” she said.

Kriese suggests that there are reasons to work out details around biodiversity and old-growth protection outside of enshrined legislation. That’s because each region is unique, he said, and has different requirements for values and protections. Forest landscape plans, he said, provide an opportunity to do that on-the-ground work.

But whether those plans will arrive in time to protect the province’s last remaining old growth is another question.

There is no stated timeline on when the regulations set forth in Bill 23 will be developed. Switching over from the old regime to the new landscape plans will take eight to 10 years, the province estimates.

For those waiting on these plans to ensure improved ecological protection, that wait time “is going to be a really tough pill to swallow,” said Kriese.

Part of the reason the wait will be so long is because the government lost significant administrative capacity during the deregulation era.

“We’re 20 years behind on doing this,” said Kriese. “I think it should be faster.”

Furstenau agrees that time is running out for B.C.’s forests. Instead of waiting on future regulatory changes or land use planning processes, Furstenau wants to see a clear indication in the act that big changes are coming.

“We are in a massive species die-off,” she said. “It seems to me as a government in a time like this, that we should be very mindful of the global responsibility we have when it comes to species at risk and biodiversity protection.”

After decades of forest policy focused on maximizing timber supply and clear-cut logging, Furstenau wants to see a decisive turn.

“It’s like, OK — we’ve put the government back in the driver’s seat. But now I’d like to see the map of where we’re going.” 

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Simon Frankson emerged from his sleeping bag at 4 a.m., just in time to join the fray.

The day before, a balmy afternoon in early August, he and about a dozen campers had studied a satellite photo of the area: a mountainside sheathed in deep green cedars and Douglas fir trees, many of them hundreds or thousands of years old, in a watershed known as Fairy Creek in the southwest corner of Vancouver Island. The telling grey stripe of a logging road was creeping up from the left side of the image. It was the same kind of road that has, over the past century, made way for logging companies to cut down 80 per cent of the ancient forest on an island larger than Belgium.

When Frankson and the campers had arrived the night before, things already looked different than in the photo. The stripe had grown into a web of roads advancing up and across the slope. One more day and the machines could crest the ridge above them, opening up yet another valley to industrial logging.

Now Frankson was rubbing the sleep from his eyes and readying himself for his first shift as an old-growth forest blockader. Out of the blackness, the harsh headlights of a four-by-four came swerving around a switchback toward the camp. Frankson jumped up to join the line of bodies rushing to stand their ground. The driver, a contractor for the Teal-Jones timber company, killed the gas. For two long minutes, they faced one another, frozen. Then, as if concluding an unspoken conversation, the truck slowly reversed down the mountain.

From its beginning on Aug. 9, 2020, the Fairy Creek Blockade has been defined by this kind of urgency. This little valley — one of the last unlogged watersheds on the Island — has become the epicentre in the kind of fight to save B.C.’s temperate rainforests that hasn’t been seen in a quarter century.

Now an injunction application by Teal-Jones threatens to break what’s been building over the past eight months. On April 1, the B.C. Supreme Court will decide whether to grant the injunction and authorize arrests. But the blockaders have already declared a “last stand for ancient temperate rainforests” no matter the costs.

In a world wracked by climate change and species loss, the Fairy Creek blockaders occupy a desperate frontline. But like the speed of industrial logging, slap-dash movements like this one have consequences. Urgency saves trees but it can alienate allies. While environmentalists are making more effort to work with local First Nations that share similar goals, Fairy Creek is a reminder that it’s not always easy. Pacheedaht First Nation, whose territory includes the watershed, has long relied on old-growth logging. But the nation is at a crossroads when it comes to the future of its forests.

The blockaders are racing not only to stymie the plans of Teal-Jones, but to forge deeper connections with potential new allies. It’s not clear what the showdown in court will set in motion. Will an injunction scatter the blockaders? Or might it accomplish what they hope — a heightened awareness of their fight, catalyzing the kind of broad, even international, support that fuelled British Columbia’s previous War in the Woods?

Pacheedaht First Nation, whose territory includes the Fairy Creek watershed, has long relied on old-growth logging. Photo: Serena Renner

The initial calls to defend Fairy Creek came via email and Zoom from a 17-year-old in Union, Wash. named Joshua Wright, who grew up visiting the cedar and hemlock groves of Vancouver Island as a kid.

The blockade came together in days, but it was a response to decades of government inertia when it comes to protecting old-growth forests. Despite promises to implement recommendations of a 2020 report that advises deferred logging in the most at-risk forest ecosystems within six months, the NDP government has failed to make any concrete changes.

