David Broadland

Skene and Polanyi are right to warn Canadians about the logging industry's impact on climate stability. As their report notes, however, they too use "government's own underlying data". In BC, biogenic carbon emissions prematurely emitted to the atmosphere by logging don't even count in the government's assessment of provincial GHG emissions. 

Some of those biogenic emissions are recorded in the inventory, but they are not counted in the public reporting of provincial emissions.

Worse, only about half of logging-related biogenic emissions are even recorded—those related to decomposition of forest products, as well as an estimate of emissions from slash pile burning. But much of the organic material killed by logging does not make it into the government's calculations.

The Evergreen Alliance has developed a methodology for estimating all forest carbon emissions that are prematurely released to the atmosphere as a result of logging.

As well, the liquidation of primary forests and the attempted replacement of those natural forests with managed forests will result in a significant decline in forest carbon sequestration capacity in BC. The impact of that loss of the ability of BC forests to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is slightly larger than the impact of BC's carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

This report does not include that loss in its considerations.

The upshot is that the impact on GHG emissions from BC's biogenic emissions plus the loss of carbon sequestration capacity alone are larger than the emissions from Canada's oil sands projects.

This report is far too conservative in its estimation of the problem.

Hi MOD.

Hummingbird Lake is an unofficial name, apparently given to the lake by the logging company.

There is a slight overlap of the areas of old forest mapped by the Discovery Islands Forest Conservation Project and the priority deferral areas. I have written about this in British Columbia's Big Lie.

Great story Ben! It's weird that all the ministry has is a paper record. By 2006 they had the Harvest Billing System, which was completely digital from the start. I doubt the ministry has any useful record on the bonus logging at all. Or, if there was, it has been pelletized rather than digitized.

To give folks a feel for the primary forests these companies are cutting for pellets, Conservation North released a dramatic video today:

Forest analyst Marvin Eng has brought forward useful information, including updates on the amount of precipitation that fell in Lytton and Merritt, which has been incorporated in the story.

Marvin reminded me about the "Great Coastal Storm" event in early December 2007 which struck BC, Washington and Oregon.

Over a 2-day period in that event, Lytton recorded 139.7 mm of precipitation. 106.9 of that occurred on December 04. Yet the Tank Hill Underpass survived.

Similarly, Merritt received 36 millimetres over two days during that 2007 event compared with 31.4 millimetres over 2 days in 2021. Yet no flooding occurred in 2007.

Soon after 2007, logging in the watersheds above Merritt—the Coldwater, Nicola and Clapperton—all accelerated.

12 hours ago, Guest Kevin Hardy said:

During my career with the the forests ministry, I PLEADED with the deputy-chief forester and other senior managers to instil a post free-growing survey before mid-rotation to ensure we were not incorrectly projecting in computer models the growth and health of plantations to maturity without any reassurance that they were actually healthy and alive at the level of stocking assumed in timber supply forecasts. 

The ministry does have a grid-based forest monitoring program but this is inadequate for assessment of the true state of plantations after they have been declared free-growing between 8 and 11 years of age.  

As a consequence of extensive field work, I have seen with my own eyes many plantations that are dead or mostly dead from disease or insects that are still "on the books" as contributing to timber supply and  supporting the high levels of harvest.  And do not think for a moment that the most senior levels of the forests ministry are not aware of this problem — they have been aware of it for decades.

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for joining us and for your comments in your two posts. To help the ministry and political officials change their minds about the dire direction they are taking us,  I believe its vital for those with long experience in the ministry to give voice to their doubts. Thank you for coming forward.

55 minutes ago, Guest MikefromNorthVan said:

Let’s work together to figure out what the problems are and how to make it work, it’s good for everyone.

Mike, thanks for your comments.

I agree with you that we need to work together to figure out what the problems are.

After having spent so much time looking at satellite images of the state of BC's forests in the southern half of the province, and seeing so many photographs taken on the ground of the devastation that has occurred since 2010, I can't agree with you that what has happened is anything remotely like "sustainable."

