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.” 

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.

Wildfire is part of the natural lifecycle of a forest; but as Manitoba continues to battle the embers of its most devastating fire season in more than 30 years, its leaders are starting to consider a more active role in managing this critical resource to stave off the flames.

In early October, as more than 70 wildland fires still smouldered across the province, Premier Wab Kinew and a handful of cabinet ministers released Manitoba’s first all-encompassing plan to slash carbon emissions in the next 25 years. 

Among the promised initiatives was a commitment to “co-develop a wildfire prevention and preparation approach that reflects Indigenous leadership, land-based knowledge and nature-based solutions” — a first hint at how the provincial government plans to respond to the growing threat of wildfire.

“We just came out of the worst wildfire season in living memory,” Environment and Climate Change Minister Mike Moyes said at a press conference for the new strategy this week.

“We recognize that local communities often will have insights in how to respond or how to prevent things. As we review [the wildfire response], we’re going to be looking to make those connections with local leaders and communities so we can get it right, heaven forbid, if that ever happens again.”

The 2025 wildfire season, which began in early May in the midst of a record-shattering heat wave, has seen 432 fires consume more than 2.1 million hectares of land — a surface area larger than Lake Ontario. Two people died trying to evacuate a blaze near Lac Du Bonnet, the first civilian wildfire deaths in Manitoba’s recent history. The province declared a state of emergency in late May and another in July. The Canadian Red Cross recorded more than 32,000 evacuees, many of whom are still waiting to go home. 

In nearly 100 years of recorded wildfire history in the province, only the 1989 season was more severe. 

There are few details about the direction Manitoba’s fire prevention strategy will take. Provincial officials have deferred questions about the strategy until the final review is completed. 

But in an interview prior to the launch of the emissions-reduction plan, Natural Resources Minister Ian Bushie acknowledged the wildfire risk is changing — and Manitoba’s approach to managing its forest resources will need to change too.

“If this fire season is our new normal,” he says, “then maybe we’ve got to be able to adapt some of our policies to adhere to what that new normal would entail.”

Manitoba’s forestry industry is ‘scared to death’ of increasing wildfire risk

Michael Doig is a long-time Manitoba forester who currently manages a working group in the province’s forestry and peatlands branch. 

Much of his team’s work involves taking detailed inventories, carefully monitoring forest health and conducting complex modelling to draw up decades- or centuries-long plans for harvesting and regenerating the province’s vast forests.

Nearly half of Manitoba’s land area is covered by forest — 26.3 million hectares in all. The majority is made up of dense, boreal wood: a mix of boggy, black spruce lowlands, and uplands dotted with white spruce, poplar and jack pine. There are stands of broadleaf forest dotting the southern prairie grasslands — clusters of aspen, burr oak and other deciduous species.

Some two million hectares are considered provincial forests, which serve as recreation areas, research hubs and timber reserves. Other sections are wrapped within the bounds of provincial parks and protected areas, where they are (for the most part) undisturbed by industrial activities.

And then there are the 11 million hectares of woodlands set aside for commercial logging in two sprawling forest management licence areas — where Doig and his team invest the majority of their resources.

“Our province is huge and our forest industry is somewhat centralized in the northwest and western regions,” Doig says.

That’s not to say the rest of the province’s forests go without oversight. In eastern and central Manitoba, provincial staff keep track of logging and renewal activities and manage limited, small quota harvests. The province participates in a national forest health survey every year, which requires flying over and monitoring forests in provincial parks and other forested regions.

But the two large swaths of land licensed to forestry companies Canadian Kraft Paper and Louisiana-Pacific come with boots-on-the-ground monitoring, troves of inventory data — and the potential to generate significant provincial revenue.

Logging generated $6.4 million in Crown royalties in 2024, though a significant drop compared to 2022 and 2023, when royalties reached approximately $12 million. 

According to the Forest Industry Association of Manitoba, the industry generates an average of $700 million in revenues annually and contributes more than $330 million to the provincial GDP. 

Fire seasons like this year’s are bad for business. 

More than 1.2 million hectares burned in logging licence areas alone in 2025 — approximately 10 per cent of the province’s regularly harvested forests. It’s the most damage the logging areas have seen in nearly 100 years of recorded fire history.

It’s still too early to determine the full consequences the fires will have on Manitoba’s logging industry, and Doig says the province will soon review the impacts and could potentially adjust harvest borders to compensate for potential damage in the future. 

But the trends that have emerged across the country in recent years are cause for concern.

“The [forestry] industry is scared to death,” says British Columbia-based Bob Gray, one of Canada’s foremost wildfire researchers.

June and July 2023 saw lumber production in Canada dip 20 per cent below the previous five-year average for the same months, according to a report from the Canadian Climate Institute. The research group’s modelling shows if forests are left to burn as they have, the impacts of climate change — including wildfires — could cost the country thousands of jobs and billions in revenue.

The impacts are already felt in B.C., where lumber mills have closed after fire decimated their source of product. 

“Whole regions now have nothing but young trees. There’s nothing to harvest,” Gray says. 

If nothing changes, “those regions will start to expand. It will get to a point where the industry is done. You’re chasing guts and feathers across the landscape.”

According to the Canadian Climate Institute, the cost of wildfire protection has been climbing by $150 million per decade since the 1970s. Wildfires have cost provincial governments more than $1 billion in six of the last ten years.

Wildfires, to some extent, beget more wildfires. Severe burns can damage soil, making it more challenging for a forest to recover and leaving the forest more vulnerable to future burns. Forests that re-burn multiple times are at risk of transforming to new, less treed ecosystems. 

As fires burn they blanket the skies in heavy smoke and harmful particulate matter (associated with increased risk of health issues impacting the lungs, heart, cardiovascular system and brain). These pollutants contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, and trap heat in the atmosphere, worsening climate impacts like drought — which in turn makes forests more vulnerable to fire.

Proactive forest management can mitigate wildfires — and ensure sustainable harvests

In his 40 years of wildfire research, Gray says he’s starting to see approaches to forest management change — but just not as fast as they need to.

Historically, forest management has focused on economic returns, both in terms of royalties to the Crown and revenues for shareholders. 

“But if forestry is going to survive then we have to tackle the fire-risk problem, and that means doing very specific treatments in very specific places not driven entirely by economics,” Gray says. 

Gray acknowledges that might require compromises like asking companies to harvest less profitable stands for the greater benefit of managing fire risk. But Gray believes there are ways to get the best of both worlds, bringing profit for industry while helping manage the long-term risks.

Foresters choose stands to harvest based on age, health and vulnerability to natural disturbances such as disease or fire. Manitoba’s forestry department prioritizes harvesting older or damaged stands with “a high fuel load, so lots of standing dead timber or ladder fuel,” Doig says. Ladder fuel refers to dead trees or underbrush that help a fire climb higher up a tree.

“When you take an old, tall forest and make it into a young, short forest, fire behaviour changes dramatically.” 

That’s because older forests often have more timber that’s ready to burn — and more fuel creates more intense fires, Doig explains. 

Doig says forestry teams have recently started to prioritize stands closer to communities — even if they aren’t the most profitable — to help protect homes, buildings and critical infrastructure from fire.

“We’ve always tried to stay away from communities; the thought process is now changing a bit. We need to get closer to communities with our forest management activities to change the forest landscape a little bit,” he explains.

Gray says the forestry industry can also look to diversify stands while regenerating forests. Flammable conifers, which make up the majority of replanted forests, aren’t always good investments.

“The chances that the tree you plant today is going to make it to maturity in 100 years is pretty slim,” he says.

Instead, he recommends planting more hardwood lumber — like aspen — to take advantage of its fire-resilient qualities. A mature aspen stand can be significantly cooler and damper than surrounding areas while serving as a barrier against high winds. 

Doig says Manitoba has considered changing the forest composition, but it can be challenging. Jack pines — a big part of Manitoba’s loggable forests — grow naturally in deep sandy soil; aspen stands may not be sustainable in the same growing conditions.

The province is, however, studying assisted migration, a process of deliberately moving seeds from one area of the forest to another to understand and better predict how forest composition will evolve.

But the most important role industry can play in fire mitigation, Gray says, is transforming how it deals with slash — a term for the unsaleable trees, branches, deadwood and discarded treetops left behind after the harvest.

One hectare of harvested forest can generate between 50 and 100 tonnes of slash, Gray says, and all that woody detritus on the forest floor fuels hotter and more intense wildfires.

It’s standard practice for foresters to limit slash as much as possible; emerging biomass and engineered wood product markets have created more uses for the leftover lumber and more opportunities to maximize the economic value of forests. Manitoba is already looking for ways to cash in on those markets, Doig says. 

But in cases where that’s not possible — like forests that aren’t easy to access by road or are located far from processing and manufacturing facilities, “you basically need to start to burn the slash,” Gray says. 

“That’s the key strategy: thinning it and then burning it.”

In Manitoba, Doig says, the slash that can’t be brought to market is typically spread out on the landscape to allow nutrients to return to the soil and provide habitat for small animals while avoiding the risks posed by large piles of dead, flammable wood. 

But Gray says even slash that’s been spread out can be “hazardous forever” in a time of extreme fire weather. 

“Timber harvest just rearranges fuels, it doesn’t remove fuels,” Gray says. “All you’ve done is take canopy fuels, aerial fuels, and put them on the ground. You open things up, now things are hotter and drier and there’s no wind friction — so you just sped up fire.”

By contrast, a forest stand that’s deliberately burned after harvest becomes more resilient, he says. 

Grassy, herbaceous vegetation will grow back first, and in the case of a wildfire, will burn with less intensity than denser forest. Once replanted conifer trees are tall enough to close the canopy and shade the grassy material below, the stand is “sort of non-burnable for a while,” Gray says.

“I think prescribed burning is always a tool for consideration, but it’s not part of our plan, not part of our toolbelt at this time,” Doig says of Manitoba’s forest management strategy. Records show 42 such burns in provincial history, all between 1995 and 2015. 

Canadian Kraft Paper and Louisiana-Pacific did not respond to written requests for comment. The Forest Producers Association referred interview requests to members of the Wildfire Consortium of Canada, which was not able to comment on forest industry perspectives by publication time.

Experts recommend strategic forest thinning in Manitoba’s provincial parks

Outside of the logging areas, forest management activities are limited. Manitoba conducts forest health surveys and allows limited harvest, but Gray says provinces should take more active roles in managing its forests in parks and protected areas too. 

While the intent behind leaving swathes of forest undisturbed by industrial activity is laudable, “fire doesn’t recognize lines on a map,” he says. 

Nopiming Provincial Park was all but wiped out by a 359,000-hectare fire that started in early May. After more than 150 days, the sprawling blaze has consumed more than 70 per cent of Nopiming, along the province’s eastern flank, and portions of Atitaki Provincial Park farther north. As of early October, it is still considered an active fire.

All told, more than 260,000 hectares of provincial park lands have been impacted by fire this year — more than double the total area burned between 2020 and 2024.

Forest management in these parks is minimal, Doig says. Logging was banned in all but one provincial park in 2009, so there’s less attention to forest inventory and strategic harvesting, though staff do clear some sections for infrastructure, park expansion and other needs.

Gray says provincial governments can take cues from Canada’s national parks to better manage those protected forests. 

Industrial logging is generally prohibited in national parklands, but strategic forest thinning is permitted in some parks to reduce fire risk. Jasper National Park, which was scorched by wildfire in 2024, has allowed selective logging and prescribed burns to clear excess vegetation, especially surrounding infrastructure and townsites, since 2003. 

Riding Mountain National Park, in Western Manitoba, conducted 4,000 hectares of prescribed burning in 2024 and a further 1,400 hectares in April this year.

British Columbia has adopted similar practices in its provincial parks, Gray says. 

The key is that provincial governments need to take a more proactive role in protecting these natural resources from fire. 

“We cannot take a static approach in dynamic systems,” Gray says. More time and resources need to be invested in “getting out ahead of as much fire as possible versus reacting to it.”

Manitoba needs diverse viewpoints to shape its wildfire strategies: minister

Manitoba Minister of Natural Resources and Indigenous Relations, Bushie, who oversees both the wildfire service and the forestry department, says the early start to this year’s fires put more of a spotlight on wildfire mitigation. 