The dirt road to Fairy Creek’s Ridge Camp shows the scars of this inaction. Clearcuts — large areas of forest razed for timber — create a camo-print collage that stretches across the territory of Pacheedaht First Nation toward the small town of Port Renfrew, two hours northwest of Victoria up a winding coastal road. Old-growth logging is happening all around here, but the blockade has mainly kept its focus on the 2,000 hectares of rainforest around Fairy Creek, a tributary of the San Juan River. It’s the largest swath of unbroken old-growth forest in the region outside of a park.

The forest in the Fairy Creek watershed. Photo: Serena Renner

The location of Fairy Creek near Port Renfrew on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Map: Zoë Yunker

“Old growth” is a simple term for complex ecosystems that have evolved over long periods of time and are home to thousands, if not millions, of plant and animal species. Their multi-storied canopies are often compared to cathedrals for the way they filter light between columns of trees that range from saplings to prehistoric giants. The province’s definition for coastal old growth is a forest containing trees more than 250-years-old.

Coastal temperate rainforests, like the moss-laden landscapes of Vancouver Island, cover less than one per cent of the planet. They purify air and water; shelter salmon, cedar and medicines integral to First Nations; and cool down regional climates by producing a near constant drizzle. The most biologically productive of these forests — those with the greatest variety of species and largest trees — gulp and store more carbon than any other above-ground environment. Their structure and diversity also means they’re less vulnerable to fires, floods and natural disturbances. In other words, they’re one of our best defences in the fight against global climate change.

B.C., though, has historically depended on old-growth logging, which took off on Vancouver Island around the 1920s and was the economic backbone of towns like Port Renfrew. Half a century later, industrial-scale forestry galvanized a wave of opposition. In the early 1980s, Indigenous communities and environmentalists began to recognize the scale of losses and set up Canada’s first logging blockade on Meares Island, a 30-minute boat ride from Tofino in Clayoquot Sound, Tla-o-qui-aht territory. The effort, which combined direct action with Indigenous court cases, led to the protection of Meares Island in 1985.

But the clear cutting continued. By the early 1990s, just 30 per cent of the Island’s original forest and a fraction of its watersheds remained unlogged. Roadblocks, tree sits and encampments spread across the Island, culminating in 1993 with the Clayoquot Sound protests that came to be known as the War in the Woods. Nearly 900 people were arrested that summer. It’s still considered one of the largest acts of nonviolent civil disobedience in Canadian history.

Yet today, the Island is down to 20 per cent of its original ancient forest. And only around three per cent of that is estimated to be the most productive valley bottoms with the biggest, oldest trees.

About a dozen Fairy Creek blockaders arrived in August and have stayed throughout the winter. Photo: Will O’Connell

“I couldn’t believe we were still logging old growth,” says blockader Shawna Knight. “At the rate that resource extraction happens in B.C., if we don’t stand up and do something right now, there will be nothing left.”

In October, the Fairy Creek Blockade moved its headquarters down closer to sea level for winter as Teal-Jones packed up for the season, instead focusing its timber cutting on more accessible forests a few ridges north in the Caycuse Valley. But there was never any doubt that come spring, the company would return.

“All the work that we’ve done and everything we’re trying to protect could be compromised very quickly,” says Suzanne Tripp, a 23-year-old Indigenous studies major at Camosun College in Victoria. “It’s kind of hard to grasp sometimes.”

Tripp got involved about a month into the blockade, arriving like many do as a curious activist. Born to a Métis mother and settler father on the southeast Alberta plains, Tripp admits that she’d never seen a massive tree until arriving at the blockade. “I came up here fully caring about the trees and fully willing to get arrested for them, and then I actually saw one,” she says. “I was shook.”

Shawna Knight first discovered the movement through a Facebook post. She recognized the name Fairy Creek having raised her two teenaged kids in the area. Before that, she thought the Island’s old growth was already protected. “I’ve never done anything like this,” she says.

A purple scar peeks out from the neck of Knight’s jacket — a trace of the rounds of thyroid cancer she’s survived. That experience sparked a hard-won reorientation: “You just accept your part of what’s meant to be and what is.”

Since showing up a few weeks into the blockade, Knight’s been at Fairy Creek almost every day, transporting supplies and patrolling logging roads in her black pickup. She temporarily shut down her food truck to be here. “I can see why people don’t do this. There’s no financial benefit, no security,” Knight says. “It strictly grows your heart. That’s all you get.”

