In May 2011, a resident of Meadow Creek, BC filed a complaint with the Forest Practices Board regarding the forestry practices of Meadow Creek Cedar Ltd. (MCC). The Board investigated and found that some of MCC’s roads, harvesting and silviculture activities did not comply with legislation.
In addition, some silviculture, protection and road construction practices were considered unsound. MCC did not implement recommendations provided in professional reports, including silviculture prescriptions and road engineering reports. This created unacceptable environmental and management risks, which, in the Board’s view, undermine public confidence in the industry and the professionals who work in it. MCC ’s allowable annual cut accounts for just 0.1 percent of the total provincial cut, therefore,the findings of this investigation should not be considered indicative of the forest industry.
In its ongoing audits and investigations the Board rarely finds licensees who do not strive to comply with the law and when it does, the licensee nearly always brings its forest practices into compliance.
In September 2010, Batnuni Lake Guides and Outfitters (the complainant) submitted a complaint to the Forest Practices Board that L&M Lumber Co. Ltd. (the licensee) was not seasonally-blocking motorized access to the road system in their Davidson Creek operating area (the Davidson). This caused the complainant to lose a key business opportunity guiding hunters by horse in a non-motorized area.
Since 1994, when not being used for industrial purposes, the Davidson road system has been closed every winter to motorized use by putting concrete barriers in front of the bridge at the start of the road. In 1997, the Vanderhoof Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP)formalized this practice by designating access into the Davidson as ‘semi-primitive, nonmotorized’(SPNM), and specifying that recreationalists, including hunters, could not use vehicles in the area between April 1 and November 30 each year.
In the spring of 2011, water from a trough located above Gilpin Creek, on the Overton-Moody Range Unit near Grand Forks, was released onto an unstable slope. The ground was saturated and a debris slide occurred, sending a significant amount of soil into Gilpin Creek. A local guide-outfitter found the slide and complained to the Forest Practices Board about the location and operation of that trough. The complainant was also concerned that some new fencing, built to block cattle access to the creek, was not wildlife friendly and that it posed a potential danger to deer and wild sheep.
In June 2011, the Stellat’en First Nation of Fraser Lake (the Stellat’en) asked the Forest Practices Board to investigate government approval of plans by Fraser Lake Sawmills (the licensee) to re-align and widen several haul roads through traditional Stellat’en territory.
The Stellat’en asserted that a major haul road would seriously disrupt traditional uses of their territory and that consultation and accommodation of Stellat’en interests by both the licensee and the government were inadequate.
While on the surface this complaint is about the adequacy of consultation, the Board found that much of the concern was about accommodation, particularly compensation.
Coast Mountain Expeditions (CME) submitted a complaint to the Forest Practices Board in September 2011 asserting that a recently approved log dump in Toba Inlet will impact its business.
Although the log dump will be operated as a forestry operation, the application was approved under the Lands Act. The Board does not have jurisdiction to consider Land Act issues and, as a result, cannot consider this complaint. However, the Board believes it worth highlighting the circumstances of this issue as an example of the problems that can arise when two tenure holders rely on the same resource for different purposes.
In 2011, a complainant experienced an unexpected loss of water and two floods. Concerned that his property, livelihood and the value of Twinflower Creek to his interests were at risk of harm from the cumulative effect of current weather, climate change, mountain pine beetle, and salvage harvesting, he contacted the Board to investigate.
The complainant expressed frustration that, under the framework of the Forest and Range Practices Act, it is the forest licensee that decides whether to proceed with forest activities on Crown land that could negatively affect values on which he depends, as well as his assets and livelihood.
This is the Board’s second investigation of a complaint about the effects of pine beetle salvage logging on this watershed.