“As a good, responsible steward of the land … it’s imperative that we evolve when things change,” he says. “As much as I want to say we have policies in place, absolutely they’re going to evolve as the seasons progress. And if there’s added investments we need … I think we have to maintain that flexibility.”

Fire mitigation strategies were top of mind for Bushie and other Canadian leaders during the annual meeting of the Council of Canadian Forest Ministers in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador in June. 

The council released its Wildland Fire Prevention and Mitigation Strategy in 2024 after more than two years of engagement with political leaders, academics, Indigenous governments and industry. 

“Wildland fire management in Canada needs to be transformed,” the strategy reads. “This transformation can only be achieved by taking a more proactive approach to preventing and mitigating risks before they occur.”

To get there, the report stresses the need for a whole-of-society approach, with leadership from both governments and Indigenous communities often uniquely impacted by wildfire; more than 40 per cent of fire-related evacuations between 1980 and 2021 were in predominantly Indigenous communities. The report recommends increased investment in training, education and prevention programs, as well as financial incentives for industry.

Implementation is currently underway, focused on risk planning and community education before shifting investment to prevention and mitigation programs. 

Whatever tools the province ultimately chooses to advance its wildfire mitigation efforts, Bushie says it will need input from First Nations, rightsholders, industry, community members and other “boots on the ground” Manitobans.

“I don’t think there’s a one-size fits all brush when it comes to forestry management,” Bushie says.

“It would be irresponsible of us not to engage and have every idea on the table.”

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

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 B.C. Supreme Court justice has ordered a group of people blocking a logging road in the Walbran Valley on southern Vancouver Island to stop. The decision to grant an injunction to Tsawak-qin Forestry Limited Partnership, a joint partnership between the Huu-ay-aht First Nations and Western Forest Products, alongside an enforcement order is expected to set the stage for the RCMP to remove people from the area.This fight over British Columbia’s old-growth forests comes four years after the start of the historic Fairy Creek protests, where more than 1,100 people were arrested.

The Walbran Valley blockade began in late August and has prevented a logging company from working and accessing tools, equipment and vehicles on the other side of the blockade. Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones, who was at the forefront of the Fairy Creek protests, is one of the parties named in the court filing, and the only person to respond to the application. Others named include Will O’Connell, John Doe, Jane Doe and “persons unknown.”

After hearing arguments from both sides on Sept. 9 and Sept. 11, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Amy Francis concluded on the morning of Sept. 12 that “counsel for Mr. Jones has made no effort to explain or suggest that the protesters’ conduct is legal. This is because it is illegal.” “The court in such circumstances, has no choice but to protect the lawful conduct and business of the plaintiff, and to address the illegality of the defendant’s behaviour,” Francis said. “In these circumstances, I find the rule-of-law considerations must prevail, and the balance of convenience weighs in favour of granting the injunction.”

Five years after pledging reform, B.C. faces renewed resistance

On Sept. 9, while the Vancouver court was hearing arguments related to the injunction, The Narwhal visited what blockaders are calling Cougar Camp, where about a dozen people were gathered with tents and a sheltered kitchen area behind a fence made from rough planks of salvaged cedar. Inside the camp, a large sculpture of a cougar sat in the middle of the logging road, made from wood gathered from debris left behind by loggers. At the cougar’s paws were several small, hand-made wooden signs bearing slogans: “Defend the old growth” and “Protect the sacred.”

O’Connell was one of the people at the camp. He learned of plans to log eight parcels of land — known as cut blocks in the logging industry — in the Walbran Valley more than a year ago and told The Narwhal he had hiked the stands of trees in the valley multiple times. When he saw satellite images revealing logging had begun, he knew he would try to stop it.

“It was a wonderful clarity, because I spent five years feeling like there should be more I’m doing for the old growth,” he said. “I should be doing something because I’m feeling a continuous sadness for the loss of these places and the betrayal of the government, who is continually not acting.”

The latest conflict over the future of British Columbia’s remaining old-growth trees arrives amid the fifth anniversary of the release of the old-growth strategic review, co-authored by professional foresters. It warned “the priorities that currently drive our forest management system are backwards” and urged a “paradigm shift,” offering 14 recommendations to improve forest management in B.C.

The NDP government promised to implement them all. While logging has been deferred in some of the priority areas identified in the report, old-growth trees are still being taken out of B.C. forests.

O’Connell called the B.C. government’s failure to fully implement the review panel’s recommendations and continue allowing logging in areas identified to host old-growth trees “gut-wrenching.”

“There are greater travesties happening in the world than the destruction of our last ancient forests, but this is our forest, this is our backyard and it’s something we can change and we can choose to do it differently.”

This conflict sits at the centre of a complex relationship between First Nations, the B.C. government, logging companies and environmental advocates.

B.C. court hears arguments from both sides 

The request in court to stop the blockade at Cougar Camp was made by Tsawak-qin Forestry Inc and Tsawak-qin Forestry Limited Partnership to protect its permitted logging operations in the Walbran Valley from interference.

The company’s request said the Fairy Creek blockade “resulted in a significant breakdown in the rule of law” and warned the situation in the Walbran “risks spinning out of control again,” unless the court intervenes. 

A statement posted on the company’s website on Sept. 8 states the Pacheedaht First Nation Chief and Council, whose territory the cut blocks are on, consented to Tsawak-qin’s plans for logging in the Walbran.

“Our planned activity incorporates specific measures to integrate cultural and ecological priorities, including the protection of culturally significant trees, support for traditional bark harvesting and respect for Indigenous Knowledge,” the statement reads.

A statement from Pacheedaht Chief Arliss Daniels included on the company’s website calls the Walbran blockade “an unlawful obstruction.”

“Blockaders must immediately vacate the area,” Daniels said. “Our lands are not to be misused or disrespected under any circumstances.”

The legal representatives for both sides made their respective cases on Sept. 9 and Sept. 11 at the B.C. Supreme Court. On Sept. 9, following a call-out for support from the Fairy Creek social media accounts, around two dozen observers sat in on the morning proceedings. 

The lawyers representing Tsawak-qin argued the blockade was unlawful and undemocratic, preventing the forestry company from legal harvesting activities. The blockade put 11 forestry jobs and millions in revenue at risk, the lawyers said, at a “critical time” of year for harvesting, as the machinery can’t operate in heavy rain. Additionally, the company raised concerns about safety, saying a fire truck and emergency transport vehicle were inaccessible behind the blockade. At one point, the judge reprimanded a number of observers for laughing when the company’s lawyers once more invoked the idea of democratic process, asking them to be respectful. 

A lawyer for the Tsawak-qin described the Cougar Camp as a “sophisticated, targeted and well-funded blockade” organized by the same group that carried out the Fairy Creek blockades.

Ben Isitt, the lead lawyer representing Bill Jones, argued in court the value of the forests for biodiversity and cultural survival outweigh the claims of economic harm by the logging company. The threats to life and liberty posed by climate change, the defence said, is a threat to everyone, with disproportionate impacts on the Canadian Arctic, coastal communities and Indigenous Peoples. In addition, the defence claimed Jones’s constitutional rights as an Indigenous person would be harmed, and that the ecological impacts to the forest would also cause harm to his cultural and Aboriginal Rights. 

Outside of the courtroom, Isitt described the court proceedings as an “uphill battle.”

“Case law in B.C. has moved in a disturbing direction, placing more weight on the interests of industry than on Indigenous interests and ecological concerns.” 

“In a planet that’s burning, it’s non-negotiable for Bill [Jones], protecting those forests. That’s the context for this dispute,” Isitt said. “And ultimately, we need the province to step in and honour its commitments.” 

In her decision Justice Francis said the case is “not about the wisdom of government forest policy.” “It is decidedly not about the court’s views on whether and where old-growth logging should occur in this province, even in the context of climate change, in an injunction application,” she said. “Those are matters outside of the constitutional competence of the courts.”

 At Cougar Camp, ‘waiting for the RCMP’

Meanwhile, under a pale grey sky at the camp, several people made coffee, planned meals and watched over a toddler. Others helped to build a small cabin to offer Bill Jones and other Indigenous Elders who might visit the camp a little more comfort than a tent or vehicle. By the end of the day, the cabin would have a split red cedar door and a small wood stove.

“We’re building this whole thing up and we’re here and we’re just waiting for the RCMP to come in and destroy everything we created in terms of a community and infrastructure,” O’Connell said.

Ahead of the court’s decision, the RCMP declined to comment on a timeline for enforcing the injunction and did not immediately respond to questions about what enforcing the injunction would look like.

The RCMP’s enforcement of injunctions against the Fairy Creek blockades was criticized by its own watchdog agency, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission. RCMP officers took “frequent unreasonable actions” during the Fairy Creek blockades, according to the commission’s 2024 report, and used “disproportionately intrusive” methods while enforcing the injunction.

“The commission is concerned about similarly broad and intrusive strategies being implemented during future protests, leading to similarly unreasonable searches and arrests,” the report concluded.

The RCMP did not immediately respond to questions about whether any actions or changes had been undertaken in its approach to enforcing injunctions since the report was released.

In court, the defence argued the injunction filed by the logging company is too broad, putting the safety and civil liberties of people at the blockade at risk. They argued the injunction area should only apply to the forestry tenure, and that a police enforcement order was unnecessary given the small number of people at the camp. Speaking outside the courtroom, Isitt warned “there’s a very high risk that the police will act with disregard for people’s basic human rights, as they did at Fairy Creek. So, if the judge feels she must issue an order, the terms need to be narrow, need to be carefully fashioned, to limit the risk of police abuse to the greatest extent possible.” 

One of Tsawak-qin’s lawyers dismissed this concern, telling the court, “The police are accountable, and there are methods for keeping them accountable.”“Blockaders seek to avoid accountability for their unlawful acts, for taking matters into their own hands when they have a concern with public policy,” the company’s lawyer said.

Francis granted an enforcement order, but denied a clause that would have empowered the police to take “any action that is reasonably necessary to prevent persons from contravening any provision of this order.”“I am very reluctant to endow the police with extra enforcement powers beyond those that were granted in the Teal Cedar injunction application,” she said referring to the injunction from the Fairy Creek blockade.

O’Connell recalled once thinking the Fairy Creek blockades could turn the tide. But the hope that blocking logging roads will actually save ancient trees has receded to a trickle.

“We all did everything we could,” he told The Narwhal. “It’s just hard to be here expecting to lose and still doing it.”

— With files from Zoë Yunker, Michelle Cyca and Lindsay Sample

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We got rain — so our drought concerns are over, right?

It’s something we hear from readers, family and friends all the time. It’s a fair question. Drought warnings are becoming more common across Canada, and when we get a wet day, week or even month, we may think — or hope — that it’s solved the drought issue. But drought can be a compounding problem, even after the cool relief of rain.

It’s an issue affecting forests, grasslands and coasts. According to the Canadian drought monitor, 71 per cent of the country was in drought as of July 31 and most of Canada had below-average precipitation in July. The government of British Columbia reported snowpack in May was 71 per cent of normal, but by June, that plummeted to 13 per cent of normal, with some areas at zero per cent of normal.

While some areas of Canada have received more rain than normal lately, others are receiving starkly less — like southwestern Saskatchewan, which received less than 25 per cent of typical rainfall in June. Several areas in the province have declared agricultural states of emergency.

Water scarcity is already an increasing risk, and even more pressures are growing. Donald Trump has called Canada a “very large faucet” that could be used to mitigate water shortages in the United States. And companies like Bell Canada are looking to open artificial intelligence (AI) data centres, which guzzle an incredible amount of drinking water, sometimes millions of litres in a single day for large centres.

Many Canadians may be surprised to hear they have no enshrined right to clean water. Residents of Glade, a small B.C. community, mounted a legal challenge against private logging near their water supply, and in 2019 a B.C. Supreme Court judge concluded they did not have any inherent right to this natural resource.