Shawna Knight has been a mainstay at the blockade, transporting supplies and patrolling logging roads in her black pickup. Photo: Serena Renner

The blockaders’ main strategy has been a simple one: stop the logging trucks from getting in. “It only takes three people to stop equipment and build a blockade,” says Knight. “Even one person can really change things.”

Fairy Creek was always meant to be just the beginning. It’s significant as the last intact valley on southern Vancouver Island, but it’s only 2,000 hectares and about 40 per cent of that is already protected as old-growth management or wildlife habitat areas. For a while, the group debated calling their campaign the “Old Growth Blockade” to signal loftier intentions to defend forests throughout Vancouver Island and beyond. While it was the Fairy Creek moniker that stuck, the spirit of bigger ambitions prevails. “We’ll just sort of bug out to blockades and scatter along the hillside as needed,” Knight says. A few core blockaders affixed a seal with the words “Rainforest Flying Squad” to their trucks, establishing their self-appointed role as forest wardens. They have since established three more camps to defend other forests nearby.

Perhaps paradoxically, a broader movement to protect old growth, mainly composed of non-profit groups with roots in the 1990s protests, already exists — but has a different strategy. Organizations like the Ancient Forest Alliance and the Wilderness Committee have spent years meeting with logging communities, faith groups and governments in an attempt to target the economic and political barriers to old-growth protection.

Valerie Langer knows those barriers well. She was a central figure on the Clayoquot Sound blockades in the late 1980s and early ’90s, and was arrested and jailed multiple times. Leading up to the famous protests of 1993, Langer and her fellow activists came to a sobering realization. “We were not a big enough voting bloc, and we weren’t organized in any powerful way,” she says. “Strategically, the problem was that we were trying to bend the ear of a government that didn’t really care about the small voices in a wilderness area, on the far coast of B.C.”

They reached out to groups with bigger audiences like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club in the U.S., and organized a global boycott of B.C.’s old-growth products. “We realized that being right isn’t the point if you lose what you’re trying to win,” she says. That meant partnering with groups that had different, less radical, ideas of what needed to happen. In the end, the efforts helped establish a scientific panel, new logging regulations, and a co-management arrangement between the B.C. government and local First Nations.

Langer sees blockades as vital but limited in their effectiveness. While she recognizes the urgency of the times, she believes direct action must be embedded within a larger strategy. “If we want to create bigger systemic change, then you have to have both the radical action and the long-term game happening in parallel.”

“People who care about this issue care so deeply, and haven’t had an outlet for so long.”

But despite more than 30 years of campaigning with bursts of direct action, B.C.’s old-growth forests are in more danger now than ever. “The point of the blockade,” says 29-year-old activist Will O’Connell, “is not to wait for the non-profits, and not to let them keep leading us because I don’t see that building or moving somewhere.”

Sophisticated strategy is also a luxury the blockaders can’t afford. They’re stretched thin just keeping the camps dry and managing the stream of characters bubbling in and out of Fairy Creek. The movement is the product of whoever shows up that day. “It’s constantly crumbling and growing at the same time,” says O’Connell.

As the months have worn on, the blockade has attracted some institutional support. The environmental non-profits Stand.earth and the Wilderness Committee have become more involved and now keep their members informed about Fairy Creek while clarifying their independence.

Still, the blockade remains fervently grassroots and non-hierarchical. This kind of open structure means that just about anyone can come with an idea and execute it. It’s been an empowering experience for many new activists who have found a role at the blockade. “I wanted to get into the environmentalist movement like six years ago, and I kept emailing organizations and was constantly filtered into letter-writing campaigns and giving money. The more organized you are, the harder it is to find a niche for someone,” O’Connell says. “People who care about this issue care so deeply, and haven’t had an outlet for so long.”

A cold October rain thumped on the tin roof of the camp kitchen as Knight boiled water for tea. The blockaders were waiting for Bill Jones, an Elder from Pacheedaht First Nation, whose territory includes the Fairy Creek watershed. So far, Jones has been the only member of his nation actively involved in the movement.

The Fairy Creek watershed is one of the last unlogged watersheds on Vancouver Island, thus adding to the urgency of protestors who want to protect B.C.’s remaining old-growth forests. Photo: TJ Watt

The issue of Indigenous consent has been a challenge for the blockaders since the beginning. Frankson recalls sitting on the forest floor at Lizard Lake near Port Renfrew alongside other activists discussing whether to blockade without the support of Pacheedaht First Nation. Messages sent to the band council and Jones the day before had gone unanswered.

