Echoes of B.C.’s War in the Woods as Fairy Creek blockade builds on Vancouver Island

This story is published courtesy of the Guardian as part of the ongoing series This Land is Your Land.

Hundreds of activists are digging in at logging road blockades across a swath of southern Vancouver Island, vowing to stay as long as it takes to pressure the provincial government to immediately halt cutting of what they say is the last 3 per cent of giant old-growth trees left in the province.

The situation echoes the 1993 “war in the woods” in nearby Clayoquot Sound, which saw nearly 1,000 people arrested at similar logging blockades in the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history.

Tensions are rising. Just this weekend, the activists stopped a team of old-growth tree cutters — called fallers — from entering a logging area in the Caycuse watershed.

“You know this is illegal?” said Trevor Simpson, a logger, who told the Guardian he’s been a faller contractor for 29 years and relies on cutting old-growth trees. “This is my livelihood at stake.”

A blockader named Owen, one of about two dozen on the scene, told the loggers through the window of their pickup truck: “The fact is, if we want our planet to be sustainable, we have to protect these ecosystems.”

Another logger said: “We have to work. Are they [the blockaders] going to pay our wages today? If we don’t work, we don’t get paid.”

Blockaders are presented with an injunction, signed by a B.C. court on April 1, 2021. Photo: Jesse Winter / The Narwhal

Contractor Trevor Simpson was denied access to a cut block by blockaders. Photo: Jesse Winter / The Narwhal

The blockaders refused to let Simpson’s team pass, and eventually the frustrated crew left. They returned on Tuesday to hand-deliver a court injunction ordering the blockades taken down and setting the stage for arrests. Similar scenes are playing out at strategic blockades across the area.

After the loggers left the Caycuse blockade, activists went to work building fortifications, a giant kitchen tent, and even an outhouse made entirely of discarded old-growth cedar.

The movement started more than eight months ago, when an impromptu blockade of 12 people sprang up to stop road building into the headwaters of the Fairy Creek watershed, one of the last untouched watersheds in the region.

Read more: The Fairy Creek blockaders: inside the complicated fight for B.C.’s last ancient forests

But what started as a campaign to stop logging in a single watershed has grown thanks to widespread frustration with the British Columbia government’s broader approach to old-growth logging.

Activists and forestry experts say a tiny fraction of the province’s giant old-growth trees are left standing, and an immediate moratorium on cutting them is needed. Meanwhile, forestry companies and the government say the cut must continue in order to protect jobs in an industry that has experienced steep job losses and mill closures in recent years.

Hundreds of blockaders with a group calling themselves the Rainforest Flying Squad are camped out at several locations to prevent contractors from accessing logging roads. Photo: Jesse Winter / The Narwhal

The logging company Teal-Jones Group says its plans for cutting in Fairy Creek have been mischaracterized, and the trees it wants to cut are critical for supporting hundreds of jobs.

“Most of Fairy Creek is a protected forest reserve or unstable terrain and not available for harvesting,” said Gerrie Kotze, the company’s vice-president.

Kotze said Teal-Jones’ planned cut was a small area at the head of the watershed. The company would harvest the trees with care “and mill every log we cut right here in B.C.,” he said.

The government is caught between its election promises to protect old-growth forests and what it says is an undue risk to jobs in the forestry industry.

“We want to make sure people can appreciate old-growth trees for years to come, while supporting a sustainable forest sector for workers and communities,” said the forestry minister, Katrine Conroy, in a statement.

Old-growth forest in Avatar Grove, a protected area near the Fairy Creek watershed. Photo: Jesse Winter / The Narwhal

In September, the government released a long-awaited old-growth strategic review. Citing the “high risk to loss of biodiversity” and “widespread lack of confidence in the system of managing forests,” the report’s authors made 14 recommendations, including immediately deferring all old-growth logging in at-risk ecosystems, all of which were accepted by government.

But critics say after more than six months, the government is not moving fast enough while chainsaws continue to snarl and ancient trees continue to fall.

Rachel Holt, an independent ecologist, argues that the government is drastically overstating how much giant old-growth still exists. The latest government reports say just over 13 million hectares of total primary forest considered very old, or ancient, is still standing. Holt and her colleagues agree.

“But the vast majority of that — about 80 per cent — consists of small or very small trees,” Holt said.

Giant, ancient trees are the bones of coastal temperate rainforests. Whole ecosystems can reside within their vast, moss-covered branches. To think of them as just pretty things to look at missed the point, Holt said.

Kids learn how to rig a rope and pulley system from one of the blockaders. The kids came out with their families to visit the Caycyse blockade on April 8. Photo: Jesse Winter / The Narwhal

A blockader helps build a camp structure at the Fairy Creek encampment. Photo: Jesse Winter / The Narwhal

The new blockades are international. On his computer in Washington state, 17-year-old Joshua Wright has followed the developments closely. Despite working remotely, the young film-maker is a key organizer with the movement, which calls itself the Rainforest Flying Squad.

Wright, who spent time on Vancouver Island as a child, said it took seeing the situation in the U.S. to realize how rare B.C.’s remaining old growth is.

“If we don’t stop logging now, in three to five years there’s not going to be any old-growth left,” said Wright.

Updated April 9, 2021, at 11:35 p.m. PT: This article was updated to clarify that Joshua Wright spent time on Vancouver Island as a child but did not grow up on the island as previously stated.