New environmental report calls for BC Timber Sales reforms

A report from the Nelson-based organization Save What's Left calls on the provincial government to revamp BC Timber Sales and give it an environmental stewardship mandate.

The 50-page report titled Public Forest, Public Trust alleges that BCTS logs old growth forests, disturbs watersheds and interferes with wildlife corridors. 

BCTS is an independent organization within the Ministry of Forests that develops Crown timber for auction. BCTS plans and designs logging operations and builds logging roads, then sells the timber to the highest bidder.

The document lays out 24 such allegations, stating they are based on field verification by Save What's Left, on satellite time-lapse imagery, and on conversations with forest professionals and forest workers.

"This paper both outlines the myriad of problems with how BC Timber Sales operates and presents a new path forward," writes prominent environmentalist David Suzuki in his introduction to the report. "What we need now is courage by leaders to walk that path."

The principal author of the Public Forest, Public Trust is Joe Karthein of Nelson. He said the report has been reviewed and commented on by a half-dozen forest professionals and biologists. It can be found online at https://savewhatsleft.ca/bcts-discussion-paper.

Karthein's report follows a B.C. government appointment in January of an expert panel to examine the operations and goals of BCTS. The panel has not yet released its findings.

Two forest professionals are quoted in Karthein's report.

Forest ecologist Karen Price was a member of the province's technical advisory panel that mapped priority old growth and ancient forests, and recommended areas for priority deferral from logging. Price thinks BCTS' practices run counter to the province's old growth policies published in 2020 under the title A New Future for Old Forests.

"By logging the most at-risk big-treed and ancient forests in B.C., BCTS destroys the irreplaceable globally-rare ecosystems that it had committed to conserve," Price writes. "By clear-cutting old growth, BCTS fails to mitigate the climate crisis and worsens impacts such as flooding and wildfire. By logging primary forest after natural disturbance, BCTS decreases forest resilience and hinders recovery."

Also quoted is biologist and retired professional forester Len Vanderstar, who writes that BCTS manipulates the criteria for old growth mapping, logs conservation areas established through strategic land use plans, logs wastefully, and promotes the export of raw logs.

The Ministry of Forests did not respond to a request for comment on Public Forest, Public Trust.

The report's 24 recommended actions include:

• Shift BCTS’s mandate to include binding requirements to protect biodiversity, water and cultural values.

• End internal approvals within BCTS and require independent oversight for cutblock approvals and Old Growth Management Area removals by non-BCTS ministry staff.

• Require independent age verification for all proposed cutblocks containing suspected old-growth attributes before approval.

• Spatialize Old Growth Management Areas; in other words, fix their boundaries based on the trees they contain, rather than allowing the boundaries to be changed at the whim of BCTS.

• Tie BCTS logging approvals to performance metrics for ecological protection and community benefit, not strictly volume-based targets.

• Reform the professional reliance system by requiring external, arms- length audits of BCTS forestry planning, decisions and practices

• Ban the aerial spraying of glyphosate, a herbicide used to kill deciduous trees and shrubs that compete with commercially valuable conifers, and which is suspected of being a human health hazard with long-term exposure.

The report lists 13 volunteer groups calling for similar reforms to BCTS.