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An International Flashpoint

Corporate Greed: the Downward Spiral

Corporate greed has led to a powerful international logging industry that extracts huge profits from its monopoly over the forests of British Columbia (BC). The result has been a shocking spectacle of degradation and biodiversity loss that neither corporate or government greenwash can cover up. Canada's downward spiral in protecting nature has become internationally known. In 2000 a German tourist took a photo of his friend on a massive stump in a typical industrial clearcut (right). This brutal massacre of thousand year old trees was carried out by Interfor (International Forest Products) in the Elaho Valley north of Vancouver, not far from the 2010 Olympics venue at Whistler. Today a handful of corporations control BC's forest industry, aided by corrupt laws which cater to big business over the needs of local communities and First Nations.

Interfor stump, Elaho Ancient Forest, 2000
Photo: Carsten Brinkmeier

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Some of the oldest groves of big trees in BC and the world grow in the Elaho and Sims watersheds, north of Vancouver, the notorious so called Tree Farm License 38. International Forest Products Inc. (Interfor) began clearcutting here in 1996, sparking an intense conservation battle that resulted in the Squamish Nation gaining more control of its traditional territory in 2005.

The greed of the international forest industry is liquidating the ancient temperate rainforests of BC. Ever more desperate corporate and government greenwash cannot conceal the horrific extent of the unrelenting deforestation and conversion into industrial cutblocks that is evident in any Google Earth view of BC (right). Singing Forest, Nimpkish Forest, Carmanah Walbran Forest, Pacheena Forest

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Roques' Gallery 2005 Forest Destroyers' Leadership

From left:         Steve Smith – Weyerhaeuser         Paul Wooding – Canfor         Ric Slaco – Interfor         Lafcadio Cortesi – Forest Ethics         Mike Bradley – Canfor         Jean Pierre Kiekens – Forest Leadership

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Big Trees as Commercial Products The BC government's contrived commercial sales motto "Super, Natural BC Means Big Business" was presented to the world at the Torino Olympics in 2006 on behalf of BC Wood, an international lobby group for wood products. Due to the forest industry's inordinate economic power in Canada, the battle to stop the extermination of the last giant trees has been all but lost. Co opted local governments also aid logging corporations in their unethical timber trade and even offer incentives to demolish the vulnerable big tree survivors.

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"A Single Oregon Fir"
Old postcard

The German proverb "Du bist auf dem Holzweg" means you are on the wrong track because logging roads are in most cases dead end roads".

How Dare They Do This the destruction of Pachena Grove using the slick forest industry lobbyist Linda CoadyLinda Coady, Weyerhaeuser Mac Blo careerist, after 20 years as a logging company executive became Vice President of the WWF's Pacific Region. She now Greenwashes for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics as Vice - President, Sustainability for the games. With the industrial extermination of the lucrative intact forests of Washington State, "Hoo Hoos" (a club for American lumbermen founded in Seattle in 1909) began buying up Vancouver Island.

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Weyerhaeuser clearcutting, Nanaimo
Photo: Ingmar Lee (Click to enlarge)

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BC Forest Massacres Crooked cronies are prevalent in colonial societies. They are unscrupulous figures in government and industry who use their leadership positions for personal gain, exchanging favours in making quasi legal fortunes from land grabs and resource extraction.Their eradication of the ancient trees and primaeval forests is to the detriment of First Nations and, ultimately, of all inhabitants of British Columbia. At the top of the long list of colonial oppressors is Trutch, a racist and a crook who committed untold damage to First Nations by stealing over 90 percent of the land deeded them by the first governor of the colony. Indigenous land owners in BC have never been recognized by the forest industry which plots with its government cronies, greasing all hands but those of most NativesOne does not have to go far in BC to see the results of the many decades of deforestation schemes by government and industry. Greenwash cannot hide the tragic loss of the ancient temperate rainforest due to commercial greed run rampant and shortsightedness.

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Environmentalist Paul George (founder of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee) and Adrianne Carr (former leader of the BC Green Party) took part in the Port Alberni blockade organized by Save Our Valley Alliance (above). This grassroots community coalition formed to enact its motto that "a healthy forest is a healthy watershed." They are demanding that the drinking water, wildlife, fisheries, recreation, biodiversity and old growth forests of the Alberni watershed be protected from forest corporations like TimberWest which operate with impunity in pillaging the environment.