40 minutes ago, Anthony Britneff said:

David: Is the naming of professionals something that you might consider for inclusion on the yet-to-be-launched Evergreen Alliance web site?  And do you agree that in doing so the outcome might produce positive change in the public interest?

Yes. I think a concerted effort needs to be made to obtain records from the ministry through FOI requests and thereby determine who approved what, and what was said by the companies and their foresters and the ministry officials who approved the cutting permits. The FOI process is not working well right now, so this will take some time and patience. I have FOIed communications for specific cutblocks (not related to the floods) in the past and have been shocked at the casual exchange of information between a forester and the District office involved. No serious questions were asked.

On 2021-11-20 at 1:13 PM, Anthony Britneff said:

I suspect some readers might be asking themselves, "Where does BC Timber Sales fit into this carbon accounting because they are responsible for 20 per cent of the provincial allowable annual cut?". 

BCTS doesn’t do the actual logging. It lays out the cutblocks, contracts out the roadbuilding and then auctions off the licence to cut. The volumes BCTS auctions, after they are cut and scaled, show up on the Harvest Billing System volumes under the name of the company which won the bid. We use a company's HBS volumes to work back to the total biomass that was killed to derive that company's emissions.

20 hours ago, Guest Trevor Goward said:

...the question needs to be asked how much industrial logging - in BC as elsewhere - has contributed to global warming and hence to the 2021 wildfires in the first place.

Thanks for your comments Trevor, and I agree with you completely on all counts.

As you may know I am working with a number of other people on a project that will examine closely how logging in BC is contributing to climate change. It's contribution is immense. When the premature release of carbon emissions associated with logging in BC are tallied, the numbers are staggering. As part of this project, which is called the Evergreen Alliance, we are calculating the contribution of every logging company in BC based on the ministry of forests' record of each company's logging activity. The list is very long and the total carbon emissions are sobering.

Below is a list of the top 23 logging company emitters, the total that they paid the Province for stumpage, and their associated carbon emissions. The methodology we are using (which is a work in progress) can be found here.

On the list are the companies that did the logging in the Coldwater and Similkameen watershed. What they paid in stumpage doesn't even cover the cost of the ministry of forests' operations required to manage logging in BC, let alone any of the damage done to communities like Merritt and Princeton. Nor does the list below account for the loss of forest carbon sequestration capacity—roughly 90 megatonnes each year. Compare that to the provincial GHG inventory's account of total annual emissions, mainly from fossil fuels: 68.6 megatonnes.

These are the companies that brought BC to its knees last week, and not just by creating the conditions on the ground that led to forest fires, flooding and transportation infrastructure damage. Their operations are also responsible for moving carbon stored in forests back into the atmosphere much more quickly than would have occurred naturally. To respond to the climate crisis, slowing the release of carbon to the atmosphere is critical.

The Evergreen Alliance website will be launched on December 1st.

12 hours ago, Guest That was Liberal gov't era said:

Mr Broadland, much appreciation for encouraging ongoing vigilance, but how about talking about now?     You're citing a 2004 Vancouver Island Land Use Plan for that so-called deferral area on Quadra Island.   That was during the Liberal government's tenure, after they trashed all previous Forest Practises rules, as is most of what you're referring to here.

Thanks for the comment. With respect, you seem to have missed what the ADM said to the reporter: logging is allowed in old-growth deferral areas.

The 2004 Vancouver Island Land Use Plan was an initiative of the late 1990s NDP government; these things take years of planning before they come into effect. The provision in that plan that set up Special Management Zones (SMZs) was highly progressive at the political level, but what matters to the forest is what occurs at the operational level. In places like the Nahmint Valley and Quadra Island, provisions of SMZs have been mainly ignored by district offices, or interpreted in such a way as to give the bizarre outcome shown in the photo above.

The cutting amongst the grove of large, old Douglas firs pictured above was approved in late October 2017. The NDP were in power at that moment.