“Do you have a right to clean water?” Justice Mark McEwan said in court. “I’d suggest you don’t. There just is nowhere in the law where you can look and say, ‘There it is — there’s my right, I have a right to clean water.’ ” Canada recognized the UN declaration on the human right to safe drinking water and basic sanitation in 2012, but that is not a legally binding protection.

Many interests want to pull from Canada’s water — while drought already has caused major ecosystem and economic losses.

Crop insurance payouts in Canada ballooned in the past few years, ranging from $3.5 billion to $4.9 billion between 2021 and 2024. For the decade before that, between 2010 to 2020, payouts ranged from $77 million to $1.7 billion. Farmers in the Atlantic provinces have said this year’s drought is the worst in recent memory, decimating both their crops and their livelihoods. 

Drought can also interfere with hydroelectricity generation, making electricity more expensive — B.C. and Manitoba had to import power in 2024 due to low reservoir levels.

Drought isn’t only lack of rain — it’s about water in soil and waterways, and impacts of industrial activity

Drought can’t only be understood in terms of lack of rain — it’s how water is functioning in the whole system, Younes Alila, professor in the University of British Columbia’s department of forest resources management, previously told The Narwhal. In a recent short documentary, Trouble in the Headwaters, he explains how logging has contributed to increased risk of flood and drought by removing tree cover that keeps the ground moist and cool, moderating the speed of melting snow.

“When the snowmelt’s slower, it has a chance to infiltrate into the soil, recharging the groundwater,” he explains in the film.

Without trees, water can rush down slopes, causing flooding and landslides, he says. “This is why we are going to be living under a heightened risk of flooding and droughts for decades to come — because by nature, the recovery is very slow.”

Many wetlands that retain water and mitigate floods have also been cleared for human development. That means soil is more likely to dry out, so it also doesn’t absorb water as well.

Hotter weather exacerbates drought risk by causing more erratic precipitation and earlier, faster snowmelts than normal — and the sudden flows can all wash away over the dry soil rather than getting soaked in.

It’s similar to pouring water on a dried-out potted plant; the parched soil doesn’t absorb the water, and it runs out the bottom of the pot instead.

Hotter weather is causing drought nationwide, posing health risks to humans and lethal risk to animals

As the climate changes, bringing higher temperatures and drier conditions, drought conditions spread and worsen. The impacts are widespread, even if they’re felt at different times to different degrees. 

It may be tempting to not worry about lower levels of drought, but the effects can still branch outwards. B.C. classifies drought severity by levels 0 through 5, going from normal to severe and rare. In the B.C. Interior, much of the area is at Level 2 drought, midway through the scale. But some rivers are low and warm enough already to risk aquatic life like salmon, which rely on cool temperatures.

When plants dry out in drought, it can mean less shade and shelter for animals like ground-nesting birds, as well as less productive growth of nuts and berries for deer and bears, or less lichen for caribou. That can force animals to move in search of food and water, sometimes to urban areas. 

Drought comes with human health risks, too. According to the Canadian Climate Institute, drought can degrade water quality and promote algal blooms — which are increasingly common in Ontario’s Great Lakes — and waterborne diseases. Meanwhile, dusty conditions can worsen respiratory problems.

Explosion of AI data centres will mean more industrial water use — including in the Great Lakes and drought-stricken B.C.

The push to build data centres across the world will put significant pressure on water supply — a Bloomberg investigation found that two-thirds of AI data centres globally are built or planned in places with high water stress. Much of that stress is due to other industries: AI currently uses much less water than, say, mining, but the race by Alberta and other provinces to attract new centres means the water they use is increasingly significant. 

In B.C., Bell plans to build six AI data centres, while Telus plans to launch an AI “factory” in Kamloops, touting the project as something that can bolster Canada’s sovereignty in the face of U.S. tariffs and threats of annexation. Bell’s first data centre is also planned for Kamloops, and the next in Merritt, both in B.C.’s dry Interior.

Merritt is in the Nicola watershed, which is in Level 3 drought. The nearby Coldwater River is having such low flows it is not meeting the needs of salmon, a 2025 study from the Raincoast Conservation Society and Scw’exmx Tribal Council found.

“The Nicola watershed is one of B.C.’s most vulnerable regions to the effects of climate change, particularly as it relates to drought,” Raincoast said in a release.

Meanwhile, in Ontario’s Great Lakes region — which provides water to 70 per cent of the province’s 14 million people — there are at least 108 data centres in the Greater Toronto Area alone.

Data centres use cold water to cool their computers — and they use immense amounts. One study projected global AI demand will withdraw between 4.2 and 6.6 billion cubic meters of water in 2027. That’s more than Canada’s entire manufacturing industry used in 2021. And demand is only growing.

In Newtown Country, Ga., where tech giant Meta built a data centre, the cost of water has soared, with rates set to increase 33 per cent over the next two years, and the county is on track to be in a water deficit by 2030, the New York Times reported. Meta makes up about 10 per cent of the county’s total water use every day.

In Spain’s Aragon region (home to about 1.3 million people and a bit bigger than Vancouver Island), Amazon’s new data centres are predicted to double the entire region’s current electricity use, and the company is asking to increase its water consumption by 48 per cent. 

AI has the ability to increase our efficiency and better monitor our use of natural resources — but its water consumption is on track to outweigh its environmental contributions, three professors from the University of Amsterdam recently argued in The Conversation.

These centres are draining groundwater while “the minimum needs of the world’s poorest to access water and sanitation services have not been met,” they argued, adding that Google’s data centres used over 21 billion litres of drinkable water in 2022, up 20 per cent from 2021. Each year, the computing power used for AI increases.

“We believe there is sufficient evidence for concern that the rapid uptake of AI risks exacerbating the water crises. … As yet, there are no systematic studies on the AI industry and its water consumption,” they concluded.

Unlike the European Union, Canada doesn’t have water use disclosure rules for data centres — in part because water is managed provincially, not federally. 

Communities, experts are already calling for industries to pay more for water

The B.C. non-profit organization Watershed Watch reported this summer that industrial water users in the province pay a maximum of $2.25 per million litres, a rate that hasn’t increased in a decade. In Ontario, the rate is just $3.71 for the first million litres, with commercial water bottlers paying an additional $500 per million litres. 

But industries use billions of litres of water — mining company Rio Tinto used 72.5 billion litres of water in Quebec in 2022 alone. According to the Montreal Gazette, businesses used 800 billion litres of water in the province in 2021 and paid just $3 million, a number the provincial government cited when it increased commercial water rates 900 per cent last year.

Watershed Watch suggests raising industrial water rates and using that revenue to support watershed security. It suggests that revenue could also go to developing regional watershed boards made up of “First Nations, governments, farmers, non-profits and other stakeholders to manage water locally.” 

The non-profit says B.C. sounds “like a broken record” telling residents to “take shorter showers and water their lawn less,” and that while these steps are important, it’s an “unserious solution to a very serious problem.”

“We’re not asking for a radical solution, just a responsible one. The status quo is failing our salmon, our watersheds and everyone who calls B.C. home.”

Prairie droughts add to wildfire and drinking water issues for Indigenous communities

First Nations disproportionately lack access to clean drinking water, and drought exacerbates the issue. Some First Nations have been left waiting years to get access to clean water. Tallcree First Nation in northern Alberta relies on spring runoff to pull water from a nearby creek, and it told the CBC it’s concerned when flows are low, it won’t be able to pull anything.

In 2015, former prime minister Justin Trudeau promised to end long-term boil water advisories in First Nations by 2021. As of July 11, 38 advisories remain in place. But the feds specifically define “long-term” as a single advisory lasting more than one year — so communities that experience many “temporary” boil water advisories for weeks or months at a time are not included. The federal government also does not track advisories in B.C. First Nations. 

First Nations access to clean water is a painfully long-standing issue, which has been condemned by multiple United Nations representatives over the years — and yet, some Canadian politicians are still opposing a First Nations clean water bill.

Meanwhile, drought conditions can also exacerbate wildfires, which have hit the Prairies hard this year. Almost 69,000 square kilometres in Canada have burned — making this Canada’s second-worst wildfire season on record so far. More than half of all areas burned in 2025 are in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

If that surface area was instead one of the Great Lakes, it would be the second biggest one behind Lake Superior and ahead of Lake Huron. If it was an island, it would be twice as big as Vancouver Island.

Manitoba had a dry spring followed by an unusual spring heatwave, contributing to the devastating fires that caused thousands to be evacuated.

Again, Indigenous people are being disproportionately affected by evacuations.

“This will be the largest evacuation Manitoba will have seen in most people’s living memory,” Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said in May. 

Government and industry have the tools to combat persistent drought

Last year, when Alberta was dealing with low water supply, Tricia Stadnyk, a professor of engineering and geography at the University of Calgary who studies hydrology, told The Narwhal Canada as a whole has ignored what’s coming.

“Oh, it’s Canada, we have so much water we don’t know what to do with it, we’re never going to have drought that’s so severe people have to move or can’t survive or we can’t grow crops,” she says, summarizing the common belief that massive, widespread water shortages can’t happen here. 

“It’s just unthinkable for Canadians to think about drought at that scale, but the reality is this is the future of the Canadian Prairies.”

“Unless properly managed, even Canada’s water supplies will eventually run out,” Stadnyk wrote in The Conversation earlier this year.

She calls for more data collection so we can forecast water flows better, and for improved cooperation across municipalities, provinces, Indigenous governments and the feds, along with the United States at transboundary areas. She says the current system has “fragmented oversight” and “privileged licences” for industrial users that shows “little care” for watershed health. She advocates for improved water efficiency by industrial users, along with people curbing their individual use.

“It’s time to challenge our wasteful ways and accept that even in Canada, water must be managed effectively,” she says. 

“The choices we make today will impact our children and their children and will literally mean the difference between them thriving or surviving as a society.”

A diary of drought

B.C. has been dealing with persistent drought since 2022. In April 2024, the province recorded the lowest snowpack since 1970. After a dry, hot summer, much of B.C. remained in drought even through the winter into 2025.

Going through the province’s 2025 drought updates reads as a diary of land struggling to grasp onto water:

• May 15: Significant 30-day precipitation deficits… rapid decline in streamflows… lowest on record streamflow for Kiskatinaw River in the northeast.
• May 22: [Snowmelt] is still tracking earlier than normal.
• June 5: Long-term drought risk persists in the northeast and southeast… Lake storage in the South Peace has not recovered from last summer.
• June 19: Recent rainfall has improved drought conditions in the northeast… but streamflow response was muted in some areas due to long-term dryness. … Chemainus River (Vancouver Island) approaching record low flows.
• July 3: Flows in the Similkameen are at a record low…
• July 10: Declining flows and rising stream temperatures continue to pose a risk to aquatic ecosystems in tributaries across the Okanagan and Vancouver Island.
• July 29: Despite near-normal rainfall in some areas providing short-term drought relief, long-term drought effects persist… reports of fish stranding on Vancouver Island.
• August 5: Flows in the Coquihalla River are at a record low for this time of year.

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Trouble in the Headwaters, a powerful 25-minute documentary by filmmaker Daniel J. Pierce, explores the root causes behind the devastating 2018 floods in Grand Forks, B.C. More than 100 families were displaced and millions of dollars were spent on flood infrastructure — yet floods continue to threaten the region. So what’s going on?

The film — which you can watch in full below! — follows Dr. Younes Alila, a professor of forest hydrology at the University of British Columbia, as he investigates the upstream impacts of clear-cut logging in the Kettle River watershed. With compelling field footage and scientific insight, The Narwhal presents a documentary that reveals how loss of forest cover has triggered a cycle of flooding, landslides and drought — transforming the landscape and endangering communities downstream.

“What is happening in the Kettle River basin is typical of what has been happening and will continue to happen for decades in other drainages across all of B.C.,” Alila told a crowd at the film’s global premiere in Victoria on June 12. Clear-cut logging in the Kettle basin, like elsewhere in the province, is extensive: two-thirds of the watershed has been harvested in the last 30 years.

“I think of the 2021 atmospheric river: the flooding of Merritt, the flooding of Princeton, the landslide on the Duffey highway,” Pierce added. “If you sort of pull on the thread and you look upstream, it’s the same picture in all of these places. The big Chilcotin landslide from last summer — if you look upstream across the whole Chilcotin plateau: dramatic forest cover loss. So, yeah, this is such a bigger story than we had time to get into in this film.”