The satellite photo taken in 1980 (right) shows the devastated watershed of the town of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. This is Green Mountain, once home to a thriving colony of Vancouver Island Marmots, a species that is on the edge of extinction because of habitat loss due to clearcut logging by MacMillan Bloedel, Weyerhaeuser, TimberWest, Island Timberlands, etc. Nanaimo's watershed is now part of a plantation forest managed with chemicals that endanger the drinking water of many communities.

Disgusted and disappointed, the members of the Arrowsmith Parks and Land Use Council (APLUC) find they have no choice but to join with others in the community and protest loudly against the continued logging in the Cameron basin near Cathedral Grove. They will be co-sponsoring the protest event with the Mid-Island Chapter of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee. OCTOBER 27, 2009

Big Trees as Commercial Products

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Old growth logs, Vancouver Island, BC
Photo: anon

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Cutblocks around Quesnel, BC, 2007
Photo: Google Earth

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Save Nanoose Bay Forest

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This biggest government give a way of wealth in history of the province TFL in Clayoquot Sound, originally given to BC Forest Products and later sold to Fletcher Challenge and then to International Forest Products, the Forest Minister of the time, Bob Summers, went to jail for accepting a bribe. Despite the scandal, this tenure was not revoked.

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Sooke Potholes Forest Destroyed

Singing Forest, Nimpkish Forest, Upper Walbran Forest, Pacheena Forest

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What can be done to save the endangered big trees of the Northwest Coast? In 1992 the European Union signed the UN Convention for Biodiversity and set 2010 as a target to reduce the alarming global rate of biodiversity loss. To attain this goal, the EU must implement a boycott of all products from old growth forests. Just as it banned the import of grizzly bear trophies from BC in 2005 and ended the mostly German market, the EU must stop importing cedar from BC.

Greenwash by the global wood industry attempts to suggest that its products are ethical. Yet the industry kills ancient endangered trees. Even in the Netherlands, a country where the love of ancient trees is pronounced, wood agents openly flaunt their commercial cedar products, such as the Arnhem dealer with his BC cedar planks and shingles (right).

Dutch cedar dealer, Arnhem, 2008
Webpage graphic

Singing Forest of Tenise Creek before destruction
Photo: Gabi Sittig

"The groves were God's first temples" William Cullen Bryant, A Forest Hymn, 1825. The murder of ancient trees that might have lived for centuries more can be seen as a sacrilegious act. Yet big trees continue to be cut down in BC and rare big tree groves of valuable biodiversity are destroyed for commercial wood products (left). Ecologist Glada McIntyre reminds us: "We immigrant races will not have the right to call this North American continent home until we have come to recognize, respect and protect the naturally sacred places such as the ancient groves of the Singing Forest."

Ancient cedar, Inland Rainforest, South Selkirks, BC
Photo: James Bergdahl

For many of us, entering an ancient forest of giant cathedrals is an experience of awe and wonder. These trees that are many centuries old, are our vital link to the past and future" Matt Lowe, Endangered Ancient 'Singing Forest'.

"Unknown to most people is the fact that ancient big tree forests, like those found on North America's temperate West Coast, also exist in the far Interior of British Columbia. In the West Kootenay region of southeastern BC, there are still remnants of ancient forests; cedars that are eight feet wide and pine, fir and hemlock trees that grow seemingly endlessly towards the sky. . .

The Singing Forest of Tenise Creek in BC includes a rare grove of ancient trees. It was the subject of a documentary film and an international campaign to save it from clearcut logging. In 1995 when local residents protested over the destruction of Singing Forest, the BC government served them with a SLAPP injunction which resulted in many arrests. Today the Japanese company that owns Meadow Creek Cedar Ltd. continues its unethical logging operations. There is no justification for the extermination of these ancient trees and future generations will hold the logging companies that commit such crimes responsible along with the BC Ministry of Forestry which allows this outrage to continue.

Singing Forest protest, 1995
Photo: Nelson Ecocenter

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"Those who see forests primarily as sources of fiber and are committed to the commercial development of the resource remain on the policy track laid down after the Second World War. The forest industry and the BC Ministry of Forestry continue to implement what can be called the liquidation conversion project, a set of policies aimed at achieving a controlled liquidation of old growth forests and their conversion into managed second growth plantations. Despite two decades of intense debate over forest policy, both harvest levels and the proportion of the harvest that is clearcut have increased dramatically since the 1970s. The busy air of policy innovation may simply mark the final stages of the elimination - conversion project, amounting to nothing more than a sophisticated symbolic politics that serves to contain environmental opposition" Jeremy Wilson, professor and author: Talk and Log: Wilderness Politics in BC.