The provisions of SMZs are still largely being ignored by forest resource district offices—under the political leadership of the NDP—as was pointed out by the Forest Practices Board in its condemnation earlier this year of what has occurred in the Nahmint Valley SMZ, including under the NDP (see attachment).

You won't get much pushback from anyone outside of the mindustry that the period between 2000 and early 2017 was an unmitigated disaster for BC forests. But the disaster continues and changing political leadership hasn't been enough to make real change.

Forest Practices Board investigation into Nahmint Valley SMZ.pdf

14 hours ago, Guest Garbanzo said:

The 2.6 million hectares is also a misleading figure in that most of it could not possibly be slated for logging over the 2 year deferral period.

Thanks for you comment Garbanzo. Your skepticism seems warranted.

The ministry of forests says that between 2014 and 2018, an average of 55,556 hectares per year of old-growth forest was harvested. Using that figure, we would expect that another 111,000 hectares would be logged over the next 2 years without any deferrals in place.

111,000 hectares is 4 percent of the 2.6 million hectares that has been deferred. Would anyone actually notice if 4 percent of those 2.6 million hectares are logged over the next two years? We don't even have precise mapping that's publicly available that would show what needs to be watched over.

There's also, according to the report that set up the deferral areas, 2.4 million hectares of unprotected at-risk old growth that was not given any kind of deferral. If such forest exists, at 55,556 hectares per year, that alone would take 43 years to log.

In looking at BCTS's public account of upcoming auctions, it is apparent that it still has, as of today, lots of old-growth on its auction schedules.

The "red-faced outrage" expressed by the logging industry and its propaganda machinery appear to me to be more like "alligator outrage."

On 2021-11-06 at 8:34 AM, Guest Old time logger said:

The NIMBYS will NEVER be satisfied no matter where the loggers work or what they are logging. However, they don't mind the great selection of finished wood products at their fingertips.

First time I've heard "NIMBY" used in the context of the suicidal over-exploitation of BC forests. Not remotely applicable, in my mind.

Look, very little of what's cut in BC is actually used in BC. The forests ministry puts this at 20 percent. Federal forest scientist Dr Werner Kurz, working for Natural Resources Canada, recently put that at 10 percent.

As a logger, your life's work is mainly making it possible to export raw logs and pulp to China and 2x4s to the US housing market, not "finished wood products" for British Columbians.

You may feel entitled to destroy our life support systems for corporate profits and so that you have a job, but that doesn't mean the rest of us are going to ignore the damage you are doing. Of course we are going to try to stop you from killing off life on Earth. If you are an "old time logger" in BC, you have done more damage to those life support systems than any other logger on the planet.

1 hour ago, Guest BiF said:

Sorry,  you lost all credibility with the claim that old growth ends up in pulp mills.  This is a propaganda piece masquerading as investigatory journalism

BiF,

When logs go into a sawmill—any sawmill—what comes out are sawn or planned lumber, wood chips, sawdust and shavings. It doesn't make any difference whether it's an old-growth log or a second-growth log, an old mill or a brand new mill. Those are the immutable by-products. The ministry of forests' own data show exactly how much of the volume of logs that go into sawmills, province-wide, is turned into lumber, sawdust, wood chips and shavings. The schematic of "fibre flows" below is from the ministry's 2019 Mill Survey. The big green area on the left is the volume of logs that went into sawmills. Immediately to its right is the breakdown into lumber (45.8 %), sawdust and shavings (17.05 %) and "By-products chips" (35.2 %).

Note that all of the wood chips, whether they are old-growth wood chips or second growth wood-chips, go into pulp mills.

This seems to come as a surprise to you. That's why I called this story, "Teal Cedar's big, dirty secret". The mindustry have managed to keep this a secret from you, but it is what it is.

The logging and milling industry is an intrinsically wasteful industry. Since its main products are low value (wood chips, sawdust, shavings and the immense volume of logging slash and dead biomass left in the clearcuts), its always going to be economically marginal without huge, hidden public subsidies. That's why it's always in need of another concession or handout from the public purse (lower stumpage, more raw log exports, payment for removing logging residue, etc, etc).