Alila came to forest science in the 1990s as an outsider. From his experience in urban hydrology and as a professional engineer, he saw cracks in the way scientists have studied the impacts of clearcuts on floods.

Climate change is responsible for some of the increase in flooding. But decades of research by Alila and his peers suggests the role of industrial forestry is significant, and has long been underestimated and overlooked. He spent years investigating the problem with the existing methodologies and developing a new paradigm — one that actually accounts for how the cumulative effects of clearcutting are increasing the frequency of major flooding events in B.C.

His published findings, including a landmark 2009 paper, sparked heated debates in the pages of scientific journals. But Alila came to realize that convincing his peers was only part of the battle. After the 2021 atmospheric river that caused devastating floods in the Fraser Valley and elsewhere, he decided it was time to speak up — publicly.“I’m on a mission, and I’m advocating for what I think is the only defensible science that should guide management,” he said.

Alila sees hope in ongoing class-action lawsuits: people impacted by floods in Grand Forks, Chemainus and elsewhere in B.C. are suing governments and forestry companies, arguing that allowing overharvesting of trees contributed to the harm.

“I think we’re moving into an era of decades in B.C. where we’re going to see more and more of these legal actions against the forest industry and government,” Alila said.

As for Pierce, whose film was made possible with support from the Sitka Foundation and the Science Media Centre of Canada, he says he wants to see a massive investment in the health of forests across the country. “Right now, we’re spending untold billions of dollars, year after year, putting out wildfires and responding to floods and responding to these disasters — and the costs that are coming down the line are absolutely gargantuan,” he said.

If we put half that amount into restoring the ability of forests to reduce floods and mitigate wildfire risks, “not only would that pay dividends for generations to come, but we could put so many people to work in an effort like that,” Pierce said. “Workers need to see themselves in that story, and communities need to see themselves protected in that story.”

“Yes, it’s going to be a massive investment, but that investment will pay off, and it pales in comparison to what we’re going to be paying if we just keep doing the same thing that we’re doing now.”

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When Barry Timpany looks out his window, he can see clear across the Creston Valley: the mountains lined with trees and the valley bottom dotted with farms. He lives in Wynndel, B.C., a community of about 650 people. One day last November, he opened the local paper and saw a notice that a private logging company was applying to use forest service roads to access the Duck Creek watershed, up the hill right beside Wynndel, which supplies water to people’s homes, farms and a sawmill. 

Timpany was instantly concerned. Prior logging on private land had already left a large clearcut looming over Wynndel. He worried how logging would impact their water supply, especially because private lands are subject to less regulation than logging on Crown land. Other community members were concerned as well. But they learned there was little to be done — since it’s privately owned, members of the public have no say on how or whether it proceeds.

Wynndel is about halfway between Nelson and Cranbrook in the Kootenays in southeast British Columbia. Private logging is widespread in the region. Some communities have tried pushing back, but their efforts have run up against private ownership and lax regulations. After residents of Glade, a nearby community, mounted a legal challenge to private logging near their community water supply, a B.C. Supreme Court judge concluded British Columbians do not have any inherent right to clean drinking water.

Timpany says forestry has gotten out of hand, and the lack of management has led to forestry becoming a “corporate slaughter.” 

Timpany worries the impact on the watershed could be “devastating” to local homes and businesses. His farm has never had an issue with water, but he worries reducing trees in the watershed will reduce how much water it can hold and cause it to dry up.

And the operation is just one more example in the long line of frustrations he has with how forests are being managed in the province. Forestry companies and the government will “scream it’s about jobs,” Timpany says, but he’s not convinced. He points out many raw logs are exported rather than being processed in the province by Canadian workers. A study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives estimated that over 3,600 jobs could be created in B.C. if exported raw logs were processed here instead.

“They don’t give a flying farmer about jobs,” Timpany says. “They’ll shut down mills to mothballs, as quick as they can.”

Private and Crown land logging planned within Wynndel’s water supply

The Duck Creek watershed is 5,221 hectares, 854 hectares of which is owned by Blue Mountain Forest Land Ltd. and operated by forest management company Monticola Forest Ltd. Another 505 hectares are controlled by the Wynndel Irrigation District for the community. The rest — 3,827 hectares — is Crown land, licensed to Canfor, one of the biggest forestry companies in the province. Both Canfor and Blue Mountain are moving towards logging in the watershed.

There’s nothing community members can do to stop the logging in Duck Creek — but Blue Mountain was required to consult the public as part of its application to use forest service roads to access its land. Blue Mountain also plans to apply to build roads that would need to cross private property.

The Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship told The Narwhal a decision on Blue Mountain’s application is not imminent, and a decision may take one to two years.

Eddie Petryshen is a conservation specialist with Wildsight, a Kootenay-based nonprofit focused on protecting biodiversity and sustainability. He says the majority of private logging in the province occurs on the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island and in the Kootenays, due to land being given to settlers as payment for rail construction. The land was sold despite the fact that First Nations had never ceded it to the Crown, a legacy that continues to impact Indigenous Rights today.  

According to the province, five per cent of land in B.C. is private land, which amounts to 4.5 million hectares. Of that, it says just over one million hectares (or around one per cent of the province) is privately managed forest land.

‘No requirement for a sustainable harvest’ in private logging: Wildsight

Brian Churchill, branch board president of Wildsight’s Creston chapter, is also a retired wildlife biologist. He says private logging is highly visible in the Kootenays. He saw a piece of private land between Creston and Wynndel was clearcut this winter.

“Nobody knows who did it, nobody knows who owns it, nobody knows where the wood went to, nobody knows what the long-term plans are.”

Even without delving into the thorny issue of giving away Indigenous Peoples’ territory, private logging brings challenges to communities today, Petryshen says. Private logging is not subject to annual allowable cut, stumpage fees or restoration measures that logging on Crown land is. The Private Managed Forest Land Act regulates private logging, and critics like Petryshen say it lacks environmental protections.

“There’s no requirement for a sustainable harvest,” Petryshen says. “They can harvest as much as they want.” He says it’s easy to switch the land designation when they want to sell it — meaning that for a fee, the land previously meant to be kept as forest can easily be switched to land to be sold for other purposes like real estate.

“It’s a strip and flip mentality.” 

This is Petryshen’s biggest concern. Forests can regenerate, even if restoration isn’t the best — but when the land is converted for other uses, the forest is gone forever.

“There’s just a lack of regulation and a lack of protection for downstream communities,” Petryshen says. “It makes Crown land logging look very good, and that is something that scares me.”

‘It’s not logging anymore, it’s just deforestation’

The big clearcut that looms over Wynndel was logged years ago by Mike Jenks, who has earned a notorious reputation among some B.C. communities for clearing forests on private land. 

“You can see it from all over the valley, this bald-ass mountain,” Timpany says. 

Timpany emphasizes he is not against logging. “I come from a logging family … But the way we log now is just deforestation.”

Stephen Aryan, a mechanical engineer who grew up in Creston, bought the land that had become “a highly visible scar on the landscape.” He’s been experimenting with an autonomous agricultural robot arm and practices to reduce waste and use less fertilizer and water. His sister runs a farm-to-table restaurant; together, the siblings create juices, wines and ciders for their business, Pippin Point. Aryan’s dream is to scale up their operation into a system they can share with others to make farming more economically feasible and less labour intensive. 

His other dream is to eventually bring back forest to the hillside and stabilize the landslides and water fluctuations caused by the clearcut.

The Blue Mountain and Canfor operations mean that trucks will be driving through a forest service road that already cuts through Aryan’s property. The dust they’ll kick up near the restaurant is not ideal, but is manageable, he says. He’s more concerned that the narrow, steep road won’t be safe for logging trucks.

“[The road] is serving residents. There are kids around. It’s not a road set up for adequately handling semi traffic, especially with blind corners,” he says. “In my mind, it’s inevitable an accident will happen.”

Aryan says he wants to support local loggers. He knows businesses are struggling to access quality trees — a challenge created by historic logging practices, which cleared out ecosystems and neglected to replant robust forests. “These companies are trying to make a living,” he says. “There’s an economic benefit to the area and all that. I don’t want to block people from having jobs. But it would be nice if it was done in a manner that still enables a forestry industry for generations to come.”

He also acknowledged that the state of the land he’s trying to revitalize, logged by Jenks, has put Blue Mountain in a tough position. “The very first major private logging [in Wynndel] … is very visible, it is very ugly, and it came with quite a few problems.”

Monticola plans selective logging, says water changes will be ‘minor’

Rainer Muenter, owner of Monticola, says he sees how the previous clearcut instilled distrust in the community.

“It is common that some logging contractors buy larger pieces of private land and then slick it, and that has happened to Wynndel,” he says. “But it’s not what we are doing.”

Muenter says two-thirds of Monticola’s operations is selective logging, and the company plans to remove 30 to 40 per cent of the trees in Duck Creek. “There will be changes, but they will be relatively minor,” he says, adding that they haven’t gotten that far yet.  

“We only have applied for road access,” he said, without providing a timeline for when logging was likely to begin. The long-term goal, Muenter says, is to manage the forest for generations. Because of forest fires in the first half of the 20th century, the majority of trees are relatively young.

Muenter says he has not heard complaints about the roads application, which he attributes to the fact most jobs in the area come from the Canfor mill, logging and farming. “That’s how everybody makes a living around here,” he says. 

In response to residents’ concerns about water, Muenter pointed to the 2020 hydrology report by APEX Geoscience Consultants Ltd., commissioned by Blue Mountain, which concluded the company’s plans to selectively log the watershed have “low risk” of impacting peak flows. It found moderate to high risk of impacts to water quality due to turbidity associated with landslides. The report concluded the company must also do an assessment of terrain stability or landslide risk. 

Muenter says Blue Mountain is part of the private managed forest land program, established under the Private Managed Forest Land Act. The program, which is voluntary, includes regulations on water like stream buffers — though critics say the environmental protections don’t go far enough. “We have chosen to become a managed forest,” he says. “The Ministry of Forests oversees us and comes for audits and inspections,” he adds, explaining that each managed forest is audited every five years.

Muenter said he hears some support selective practices, but he’s also heard opposition from others, who say to get logs out faster and not leave so many trees behind. “There’s a big crunch for trees,” he says. 

Ministry of Forests says it’s still working to modernize private logging laws

In 2019, the province announced a review of the Private Managed Forest Lands Act, but no amendments to the act have been made. The ministry said it is still working with the Private Forest Landowners Association and Managed Forest Council “to modernize the Private Managed Forest Land Program.” 

“Many of the issues raised during the review are being addressed through government’s work to make sure forestry supports ecosystem values – including through the $1-billion Nature Agreement – as well as reconciliation, wildfire prevention, local community benefits, and made-in-B.C. wood manufacturing and innovation,” the Ministry of Forests told The Narwhal in a statement.

It said private landowners are subject to inspections and legislation like the water sustainability act.

“B.C. is making watershed security a priority. The Watershed Security Strategy being developed by B.C. and partner First Nations will ensure that the province’s watersheds are well managed and resilient in the face of climate emergencies, drought and competing needs for water,” it said.

According to a Government of B.C. website, public engagement on the watershed strategy began in 2021. The strategy was scheduled to launch in the winter of 2023-2024 and begin implementation in the winter of 2024, but no updates have been shared since the public feedback period concluded.

B.C. doesn’t answer whether British Columbians have a right to clean water

The private logging in Wynndel also raises questions around British Columbians’ right to clean drinking water, as potential water scarcity in the future looms. 

“There just is nowhere in the law where you can look and say, ‘There it is — there’s my right, I have a right to clean water,” Justice Mark McEwan said in 2019, ruling against the community of Glade in a dispute with timber companies.

Herb Hammond, an ecologist and retired forester who lives in the Slocan Valley, assisted residents of Glade in their fight. 

When he thinks about the decision, he says, “I’m as disgusted today as I was then.” 

In 2023, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act was amended to recognize every individual in Canada has a right to a healthy environment.

The Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship and Ministry of Health did not answer The Narwhal’s question if British Columbians have a right to clean drinking water.

In a joint statement, the ministries said clean drinking water is “critical” and that there are regulations around treating water.

“If a person considers that there is a threat to their drinking water, the person may request the drinking water officer to investigate the matter,” the statement read.  

The provincial government has warned that worsening drought across B.C. can impact households and businesses. In 2024, the province recorded the lowest April snowpack level since 1970, following “persistent, severe” drought conditions that had gripped the province since fall 2022.

Beyond bringing water to communities, watersheds are integral to ecosystems. Tree cover in watersheds slows snowmelt so the land isn’t run over by floods and landslides, Hammond explains. Older forests are also more resilient to wildfires. They also provide habitat for wildlife like caribou. The Purcells-South herd of southern mountain caribou was once in the region but are now locally extirpated. 

Muenter says some management in the Duck Creek watershed is needed because “the fuel loads and the fire risk are high.” As well, the proposed roads could be used to get to the source of the fire and “protect the watershed from larger-scale wildfire, because we will be able to keep the fire small,” he says.

Speaking generally, Hammond agrees that selecting areas at high risk of wildfire and thinning between the trees can help — which means removing “fire ladders,” shorter trees that fire travels up to reach the crowns of big trees.

But wildfire prevention is “not taking the best trees,” he emphasizes. 

“Wildfire risk has been adopted by some people as an excuse to log,” Hammond says, but there’s no evidence that it’s an effective strategy. “There’s no such thing as fireproofing… You get the right conditions, and any forest will burn.”

Poor private logging operators leave communities fearing the next one 

Blue Mountain is “a pretty good operator,” Churchill says. To him, the bigger question is whether logging in community watersheds should be happening at all. 

He wants to see B.C. come up with a water sustainability plan to manage logging in watersheds. He also emphasized he is not anti-logging, the communities aren’t anti-logging — but he wants to see more public accountability and planning to address uncertainty around water supply.

Churchill and Petryshen also want to see an updated, more stringent Private Managed Forest Land Act.  

For small scale landowners, maybe the existing regulations are relevant, Petryshen says. But “If large landowners are operating industrially and at that scale, they should be subject to the same regulations Crown operators are.”

Timpany says “if we want to fight climate change, we need to leave forests to do the work they’re meant to do,” still managing them to mitigate fires and doing some logging, but avoiding clearcuts in key watersheds and increasing oversight of forestry operations. 

The trees are here “for all of us,” Timpany says. To clean the air and provide habitat — not make a select handful rich, he argues.

“There’s just too much greed.”

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“You have these 300-year-old bigleaf maples, completely draped in hanging sheets of moss and ferns,” Ken Wu, executive director the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance says. “Every single square centimetre is covered with moss — they look like ancient beings.”

Wu is describing a 13-hectare tract of old-growth deciduous rainforest, nicknamed Mossy Maple Grove, that runs alongside a creek just south of Cowichan Lake on southern Vancouver Island. 

“You have Roosevelt elk all through the area, big herds of large ungulates,” Wu continues. “And where you get large herbivores, you get large carnivores. So, you have the wolves and cougars in the area too, and spawning salmon in the adjacent stream.”

For more than 30 years, Wu has been working to protect significant and at-risk ecosystems. He says the grove and other small, fragmented forest stands on southern Vancouver Island represent some of the most “ecologically and culturally significant ecosystems in the province.” But because they are situated on fee simple — or privately owned — land, they have historically been some of the most at-risk.

That’s because private forests are subject to far less stringent regulations than publicly owned forests in B.C. According to Wu and others, lax regulations for privately owned forests threaten species at risk of extinction, Indigenous land rights, climate security and the economy. “It’s a much weaker system of an already weak system,” Wu says. “It’s closer to a free-for-all.”

Mike Ekers, an associate professor in the University of Toronto’s department of human geography, agrees. Ekers has researched B.C.’s forestry industry for the past 15 years and is also concerned about the lack of regulatory oversight and reporting requirements for private forests in the province. He says that provincial reporting dating back nearly a century has indicated that “forestry practices were much, much more egregious, much more devastating on private lands than they were on Crown land. And this has continued to be the case.” 

Here’s what you need to know about B.C.’s privately owned forests.

Where are most of B.C.’s privately owned forests? 

About 95 per cent of land in B.C. is called “Crown land,” though most of it is not covered by treaties and was never ceded to the Crown by First Nations. The remaining five per cent of the province — about 4.5 million hectares — is held in fee simple, or private, ownership. 

According to the province, just over a million hectares, or around one per cent of B.C., are classified as “private managed forests,” meaning they can be harvested for commercial purposes. Other private lands are designated as forests, but don’t have a “managed forest” designation and cannot be harvested.

The vast majority of private managed forests in the province — around 800,000 hectares — are on southern Vancouver Island. Set within a 32-kilometre-wide tract of land running north from the Saanich Inlet to the Comox Valley, these forests make up around one-fifth of the island’s overall land base. 

Most of the remaining private managed forests are in the Kootenays, while a small number are scattered throughout B.C. 

The origin of B.C.’s private forest lands dates to the early 19th century when lands were expropriated by the Crown for settlement, mineral exploration and the construction of railways. The most significant expropriation was 850,000 hectares of Coast Salish, Nuu-chah-nulth and Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw territories on Vancouver Island for the construction of the E&N railway.

How are private forests in B.C. managed?

Forestry operations on Crown lands are governed by the Forest and Range Practices Act, introduced in 2004, which includes mandatory regulations around 11 environmental, social and cultural objectives. The act is administered by the Ministry of Forests and requires forestry operators to produce comprehensive stewardship plans, consult with First Nations and local communities and report regularly to the provincial government and the public.

In comparison, most private managed forests fall under the more streamlined Private Managed Forest Land Act. The act was introduced in 2003 and is administered by the Managed Forest Council, an independent provincial agency comprised of five appointed members: two by the province, two by the private forest land owners and a chair appointed by the other four members. This act does not require owners to report publicly on activities, engage local governments or First Nations in planning or create stewardship plans. Reporting by private forestry operators is done via a one-page annual declaration form directly to the council.

While reforestation is one of five “environmental values” to which private forest operators agree to commit, it’s relatively easy for owners not to follow through, says Eddie Petryshen, conservation specialist with Kootenay-based nonprofit Wildsight. For a fee, owners can switch the land designation before they list it for sale — meaning private land designated as forest can easily be switched to land to be sold for other purposes, like property development.

“It’s a strip and flip mentality,” Petryshen says.

How have private regulations affected forest cover?

According to Wu, the most egregious difference between public and private regimes is that the latter have no prescribed harvesting limits. “You can cut as much as you want, as fast as you want,” he explains. 

With no limits to the volume of timber that can be harvested from private forest under the current legislation, Ekers says, “the old growth and the hyper-valuable timber that’s been protected through activism on the west coast of Vancouver Island has generally been liquidated” within privately owned forests. 

A 2023 map from Sierra Club BC showed 35 per cent of Vancouver Island’s old growth had been destroyed since 1993. 

While some protections have been achieved for Crown forests, these victories may have ratcheted up logging on private forests. Ekers points to Clayoquot Sound, where protests led by Nuu-chah-nulth nations ended most industrial logging on their traditional territories, which are called Crown lands by the province; in response, more pressure was put on the island’s private forests for timber resources.

Annual reports from the Managed Forest Council show a disproportionate amount of timber is harvested from private managed forests, which make up less than four per cent of the province’s harvested forest base. In the most recent report, 11.6 per cent of timber harvested in B.C. came from private forests within the Managed Forest Program. 

What environmental protections exist for private forests? 

Private forest operators in B.C. have five management objectives related to environmental measures such as soil conservation and water quality. But critics say these objectives are too broad to be meaningful, and far more lax than those applied to Crown lands.

“There are no mandatory old growth and endangered wildlife and ungulate winter range protections,” Wu says. “The private managed forest lands don’t have the stringency regarding soils and erosion. They don’t have the same road engineering standards. And they don’t have the riparian strip protections nearly on the scale of Crown lands,” he says, referring to the vegetation buffers alongside bodies of water that protect from erosion and runoff. 

In an emailed statement, a representative for Mosaic — an operator that manages 71 per cent of private forest land in B.C. — said the company’s forestry operations are certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, an organization operating in Canada and the United States that sets standards for forest operators.

But Ekers says the initiative’s standards are far less robust than other forest management certification systems, such as Forest Stewardship Council certification. He describes the sustainable forestry initiative as “more voluntary” and “much weaker.” 

“It doesn’t really do anything other than provide legitimacy for companies that use it. It’s greenwashing through and through.”

Is there anything British Columbians can do if they’re affected by private logging? 

Communities concerned about logging on private forests have limited options — even if the logging affects them directly. 

In 2019, the rural community of Glade fought logging in the watershed that supplied their drinking water, bringing a challenge to the B.C. Supreme Court. Ultimately, the judge sided with the logging companies. “Do you have a right to clean water?” Justice Mark McEwan asked. “I’d suggest you don’t.” 

In the town of Wynndel, a two-hour drive from Glade, community members are once again raising concerns about the water supply as a timber company prepares to log the area surrounding their watershed.

How are First Nations rights impacted?

First Nations whose traditional lands are held in fee simple title have lost access to important foods, cultural and spiritual sites and resources and been undermined in their efforts to effectively steward or assert their inherent title over their territories. 

Both the province and Canada have staunchly maintained that private property is off the negotiating table in land claims discussions, a position solidified in B.C. the controversial 2002 referendum. This has thwarted the efforts of treaty-seeking First Nations, such as the Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group’s five Coast Salish nations whose traditional territory was nearly entirely appropriated as part of the 1887 E&N grant. 

“After almost 30 years into the [treaty] process, we have not been able to come to any kind of an agreement on how to deal with the biggest challenge that we have in our treaty negotiations, which is the private land issue,” Robert Morales, chief negotiator for the treaty group, says.

Ekers says the Private Managed Forest Land Act doesn’t make provisions for cultural, spiritual or recreational values to be protected. “Nowhere in the act is there a policy or practice related to cultural protection, or the meaningful participation of Indigenous nations.” 

In 2008, the B.C. Supreme Court ruled that the Crown had a duty to consult and accommodate issues such as access to sacred sites, hunting and harvesting cedar and traditional medicines. However, that decision was not without caveats, according to Estair Van Wagner, a professor of law at the University of Victoria, who writes, “Judicial consideration of Indigenous relations with place has focused on the duty to consult and accommodate with respect to ‘Crown land’ … This emphasis has come at the expense of attention to Indigenous property relations in areas that have been largely privatized.”

What’s the future of private managed forests in B.C.?

Widespread concerns by citizens, municipal and First Nation governments, academics, environmentalists and outdoor recreation enthusiasts led the province to initiate a review of the Private Managed Forest Land Act in 2019. 

Public feedback indicated support for the program by private forest owners, but everyone else had concerns. Key issues were impacts to local watersheds, lack of accountability, First Nations’ access to traditional resources and spiritual sites and protections for wildlife, recreation and environmental values. The most common theme among comments was that the regulations did not do enough to protect the environment. However, no changes to the act have been made since the review. 

In an emailed response to a question about whether any changes to the act are forthcoming, a representative from the Ministry of Forests did not answer directly, but told the Narwhal, “Issues raised during the review of the Private Managed Forest Program are being addressed through actions, such as conserving more old forests, including through the $1-billion Nature Agreement and a new Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework,” and by supporting local forestry jobs through support for “made-in-B.C. wood manufacturing.” 

The newly re-elected NDP party promised to uphold commitments to the Nature Agreement and biodiversity strategy, as well as to implement protections for watersheds and old growth. However, it remains unclear if the Private Managed Forest Land Act will be amended. 

What about privately owned old growth in B.C.?

While B.C. once had 25 million hectares of old-growth forest, ecologists concluded in 2020 that just 35,000 hectares of the largest, most productive trees remained, disputing the provincial government’s estimate of 11.1 million hectares of old growth as “misleading.”