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Nimpkish Tree Farm Licence 37
Photo: Western Forest Products

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Weyerhaeuser's ancient log dump, 2003
Photo: Karen Wonders

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Photo: Karen Wonders

Tree Farm License von MacMillan Bloedel (heute zu Weyerhaeuser gehörend) Nördlich Carmanah Valley, Vancouver Island Philipp Küchler

In 2003, outraged at the continued pillaging of BC's valuable old growth forests by greedy and irresponsible logging companies, forest activist Betty Krawczyk blockaded a logging road in the Upper Walbran Valley on Vancouver Island, close to the site of a Weyerhaeuser log dump (left).

Logging blockade, Upper Walbran, 1998
Photo: Richard Boyce

Save Upper Walbran Valley One of the most endangered ancient forest in BC is located in the Upper Walbran Valley on Vancouver Island, the traditional territory of the Pacheedaht First Nation. Protesters were assaulted by 15 employees of Hayes Forest Service Company and TimberWest in 1998 (above). See: Attack of the Contractors. At another protest, on 9 October 2004, about 500 people gathered on a clearcut in the Walbran to send a resolute message to Weyerhaeuser to stop logging here (right).

Protest, Upper Walbran, 2004
Photo: Jeremy Williams

Ancient yellow cedar, Upper Walbran, June 2005
Photo: Richard Boyce

Ancient yellow cedars clearcut logged in June 2005 in the ancient forest remnant located in the Upper Walbran Valley on Vancouver Island were tracked by the environmental filmmaker Richard Boyce to the stockyard of Errington Cedar Products (right), a cedar mill located in his own home town of Errington, not far from the world famous Cathedral Grove. Like all the hundreds of cedar dealers in BC, the company advertises that it has the "highest quality western red cedar and yellow cedar products in the lumber market today" and "a healthy supply of logs for foreign export."

The high commercial value of ancient yellow cedar trees has led to their near extermination on the Northwest Coast. The species can grow to 2000 years in age and has such tight growth rings that they can only be counted by polishing the wood and using a magnifying glass. All commercial trade ancient yellow cedars is unethical yet they continue to be logged. Filmmaker and Errington resident Richard Boyce documented the death of one 850 years old giant, cut down in her prime near the summit of Sad Hill in the Upper Walbran Valley on Vancouver Island (left). See how the logging company Teal Jones is pillaging this rare old growth forest: Clearcutting Gallery (Western Canada Wilderness Committee.

Ancient cedar planks, Errington, BC
Photo: anon

Muir Creek Big Trees

Almost all of the some 90 watersheds on Vancouver Island have been devastated by lumber corporations, most of them within the last 50 years. No industrial tree farm can ever replace the primordial forests that have been lost. Unbelievably, in 2007 the slaughter of the few remaining old growth stands continues. No government regulations restrict the unethical practices of the multinational lumber companies. The result is bad logging and the pillaging of the natural wealth of future generations.

Evidence is a massive log jam at the mouth of the San Juan River in Port Renfrew (right). This is Pacheedaht Territory and has never been given up by the rightful indigenous owners yet they have not benefited from the exploitation of their forests and the current scramble by TimberWest and other lumber corporations to turn over their tree farm licenses to property speculators and lucrative real estate deals (below).

Log jam, Port Renfrew, July 2007
Photo: anon

Pacheedaht First Nation Campground and R. V
Photo: Port Renfrew Community

Port Renfrew was named in 1896 after a British lord who planned to make it a centre for settlers. Since the logging industry began here in 1906, it has voraciously deforested the land. Scars from the brutal clearcutting remain carved into the landscape (above). This is the homeland of Pacheedaht First Nation (Port Renfrew Community website). The Pacheedaht operate a campground at the start of the world famous West Coast Trail. Only a very few giant trees around Port Renfrew have survived the greed of the forest industry, the most famous being the Red Creek Fir (right), the largest of its kind in the world. For more information and photos: Douglas Fir, Then and Now.

Red Creek Fir, 2007
Photo: Myklicious

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