After about 15 minutes of conversation during the meeting, urgency ruled the day. “Ultimately, I felt it was important enough to block the road,” says Frankson. “They were taking down ancient cedar trees. It was a dire circumstance.”

That group’s decision became a lightning rod for criticism, on the ground and online. Without the consent of the Pacheedaht, blockaders appeared to be reproducing an age-old mistake that had cut deep rifts in B.C.’s environmental movement: settlers claiming authority over land that doesn’t belong to them.

Before smallpox introduced by European settlers devastated their population, the Pacheedaht were estimated to have 1,500 members or more. Now there are only about 290 members — and 100 or so live on reserve near Port Renfrew. And for over a century, large corporations have liquidated the nation’s old growth.

Today, a revenue-sharing agreement with the province means that the nation is compensated for logging in its territory, including in the proposed cutblocks of Fairy Creek. Article 11 of that agreement indicates that the Pacheedaht are beholden to “non-interference”: they can’t “support or participate in any acts that frustrate, delay, stop or otherwise physically impede or interfere with provincially authorized forest activities.” Some Fairy Creek blockaders believe that agreement means the Pacheedaht band council is legally barred from supporting the blockade, even if it wanted to.

But the council isn’t opposed to old-growth logging. A few years ago, they built a multimillion-dollar sawmill specifically designed to process old-growth cedar. Every year, it mills 10,000 cubic metres of wood — picture four Olympic swimming pools filled with logs. In 2010, the nation bought into a logging partnership that purchased a tree farm license covering 20,240 hectares south of Port Renfrew and Fairy Creek, some of which is old growth.

“We just watched logging trucks go by out of our territory,” said Pacheedaht band council Chief Jeff Jones in an interview with Ha-Shilth-Sa newspaper. “Now we’ve got tenures in our traditional territory with revenue coming back.”

Other Pacheedaht members have started voicing concerns about their old growth, and the species it supports like salmon. Arliss Jones, the former Chief of the nation, says old growth shouldn’t be clear cut, especially when there’s second- and third-growth forest around. “Just leave the first growth alone,” she says.

But she understands her nation is in a difficult position — stuck between the logging booms of the past and a new generation with different prospects.

“Our fathers were all loggers,” Arliss says. “If we didn’t have those jobs in our community, I don’t know how they would have survived. But this generation, it’s changed. We’re not that community anymore.”

Arliss also recognizes the challenge facing the band council when it comes to Fairy Creek. “Their hands are tied,” she says, because of the nation’s involvement in logging industries that rely on old growth. But she also critiques the council for not providing information about forestry issues to Pacheedaht members.

“We’re playing the guessing game between all these protesters and where Pacheedaht stands, and we stand in the middle,” Arliss says. “So maybe things didn’t happen perfectly. Nothing ever happens perfectly. But I’m grateful that the protesters are there to protect the territory against these huge logging companies.”

In response to an email, Rod Bealing, the forestry manager for the band council, declined to comment but acknowledged that internal work needs to be done. “Our nation currently takes the view that we need to continue to make it a higher priority to improve forestry-related communications within our community before we engage with external interests.”

Pacheedaht is in the final stages of a 25-year joint treaty process with neighbouring Ditidaht First Nation to reclaim tracts of their territories. So far, the band council’s silence has been interpreted by the blockaders as a tacit, if limited, form of consent for their actions. This assumption drew criticism from Indigenous leaders in Victoria, who called out the decision to occupy the ridge without having forged relationships with more members of the Pacheedaht community first.

These kinds of dilemmas — searching for common ground versus frontline action to keep trees from falling — informed Ken Wu’s work as co-founder of the Ancient Forest Alliance. A former campaigner for the Wilderness Committee, Wu was a student organizer during the Clayoquot Sound blockades. Then he noticed how direct action by environmentalists was polarizing them from loggers and energizing a pro-old-growth-logging countermovement. Wu began organizing across interest groups.

Wu’s top priority lies in finding economic alternatives to old-growth logging for First Nations. “Conservation financing needs to be front and centre,” he says.

He helped create a joint resolution with the Union of BC Indian Chiefs to call for government action to finance initiatives such as ecotourism and Indigenous Guardian programs that provide jobs while preserving the forest. Arliss says she would support these kinds of programs.

Bill Jones arrived at camp midday. Shawna Knight greeted the Pacheedaht Elder at his car and they walked arm-in-arm slowly to the fire. He sat in a fold-up camping chair, nodding at blockaders as they came and went from the circle forming around him.