In 2022, private forest manager Mosaic introduced the BigCoast carbon credit initiative, which aims to defer harvesting on almost 40,000 hectares of private land, trading the timber revenues for the sale of carbon credits. The program is on hold pending a technical review, but for now, Mossy Maple Grove and a few other privately-held old-growth stands on Vancouver Island still get a reprieve from logging until 2057.

While BigCoast has come under some scrutiny for its ability to reduce carbon, Wu says the logging deferrals provide a much-needed opportunity to find a longer-term solution. “We don’t think that carbon offset projects are a surrogate for real protected areas. They can be a stepping stone to keep these areas under essentially a moratorium on logging until the private lands can be purchased [for the creation of] new protected areas, including Indigenous Protected Areas,” he said. 

And for private forests outside Mosaic’s management, it’s business as usual.

With files from Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood

Updated Feb. 20, 1:00 p.m. PT: This story has been updated to correct the size of the area in which logging will be deferred by Mosaic as part of the BigCoast carbon credit initiative. It is 40,000 hectares, not 400,000.

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 has been co-published with The Globe and Mail.

When I moved to Youbou, B.C., on the shores of Cowichan Lake in January, the first neighbour to come and say hello was Bob. 

He weighed approximately 800 pounds but had the curiosity of a kitten as he approached the fence moments after we pulled in the driveway. Word of Bob the elk had preceded him in this small Vancouver Island community. We knew who he was right away, thanks to the tag in his left ear. “Hey buddy,” I said as my husband took a video. 

Bob was not just any elk. At approximately 15 years old, he was about 100 in wild elk years. He injured his foot so badly a few years back that a B.C. government veterinarian examined him several times. On another occasion, Bob was tranquilized because he had a wire stuck in his antlers. He’d been featured on the local TV station and residents raised funds in an attempt to erect a statue of him in the local park. On the community Facebook page, residents regularly posted photos of Bob. People were quick to comment: “So cute.” “Bob is a sweetheart.” “I love Bob.” 

But it didn’t take long to learn the resident Roosevelt elk herd — listed as a species of special concern in B.C. — was a polarizing subject in this former sawmill town. “Everything you love, they eat it,” one of my new neighbours warned. Poachers have been known to shoot and kill elk here, sometimes leaving them whole.

Despite this, we couldn’t help but feel Bob’s greeting was something of a good omen. My husband and I had moved to this end-of-the-road community with hopes of a fresh start after hard times (think: three floods, a stolen car, an attempted break-in, a car accident and several more heartbreaking losses). It was Bob who had drawn our attention to our new home. As we drove around the area last summer, there was Bob, standing beside a “for sale” sign. 

A month after moving in, on Feb. 25, I was enjoying a slow morning reading in bed when my husband came upstairs and broke the news: “I think Bob might have been killed last night.” According to a Facebook post, a large male elk had been hit by a car near our house at 2:45 a.m. Everyone was worried it was Bob. By the afternoon, a photo of the dead elk on the road had been posted on the community Facebook page. Wendy Stokes — who gave Bob his name — confirmed it was him. Amid outcry, the photo was removed. 

When Stokes heard an elk had been hit, she got straight into her car wearing pyjamas and drove to the Lake Cowichan RCMP station, looking for answers. On the way, she passed Bob’s blood on the asphalt. Unable to confirm the elk’s identity, next she went looking for his body down a gravel road, in a place where highway crews often dump roadkill. But she couldn’t find Bob. 

The questions from the community were immediate: had the driver been drinking or speeding? Was it even possible to hit an elk if you were obeying the speed limit of 50 km/h? Where was his body? 

The story unravelled before me like a true-crime mystery, nature edition. 

I had my own questions about what had led elk to live here in the first place and why there wasn’t better signage warning drivers about them being on the road. And I wondered how many other elk had died in collisions. 

The night after Bob’s death, I lay awake and thought about him on the pavement outside my home, dying. I needed to know Bob’s story and what factors led to his demise. What did this community’s love for this animal tell us about our relationship with the natural world? And what could Bob’s death teach us?

The complicated history of Roosevelt elk in British Columbia

“Roosevelt elk are an iconic, genetically pure species of elk. They’re beautiful animals, they’re big and they’re co-existing across a human-altered landscape,” Leonard Sielecki, CEO of Wildlife Logistics, told me. Sielecki recently retired as the head of wildlife-vehicle collision monitoring and mitigation for the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, so I called him to talk about Bob. 

“There’s something about a Roosevelt elk: their colouring, the way their antlers are set, the way they present themselves, God, it goes right to the core of my heart,” Sielecki said. “They are an animal that people become attached to.”

Roosevelt elk — the largest subspecies of elk — were once abundant throughout much of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. But an ever-expanding human population and overhunting led to declines. Roosevelt elk were largely extirpated from B.C.’s south coast in the 1880s; by 1986, scientists estimated there were fewer than 50 remaining there. Conservation efforts, including translocating elk from healthier populations on Vancouver Island to the mainland, enabled the population to rebound.

The population on Vancouver Island also bounced back. Between 1981 and 2024, the Roosevelt elk population here roughly doubled, from 2,700 to an estimate of 5,300 to 6,300, according to the Ministry of Water, Lands and Resource Stewardship. But the vast majority of those elk live on the north end of the island, whereas Bob lived in the south. 

The resurgence of Roosevelt elk is a rare conservation success story, according to Adam Ford, an associate professor of biology at UBC Okanagan, who studies the impact of human activity on the predator-prey relationship.

“Most major wildlife species in British Columbia are declining,” Ford told me. “These are little bright spots in a very dark landscape. Taken as a whole, the whole Roosevelt elk story is a positive. It speaks to the resilience of the species.”

Roosevelt elk graze on a variety of shrubs, grasses, sedges and trees. They tend to live along forest edges, river banks, recently burned forest stands or clearcuts. That makes a place like Youbou, a community built around the logging industry, prime habitat for elk. 

According to Ford, a key change that helped Roosevelt elk bounce back was improved forest management — chiefly setting aside blocks of mature forest as “ungulate winter ranges” which act as mini protected areas where elk can find food even when snow covers clearcuts.  

In a 2014 management plan for Roosevelt elk, the province stated a goal to remove the animal from the blue list — a list of species “of special concern, vulnerable to extirpation or extinction” — by 2024, while recognizing that has “potential implications for the forestry sector, agriculture and public safety due to the risk of vehicle collisions.”

In my quest to learn more about elk, I sent a lot of emails, texts and Facebook messages. I tried to speak with provincial biologists, the local conservation officer, the local director with the Cowichan Valley Regional District and the Ts’uu baa-asatx First Nation, but wasn’t able to get interviews with any of them. 

A public affairs officer with B.C.’s  Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship sent me a statement saying the management strategy for Roosevelt elk will be updated in 2025 and their conservation status will be reviewed then, too. Staff update population counts every one to five years, they added, and elk populations have increased in most areas across Vancouver Island. 

Human numbers have increased too, with the population of Youbou jumping by 20 per cent between 2016 and 2021, and now sitting at 1,300 people. Residents of Youbou report seeing more elk in town since about 2010. 

While elk have lived on Vancouver Island for at least 12,000 years — and continue to be a culturally important species for First Nations — there are several reasons why elk may be seen in Youbou more now than in the past.

Predators like wolves, cougars and bears are less keen on being close to humans, so populated areas can become something of a “human shield” for elk. 

“Over time, if their survival in town is really high, because there’s no predators and people are feeding them, it doesn’t really create an advantage to migrate,” Ford said.

Then there’s the food. The ministry told me that in addition to shelter from predators, “the availability of non-natural food” is a key attractant for elk.

In recent years, Bob lost a lot of weight, and his ribs started to show. That, combined with his foot injury and familiar presence, created a slippery slope. Some residents started feeding Bob. 

It’s easy to see how once it began, it became hard to stop. In the first couple of weeks in our new home, Bob was waiting for us nearly every time we stepped outside. The first time we tried to walk to our mailbox, Bob cornered us in our driveway. It wasn’t clear whether he wanted us to pet him, feed him or hand over our phones. Not wanting to further habituate him, my husband snapped his fingers and talked sternly to him. Dejected, Bob walked away. Another time he followed me and a friend to the general store, where he headed for the loading dock. “Bob’s eating the cardboard again,” one of the store clerks yelled to the other.

“Feeding them can be bad for their health,” Ford said. “They get used to kind of a bad diet and their digestion gets set up for that … having respect for their wildness is really important.”

While some people admit to intentionally feeding Bob, there are also more indirect ways humans attract animals. The town of Banff, Alta., for example, has a bylaw restricting all animal attractants, from accessible garbage and recyclables, to fruit trees and gardens. The town also has a fruit tree replacement program that covers the cost of swapping a fruit tree for a native non-fruit bearing tree. 

But in Youbou, an unincorporated community within the Cowichan Valley Regional District, the garbage cans don’t have latches and elk can easily knock them over and eat whatever they find inside. And there are no rules about gardens or fruit trees to reduce the attractions for elk and bears alike.

Youbou grieves Bob the elk

Within days of Bob being hit by a car, tote bags, sweaters and mugs with his image were for sale. News of his death made the front page of the Victoria Times Colonist and the local TV station. Two weeks after Bob died, a memorial service was held for him. Torrential rains fell in the morning, but the sky cleared as about 45 people gathered in Little League Park, just 300 metres from where Bob was killed. Many people wore sweatshirts emblazoned with an image of Bob and the words “Youbou’s legend” on the sleeve. Among the attendees were a local RCMP officer and B.C. conservation officer. 

Youbou resident Matt Baird, who co-organized the event, started it off by saying how Bob helped bring him to this off-the-beaten-path community. 

“He had a soothing, yet fiercely powerful way about him,” Baird said, adding Bob would often come and visit his yard, eating from the trees. “After I knew that he was comfortable with me, I would go out and sit near him and enjoy his company. Often I talked to him, half expecting him to reply.”

Baird — a carpenter donning steel-toed boots — shared how when he moved to Youbou from Victoria, he struggled with anxiety, was impatient and sped regularly. 

“Being in Youbou and being around Bob and the other elk has a very therapeutic effect on you. Sitting outside watching and talking to him helped me and taught me to slow down and enjoy the nature around me,” he said, as many people wiped away tears. “I no longer feel so much anxiety. I’m a much more patient person. I enjoy the silence and the sound of nature. More importantly, I’ve learned to slow down while driving.”

For Sielecki, the former government employee responsible for reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions, “Bob represents a pinnacle in wildlife awareness.”

“He had a persona, he had a presence, he had an identity and he was part of that landscape,” Sielecki said, describing Bob as being like “the elder statesperson for the wildlife in your community.” 

“Bob represents a significant loss not just to his herd, but to the human community that he lived in,” he added.

While Bob and his kin are regarded as a nuisance by some in Youbou who roll their eyes at elk being given names, there’s no ignoring the fact he captivated many people here. “I have never heard of a community having a memorial for an animal before,” Sielecki noted.

At the memorial, Baird revealed he knows the person who hit Bob. “[He’s had] the worst couple of weeks of his life,” Baird said.

“It really could have happened to any one of us,” he added. “I was very angry at first, wanting the person to be charged with speeding or whatever. But I realized soon that that’s just a stage of losing someone that you cared about. It was an accident, period.”

The accident: when elk and cars collide

When humans and half-tonne foragers take up residence in the same place, you’re bound to have some conflicts. Just like elk love the fresh greenery in a clearcut, they are also drawn to gardens and the plants that pop up beside roadsides, especially in the spring. Grazing near a roadway poses a danger to humans and elk alike. 

For instance, in 2014, there were an estimated 87 elk in the herd that lives around Highway 18, which runs between Duncan and Lake Cowichan. Since then, about a quarter of the estimated population has been reported killed on the highway, according to data obtained via a freedom of information request. The province’s wildlife-accident reporting system recorded 23 elk as killed on the 40 kilometres of highway between Duncan and Youbou between 2018 and 2022. But wildlife fatalities are seriously underestimated. A 2016 study prepared for the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure found 66 per cent of wildlife-vehicle collisions were not captured. That means the actual number of elk killed could be three times the number reported. 

