East Creek Massacre 2008

Report on East Creek & Klaskish Valleys on Northwestern Vancouver Island by Richard Boyce, Island Bound Media Works

From 28 April to 10 May 2008 Boyce and his climbing team conducted ancient forest canopy research in the East Creek Watershed, one of the last pristine temperate rainforests on the planet

Most of the old growth forest in the upper Watershed has been ravaged by clearcut logging, including creeks where the largest and most ancient trees once grew. Littering the clearcut are massive tree corpses: Yellow Cedar, Mountain Hemlock, Western Red Cedar & Balsam Fir

Right: Destroyed ancient cedar
Photo: Ryan Murphy

Soon Grapple Yarders will move in and drag the logs to the roadsides, devastating everything in their paths. The upper valley is now almost completely logged and the lower valley will be cut down next. The really big trees are still standing in an intact pristine rainforest, which stretches from the East Creek estuary at Klaskish Inlet . . .

Western Forest Products (WFP) will be moving in to replace Lemare Logging and they will destroy the lower valley . . . As far as the BC Ministry of Forests is concerned this is a done deal with no public process for approval. Along the largest tributaries, the final two waterways that flow into the lower East Creek stand a row of single trees

The fragmented strips of forest that are left behind contain the smallest trees, growing on the rock out- cropping between the soiled areas along the water- ways where the heaviest logging has occurred. The biggest fear of logging companies is that the public will find out what is happening on public land and put a stop to the madness . . .

WFP holds the ‘Timber Lease’ on the old growth trees in the lower East Creek Valley; it has no obligation to work towards and ecological standards . . .the old growth temperate rainforest of East Creek will be blasted for logging roads, the trees will be cut down, yarders will drag the logs across the watershed, and the ecosystem will be destroyed

Right: View over the logging road being blasted into the pristine lower East Creek Valley

Contractor: Lemare Lake Logging Co.

Timber holders: Western Forest Products, Interfor, Weyerhaeuser

Photo: Ryan Murphy

Note: Richard Boyce of Island Bound Media Works is a documentary filmmaker, environmental journalist and climber.
He has spent most of his life exploring Vancouver Island and is a founding member of Friends of Cathedral Grove.
As a certified Woodlands Manager (Forestry Renewal BC), Boyce declares East Creek to be an "eco crime."

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