Now 80-years-old, his hair wispy and white, Jones survived residential school in Port Alberni. He worked as an airplane mechanic, a nurse, and then a logger during the industry’s heyday of the 1960s and ’70s before getting laid off. “Every year, we would notice the patches of bareness, until after maybe 15 to 20 years, practically half of the forest was gone.”

Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones has been the only member of his nation actively involved in the movement. Photo: Serena Renner

Jones says he was despondent in his early 70s, feeling the weight of colonization and environmental destruction. Then he got involved with forest activism in the Walbran Valley nearby. “I think I was ready for it. I was searching.”

In August, a week into the blockade, he joined the effort to protect Fairy Creek.

This day, his hands clasped and unclasped as he spoke to the intent blockaders. “I feel that we are now in a crucial process of surviving this storm.”

Jones has been careful not to blame his nation for inaction on Fairy Creek. “How do we reconcile the fact that not everybody in this community is on board?” he wrote in an open letter posted to the blockade’s Facebook page last September. “Who do we look to for guidance? There is no simple answer to these questions. We all have a role and a part in this and we need to appreciate and honour our differences. Difference is a good thing.”

Lisa Small, a 30-year-old blockader from Victoria, thinks their movement poses an open question about the future of settler activism. “It would be so powerful if this movement was Indigenous-led, but does that mean that it shouldn’t exist because it isn’t? I don’t know. We’re still trying to figure that out. What should it look like for settlers who want to take a stand?”

Tsastilqualus Ambers, an Elder from Ma’amtagila territory in Alert Bay, went to camp after hearing concerns about the blockade’s lack of Pacheedaht support.

She visited Ridge Camp in late September with her son and three Indigenous women, one of whom is Jones’s niece. They marched up the logging road toward the blockaders, drumming. When they got to the fire, they introduced themselves one by one, tracing their lineages, and then asked the blockaders to do the same. “After everything was done, we turned it over and explained to them that they have now introduced their ancestors to ours,” Ambers says, adding that this is the kind of relationship-building that should have happened before the blockade began.

“Nothing about us without us: that’s one thing a lot of environmentalists need to know,” she says. “You can’t call us to the table after you’ve formed an idea or a plan. We’re not an afterthought.”

For Bill Jones, the stillness of the forest has been a “touchstone” in his journey back to himself and his culture. As a kid, he paddled with his parents up near Fairy Creek, where they would camp on the beach. He’d wake to the smell of his mother barbecuing fresh sockeye salmon in the morning.

One day, years later working as a logger, he stopped and looked at all the cut trees at a log storage facility on Alberni Canal.

“I got halfway to the boom, and something hit me,” Jones recalls. “I don’t know what it was. I sat down and I started crying.” He says he suspects his fellow loggers had similar experiences. “Our training systematically alienates us from ourselves,” he says. “Desensitizing man is a very easy thing to do. And resensitizing him is very difficult.”

Jones’s story reflects what researchers have started calling “ecological grief.” It’s a mourning that comes when we slow down enough to register the changes happening in the more-than-human world. As Ashlee Cunsolo, a Labrador-based expert on the subject, puts it, “Grief is incredibly painful, and it can be very isolating and debilitating, but it also has the potential to bring people together and inspire action. We only grieve what we love.”

This week the emotions running through the Fairy Creek blockaders and their allies are rising urgency and defiance. In the lead-up to the coming injunction decision, activists and members of the public are holding a vigil for Fairy Creek outside the legislative assembly and the provincial courthouse in Victoria. It follows a month of old-growth rallies around the province from Prince George to Premier John Horgan’s office. Yesterday, Green party MLA Adam Olsen continued his party’s support for old-growth protection in the B.C. legislature, challenging the premier to provide conservation funding to Pacheedaht First Nation and to buy back the Fairy Creek cutblocks from Teal-Jones.

The Fairy Creek Blockade has raised more than $125,000 on GoFundMe, about $50,000 of that flowing in since Teal-Jones filed for its injunction. Joshua Wright, the teenager still working behind the scenes from Washington, has called for a “Cedar Summer,” a play on California’s “Redwood Summer” of 1990, and a “new War in the Woods.”

As for Shawna Knight, she’s still driving her black pickup truck around Fairy Creek’s gravel roads, delivering supplies and forging connections. It’s been a long, rainy winter building alliances between workers, Pacheedaht members, and the blockade’s amorphous crew of supporters. “It’s all about building relationships based on respect. That’s the whole thing,” she says.

As Knight and the blockaders brace themselves for the injunction, the long game is coming to a head. “I think this is the climax, this is the moment we’ve all been waiting for,” she says. “We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to do what it takes.”

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