“Every large wild animal that dies on the highway is an animal that’s removed from that population of animals, it’s also removed from the First Nations food supply, it’s removed from subsistence hunters who are looking to put food on their table,” Sielecki said. (A small number of hunting licences for Roosevelt elk are awarded by lottery each year.) 

In fall 2019, two crashes involving elk happened within 12 hours on Highway 18, prompting police to issue a reminder to watch for wildlife. In one, a woman was killed and two other people were seriously injured. A year before Bob was hit, Lake Cowichan Mayor Tim McGonigle vowed to meet with provincial officials “before another fatality occurs and families are affected by that.”

At issue is how to reduce collisions between vehicles and elk in the region. It’s a surprisingly thorny debate over the merits of signage, the efficacy of lower speed limits and the need for higher-tech options. Before I knew it, I found myself flung down a rabbit hole, talking to expert after expert in the field known as “road ecology.” 

I connected with McGonigle the day after Bob was killed. He told me he has corresponded with the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure about elk collisions and is hoping to meet with the minister this year.

In September 2020, the ministry installed warning signs along Highway 18. These signs flash in low light conditions year-round and warn of elk for the next 20 kilometres. McGonigle said he gave the ministry a number of suggestions, including his conclusion the current signage is ineffective. “The more signs you have, the more you ignore them,” he said. “There’s no easy solution.”

He’d like to see an animal-detection system implemented — similar to those used on Highway 3 between Cranbrook, B.C., and Alberta. The systems use thermal imaging to tell drivers when wildlife is actually on the road, reducing the speed limit in real time.

Research backs McGonigle up. According to Marcel Huijser, a senior research ecologist at the Western Transportation Institute in Montana, the most effective option to reduce wildlife collisions is fencing with overpasses and underpasses. But if that’s not feasible, animal-detection systems can substantially reduce collisions. 

“If the warning is very time specific and location specific, then we see a response in terms of what the drivers do,” Huijser said. Static wildlife warning signs, he added, “are absolutely not effective.”

Huijser’s research has found the average cost of a vehicle collision (based on vehicle repair costs, human injuries and human fatalities) is US$45,445 for an elk and US$82,646 for a moose.

The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure told me it set up cameras from September 2023 through January 2024 to count elk crossing Highway 18. Despite the fact dozens of elk have been killed on that stretch of highway over the last five years, the pilot “recorded no elk at either of the two monitored crossing locations.”

In a statement, the ministry said “after a thorough evaluation” it concluded that elk fencing would not provide “effective ecological protection” on Highway 18.

In the case of Bob’s demise, the RCMP ruled out alcohol and speed as factors in the crash. Huijser’s research has found only half of people travelling at 60 km/h in the dark can see a moose in time to come to a complete stop. Add in rain and fog and we can’t stop as fast as we think we can.

When I asked Huijser how fast a car needs to be moving to cause serious harm to an elk, he had a question for me: “What speed are you comfortable with being hit by a vehicle?” 

After studying wildlife collisions for nearly 30 years, Huijser is frustrated with governments implementing ineffective measures.

“Driving in the dark in areas with large wild mammals is very similar to playing Russian roulette,” he said.

Too often, everyone loses.

‘I’m never gonna feed another wild animal again’

A week after Bob’s memorial, I sat down with Stokes  — Bob’s unofficial human guardian — at her dining room table. A set of Bob’s antlers that he shed in her yard hung above us. As her two rescue dogs buzzed around our feet, she told me she was still searching for Bob’s body. A few days later, she called me to say she’d found Bob’s body at a roadkill dump site, but his antlers had been cut off.

She said some people have blamed her for Bob’s death, due to her role in domesticating him. But others have dropped off flowers and condolence cards. She put a memorial up at her house, with photos and a wooden sign that reads: “R.I.P. Bob. You will be missed.” Another memorial 100 metres down the road marks the place Bob died and is a constant reminder to slow down. 

Bob’s death has given Stokes — and many of us in Youbou — a chance to reflect on our relationship with wild animals.

When Stokes spoke at Bob’s memorial, she didn’t mince words. “I fed Bob,” she said. “I’ve never kept it quiet.” While she’s sad not to see her constant companion any more, Stokes is crystal clear on one thing: “I’m never gonna feed another wild animal again.” 

She went on to describe how feeding him led to her being a prisoner in her own home for years. “Bob knew the sound of my car, the locking mechanism. I’d get out of my car and he’s right there.” Getting in and out of her house became difficult. She couldn’t even walk across the street to the coffee shop.

A new proposed regulation could mean a fine for anyone caught feeding elk and deer in an urban setting on Vancouver Island. “Let’s keep them all skittish,” Stokes said. “If I see people [feeding elk], I will report them.” 

For my part, after weeks of speaking to experts and locals trying to make sense of Bob’s death, I’ve started to come to peace with how the old guy left us. In the wild, an ailing elk would likely be killed by predators, and that’s not exactly a pleasant way to go either. 

When I think back on my limited time knowing Bob, I feel wistful. Some days I like to believe the way he graced us with his presence on our first day in our home really was a good omen, but other days I know he was simply a habituated geriatric elk looking for food. 

The very fact Roosevelt elk are a part of our communities on Vancouver Island is in itself a story of an animal brought back from the brink. 

“It’s just worth remembering that there are success stories out there and that we need to learn from not just our mistakes, but from our successes,” Ford told me. 

“Maybe Bob is both. Maybe what happened to Bob is an example of when we do things right. And an example of what we can learn from.”

In his life, Bob brought a sense of awe and wonder to many. His death has prompted a much-needed conversation about how humans and elk can share the same home. Many more elk will die on our roads this year. None will be as famous as Bob, but each one will be a life lost, and endanger human lives in the process.

— With files from Ainslie Cruickshank

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Last week, the Alberta government released a draft map outlining new buffer zones prohibiting new wind energy developments, saying “wind projects are no longer permitted in the buffer zones due to the impact of their vertical footprint.” 

Speaking to the media in late February, Alberta’s Affordability and Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf had announced the government’s plan to establish 35-kilometre buffer zones around protected areas and other “pristine viewscapes.” Neudorf added there is no universal definition of what constitutes a pristine viewscape, but generally refers to “areas that are unobstructed, natural landscapes.”

The buffer zones in the draft map encompass much of the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, extending as far east as Calgary. It’s an area dotted with oil and gas facilities and coal mines. Much of the area has been farmed or logged.

In other areas not totally off-limits, the government said renewable energy projects will have to pass through increased regulatory scrutiny in the form of “visual impact assessments.”

As Evan Wilson of the Canadian Renewable Energy Association has pointed out, the Alberta government’s new rules — from pristine viewscapes and beyond — apply only to the renewables industry. “Why is this something that is just impacting wind and solar?” he asked, speaking to CBC. 

Wind turbines have been getting larger, with towers double the average height compared to 20 years ago, and some new turbines stretching upwards of 200 metres tall. Other permitted activities are not as tall as a turbine, but that doesn’t mean they should be treated differently, according to the Alberta Utilities Commission. 

The commission, the regulator of power development in the province which conducted the government-ordered inquiry into renewable energy development, said in its first report any prohibition to “achieve viewscape protection” should be “industry agnostic” and “apply to all forms of development within the restricted zone.”

A spokesperson for Neudorf confirmed only new wind energy projects would be barred from the buffer zones, but said all forms of generation, including natural gas plants, would be subject to visual impact assessments in other specified areas.

Geoff Scotton, a spokesperson for the Alberta Utilities Commission, said the organization has no information on when areas off-limits to wind development will be more clearly defined and that it is “up to the Government of Alberta.”

With wind energy likely off the table in large swaths of the province — and new restrictions on solar farms in others — here’s a look at some of the things Albertans can still do in those “unobstructed, natural landscapes.”

1. Urban sprawl is continuing in Alberta’s draft ‘pristine viewscape’ regions

As the Alberta government seeks to create buffer zones around many of the Rocky Mountain national parks — extending as far east as Calgary — there has been no indication that construction would be stopped on new developments and urban sprawl. 

In Canmore — approximately five kilometres from the boundary of Banff National Park — plans have forged ahead for a massive new development that would take up almost all of its remaining developable land, nearly double the population and eat into critical wildlife habitat.

In Calgary, numerous new communities have been approved on the city’s outskirts extending west towards Bragg Creek. Cochrane too has seen rapid population growth — a 23 per cent increase in five years and much faster than officials had predicted — and now predicts “increased demand for land to support this growth.”

All of this means urban boundaries are likely to sprawl farther, into land that is part of the government’s buffer around pristine viewscapes and protected areas. 

2. Logging applications are ongoing in Kananaskis Country — now off limits to new wind energy projects

Kananaskis Country is something of an iconic outdoor destination for Calgarians and tourists alike — more than four million people visited in 2023. In Kananaskis, provincial parks are knitted together with public lands and recreation areas with varying levels of protection: some are off limits to most activities while others are open to industry. Just 60 per cent of the region is fully protected.

That means logging continues in the area — with cutblocks often earmarked smackdab in the middle of wilderness destinations. According to the Alberta government’s new map of buffer zones, no wind turbines will be allowed in Kananaskis Country, but the government has made no similar move to create a blanket ban on logging. Plans to log areas like West Bragg Creek, for example, are moving ahead. Canadian forestry company West Fraser Timber, which recently bought Alberta-based Spray Lake Sawmills, is allowed to log approximately 800 hectares in the area in 2026.

3. Investments in pulp mill is being celebrated by the government just outside of Jasper National Park

Farther north, West Fraser Timber also has rights to log a wide area along the border with Jasper National Park, and just days after the buffer zone map was released, the government celebrated investment in an existing pulp mill in Hinton, within the no-go zone for wind turbines.

“Our investment-friendly policies, competitive corporate tax rate and highly educated workforce continue to draw in world-class companies that can feel confident about spending their money here,” a government statement said as the new investments in the pulp mill were announced.

4. Coal mining is not explicitly prohibited under Alberta’s new draft ‘pristine viewscape’ plans

The eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains were the focus of much outrage when the previous United Conservative Party government tried to open up large swaths of them to coal mining in 2020. That decision was ultimately reversed, but a number of projects — essentially grandfathered in — were allowed to carry on. Coal mines are currently operating in communities from Grande Cache to Hinton, which are areas that overlap with the Alberta government’s new draft map of buffer zones around protected areas, with a large focus on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. 

In March 2022, the Government of Alberta decided four “advanced” coal mine proposals would be allowed to proceed despite a moratorium on coal development in Alberta’s eastern slopes. 

Those advanced proposals include Summit Coal Mine 14. That new project will be four kilometres northeast of Grande Cache on Grande Mountain, a forested peak popular with hikers, horseback riders and snowmobilers, that is within the new no-go zone for wind turbines. The mine would create a footprint of 53.5 hectares on the mountain and would involve 91 drill holes, creating an underground footprint of 512 hectares.

The Northback Grassy Mountain open-pit coal mine is currently being considered by the provincial regulator even after it was rejected twice in previous years, and new mining activities are underway at the Vista Mine near Hinton — both of which fall into the buffer zones on the government’s draft map.

5. There are no blanket bans on what landowners can do with their land, from RV storage fields to mega mansions

The Alberta government’s ban on wind turbines in buffer zones around protected areas and pristine viewscapes includes large swaths of private land. Landowners will no longer be permitted to agree to lease their land to a renewable energy company to build wind turbines — but they can’t say no to leasing it to an oil and gas company. 

The government has also made no moves to restrict other uses of private land: from building mega mansions to starting RV storage lots, both of which can be a common site along some stretches. Landowners must apply for the necessary development permits but face no blanket ban based on their impacts on the viewscapes or protected areas.

6. Drilling for oil and gas continues across much of the province, including in wind energy no-go zones

Oil and gas wells are a common sight on Alberta’s landscape, stretching from the mountains all the way into Saskatchewan to the east. 

In 2024, there were 328,436 wells in Alberta that had not yet been reclaimed. Approximately 157,000 of them are currently active and producing fossil fuels. 

The Alberta government has not announced any new restrictions on oil and gas development in the buffer zones now off limits to wind turbines.

7. Fracking is using increasing amounts of water in areas off-limits to new wind energy projects

The buffer zone is a hotbed of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in Alberta.

The major formations where oil and gas is held in tight, rocky spaces far underground all kiss the edge of the western buffer zone. This includes the Cardium formation, which extends the length of the zone from Grande Prairie in the north down to the U.S. border.

Fracking activity is sparse in the south, picks up west of Calgary and then intensifies dramatically moving north adjacent to Jasper.

As drought threatens the province, new drilling continues to be approved by the Alberta Energy Regulator — though some areas are facing the possibility of such an intense water shortage that fossil fuel companies have been warned they might be forced to cut back. 

Overall water use for fracking saw a 252 per cent increase between 2013 and 2022. Intensity of water use has increased even more, a 260 per cent change, according to the regulator. 

In 2022 producers used 25.4 billion litres of water for fracking.

Updated on April 4, 2024, at 2:44 p.m. MT: This story was updated to say the pulp mill near Hinton is not new, as previously stated, but will receive significant investments under a new owner.

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A controversial clearcut planned for a cherished valley in Alberta’s Kananaskis Country has been paused, following public outcry and the sale of the forestry company to B.C.-based West Fraser Timber. 

The forest was to be cut starting this winter, through a wedge of land in the Highwood Pass  surrounded by protected areas in a region where industry, recreation and conservation mix. 

“Following West Fraser’s acquisition of Spray Lake Sawmills, now known as West Fraser Cochrane, we decided to pause this year’s harvest plan for the Highwood,” reads a statement from the company. 

“We want to take time to meet with local groups that have expressed an interest in our planned activities.”

The company also said it intends to meet with Fisheries and Oceans Canada to discuss a controversial bridge over the Highwood River that was under investigation by the federal department.

The logging would have cleared approximately 1,100 hectares, the equivalent of 2,000 football fields, in a valley popular with residents of nearby Calgary, particularly as the larch trees dot the largely green landscape with explosions of yellow in the fall. 

Opponents of Kananaskis clearcut cited impacts on fish, waterways

Opponents of the plan cited not only the impact to a popular recreation area, but the effects of logging on creeks, rivers, fish and wildlife. 

Stand Up for Kananaskis, a group started to oppose the logging plans, points to the impact on fish species such as threatened westslope cutthroat and bull trout and say without adequate tree cover, water will rush off the hills, adding sediment to the river and destroying the natural water retention of the forest. It could result in more flooding, but also reduced flow in drier months — a key concern as Alberta faces down the likelihood of a severe drought this summer.

There was also frustration with the former owner of the logging lease for ignoring community concerns and for inadequate consultation.

West Fraser Cochrane declined an interview but re-sent the statement posted to its website. 

“As a new owner, we wanted to meet with community groups that were reaching out to us and hear directly from them,” spokesperson ​​Joyce Wagenaar wrote in response to follow-up questions from The Narwhal asking for more details. 

“That is the purpose of the pause. We are continuing to meet with groups.”

Becky Best-Bertwistle with Stand Up for Kananaskis, said they have not sat down with the new owner yet “after many emails and weeks of waiting” for a meeting, but they’re hopeful to have a conversation in the coming months. 

The organization is cautiously optimistic about the pause. 

“It’s more than we could have hoped for when we got together in August of last year to try and stop it,” Best-Bertwistle said, adding time will tell if the company is serious about public consultations.

Public outcry likely contributed to change in plans: conservation group

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, which also opposes logging in the area, had a meeting with West Fraser earlier in February.

“We do see this as a positive step,” Joshua Killeen, a conservation specialist with the organization, said in an interview. 

“We definitely think that they have made this pause in reaction to the amount of public concern and the amount of people contacting them about this particular cut,” he added.

Killeen also said it’s too early to tell what will happen moving forward, but that the company did seem aware there was considerable frustration with a lack of engagement in the past. 

“At least at a high level, they are willing to meet and to discuss these issues, which is a good thing,” he said. “But, again, it will all come down to what actually happens operationally and what changes will they actually be willing to make?”

The nearby Stoney Nakoda First Nations were also upset with the lack of consultations as noted in the company’s own management plan for the area.

The consultation office for the Stoney Nakoda Nations did not respond to a request for an interview by publication time.

Federal investigation also initiated as result of forestry activity

The bridge cited by West Fraser in its statement has been a source of conflict between the company and those who oppose the logging, with the former saying the work impacted the fish-bearing waterway and was done without proper permits. 

The company initially denied any wrongdoing, but Fisheries and Oceans Canada, which oversees impacts on fish-bearing waterways, initiated an investigation and signs went up near the site late last year indicating a new consultation process. 

The federal department said the investigation is ongoing but it is not able to provide additional details.

Killeen said the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society has conducted research showing the whole area is critical habitat for threatened bull trout so reviews should be required for any and all water crossings.

West Fraser hasn’t said it will forego harvesting trees in the area, but that it does want to listen to community feedback.

“We will work to incorporate actionable information that we garner through these conversations into our future harvest plans for the Highwood,” it said in its statement. 

Killeen said he didn’t get the impression the company would cancel the harvest in the area, but there could be some compromises, including a reduced harvest. 

“We still take the view that this area is such a sensitive area that this large-scale, clear-cut harvest is inappropriate, full stop,” he said. 

“It just remains to be seen how those conversations go with the company, and whether they are willing to consider taking this area off the books.”

Updated on Feb. 21, 2024, at 2:35 p.m. MT: This story was updated with a response from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, saying an investigation related to the logging activity is ongoing.

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In the midst of a biodiversity crisis that’s seen a dramatic decline in nature, there are concerns creative accounting could undermine B.C.’s conservation goals.

While the provincial government says it is almost two thirds of the way to meeting its goal of conserving 30 per cent of land by 2030, the B.C. chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) says the province inflated its progress by counting fragmented stretches of forest that may not have permanent protection.

“It is crucial that the areas that we use to count towards those protection targets are effectively protected and effectively foster biodiversity,” says Meg Bjordal, the organization’s conservation research and policy co-ordinator.

Canada and 195 other countries committed in December 2022 to the 30-by-30 conservation target under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. According to the Canadian Protected and Conserved Areas Database, B.C. is leading the way among provinces and territories, having conserved 19.6 per cent of land in the province.

Most of that land, 15.5 per cent, falls within protected areas, where conservation is the primary purpose, such as in provincial parks or Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas. The remaining 4.1 per cent is considered protected by “other effective area-based conservation measures,” or OECMs. 

This is where things can get tricky. In these areas, conservation is not necessarily the primary purpose, but biodiversity is meant to be protected nonetheless. Examples include areas set aside to protect drinking water sources or recreational areas, a federal website explains.

Old-growth management areas, which are intended to conserve old-growth forests from logging, are counted towards the province’s conservation targets as lands conserved by other effective measures, according to a CPAWS-BC report released today. These counted areas cover about 1.5 per cent of land in B.C.

But the researchers found less than a third of the land within all legal old-growth management areas, which cover a slightly larger area of 1.9 per cent of land in B.C., is actually old forest. Most of the land they cover is young forest, the report says. 

The lack of actual old-growth in these areas is a concern Rachel Holt, an ecologist and independent consultant based in the West Kootenays, has been raising for a decade.

“I am pretty shocked by the idea that small, non-functional, non-old areas could be counted” towards B.C.’s 30-by-30 targets, Holt says. “We need to be doing honest, transparent accounting.”

In a statement to The Narwhal after publication, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Forests said “the province is actively improving our ecosystem stewardship practices as part of our commitment to conserve 30 per cent of B.C.’s land base by 2030.”

According to the spokesperson, the CPAWS-BC report is based on a 2021 assessment of conserved areas. The province has paused reporting of other effective conservation measures for the time being and is working on a new assessment approach in collaboration with First Nations, the spokesperson said.

Old-growth management areas don’t meet criteria for conservation targets, report says

Old-growth management areas in the Kootenay Boundary region are largely not doing what they’re meant to, Holt says: protecting old forests.

And though not always the case, she says there’s a tendency for old-growth management areas to be in places where logging is already constrained.

“What we find is a lot of small, narrow, relatively unproductive gully areas,” she says.

Other effective area-based conservation measures like these are meant to restrict activities that could harm biodiversity, offer permanent protection and conserve biodiversity.

Yet, logging and roadbuilding have been documented within the boundaries of old-growth management areas, the CPAWS-BC report highlights. In other cases, management area boundaries have been changed to allow for logging.

“Boundaries are frequently shifted to permit harvesting,” Bjordal, who authored the report, says. “Sometimes it’s big chunks of old-growth management areas and sometimes it’s little chips that chip away at them and then result in these heavily fragmented patches.”

Taken together, Bjordal says old-growth management areas don’t meet the criteria to be counted as other effective area-based conservation measures towards 30-by-30 targets.

Small forest patches aren’t enough to meet conservation goals, experts say

Experts and conservation groups are concerned about counting old-growth management areas as they currently exist towards B.C. conservation targets because small, fragmented patches of forests can’t protect biodiversity the way large stretches of intact forest can. 

Small patches of forest don’t offer sufficient habitat for at-risk species like the northern goshawk, which relies on old-growth forests for foraging and raising young.

The 2018 recovery strategy for northern goshawk, for instance, found habitat loss and fragmentation, largely due to logging, pose the “most imminent threats” to populations in coastal forests.

And, as climate change progresses, large areas of intact forest will also become increasingly important to allow for natural regeneration from wildfires and insect outbreaks, Michelle Connolly, a forest ecologist and director of the non-profit Conservation North, told The Narwhal.

Areas that are affected by wildfire or infestations of insects should not lose their protection, she added, because they still have value as old-growth forests. All the deadwood and snags that build up over generations are important structures in natural forests, she explained.

While Connolly says old-growth management areas have been effective in offering some short-term protection for old forests, she agrees “they are falling short as a tool to protect biodiversity.”

“Big trees are what’s actually in real trouble right now, so if they’re not protecting the biggest and oldest trees then [old-growth management areas] are completely useless because that’s the one thing they’re meant to do,” she says.

But alongside those big, old trees, Connolly says she wants to see more protection for primary forests — forests that have never been logged — of all ages. That could include forests affected by wildfire that might be younger but will one day become old-growth.

The Ministry of Forests spokesperson acknowledged in a statement that “many old-growth management areas contain more mature forests than old-growth. However, mature forests were included in [old-growth management areas] to capture larger, more contiguous areas.”

“The province is reviewing and strengthening [old-growth management area] management as part of its improvement of forest management across B.C.,” the statement said. It also notes other steps to improve conservation including the signing of a $1 billion nature agreement with the federal government and a new $300-million conservation financing mechanism.

B.C. has promised major changes to prioritize biodiversity, ecosystem health

For a long time, forest conservation was constrained by policies that put industry interests ahead of biodiversity.

“There’s been an entire art to making sure that these things affect timber as little as possible,” Holt says of old growth management areas.

More recently, the B.C. government has committed to major shifts in the way the province approaches forestry to one that prioritizes the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem health rather than timber.

Early last year, for instance, the province removed a clause in forest regulations that prevented conservation measures from unduly impacting timber supply. It has also released a draft biodiversity and ecosystem health framework for public consultation, that could lay the groundwork for new legislation down the road.

“I see a lot of positive words and direction that is coming out in the province’s biodiversity and ecosystem framework,” Holt says, “but then I see real clear examples of us not heading down that path.”

In its report, CPAWS-BC recommends the province undertake a review of old-growth management areas and amend its guidelines and rules to ensure these areas not only protect old forests, but also prevent boundary changes and industrial activity from happening within them.

“It’s important that we get this right and that the conservation tools that we’re using actually protect old-growth,” Bjordal says.

In a statement, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Forests said “as the province initiates more forest landscape plans, we are establishing clear objectives for developing permanent approaches to managing old-growth and biodiversity, climate change and wildfire risk. This includes incorporating [old-growth management areas] into long term strategies for old-growth management.”

Updated Jan. 30, 2024 at 1:54 p.m. PT: This story has been updated to include comments from B.C.’s Ministry of Forests. The headline was also updated from is counting to counted based on the government’s response.

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