3 hours ago, Rick Weatherill said:

I do not know of Victor Peters stand on felling old growth. I do know that Bill Jones is in favour of logging them, according to a Narwhal article....

Thanks for your comment, Rick, but you are mixing up the Joneses. This is easy to do. There is Teal Jones, the company doing the logging. There's a number of Pacheedaht families that have "Jones" in their name (no relations to the Jones family that runs Teal Jones, as far as I know). And there is the outspoken Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones who you credit with being okay to log old-growth forest. This is not true.

The Narwhal reported: "Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones has a different point of view that has garnered extensive national and international media coverage. He has welcomed the protesters to Fairy Creek, urging people to continue to take direct action to stop all old-growth logging in his nation’s territory. “I implore people to continue to stand with me to protect our forests from destruction and colonialism because we need allies on the ground to stop old-growth logging in my home territory, and for my future generations and relatives,” Jones says in an interview with his niece, Kati George-Jim, who is from the T’Sou-ke First Nation and supports the blockades."

The Mt. Hayes Fire very near to Ladysmith started in a clearcut just northwest of town on August 19. According to BC Wildfire Services tracking, its perimeter so far is almost entirely within clearcuts and plantations. A short distance to the west is a gas plant (white tank in image below) and a short distance to the east is Ladysmith. Hopefully BCWS will be able to get the fire out quickly.

8 hours ago, Guest Don Heppner said:

 I agree that most of the hazard is due to logging and the resulting plantations, etc.  However there is a lot of dead fuel in our forests due to the pine beetle that I am certain is significant.

Thanks for your comments Don. I hear what you are saying and I trust your judgment.

I didn’t include satellite images from before and after a fire to show what happens on the ground, but these provide valuable insight into what is burning and what is surviving in these large fires. For example, I have assembled before and after images of an area of the 192,000-hectare 2017 Elephant Hill Fire. Just south of Hihium Lake the fire burned quite intensely. The RESULTS-Openings record for that area show that almost everything had been logged before the fire struck. After the fire, almost everything cut in the last 25 years and then replanted, is completely gone or badly damaged. The few patches of primary forest that remained before the fire survived relatively well. 30-year-old plantations appear to have survived quite well, too.

What’s needed, I think, is for the ministry to conduct, in public, an analysis of what is being burned in these big fires and what is surviving. It needs to show us the results as well as the data it used to get those results. They can do that from satellite imagery, so it wouldn't be expensive. If the ministry doesn't do it, and soon, I know of some people who will.

Below are some images from the Elephant Hill Fire. Each is of exactly the same area. The top one is from 2011, just as the MPB salvage program was ramping up. It shows how much primary forest remained then (dark green). The middle image is from about 2019, two years after the fire. The bottom image is from RESULTS-Openings mapping and the red-shaded areas show what had been logged before the fire struck. The areas that are not red-shaded show what had not yet been logged. Most of those areas survived reasonably well. Click on an image to enlarge it.

On 2021-08-13 at 2:08 PM, Guest Sean Steede said:

There is so much I take issue with in this article - for example who ever said that the industry should be structured such that it only meets the needs of British Columbians?  If that were truly the case, we would have only 2 sawmills and well over 50,000 neighbors out of work in this province.  It's a ridiculous statement to make.  But the primary issue I have is the massive black hole right through the entire article - virtually no mention of the impact that the Mountain Pine Beetle attack is having on forest fire behaviors.  The primary reason BC will continue to face more and larger fires was already advised to the general public many years ago.  It is directly related to the Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) killing 65% of the mature Pine across our entire province between 2003 and 2013 before the contiguous stands of Pine were eradicated by the beetle and populations returned then returned to endemic levels.  Forest scientists in the early part of the 2010's were already warning of "aggressive wildfire behaviour" that should last roughly 10-15 years after the MPB attack and we are living this experience now.  Without significant attention to this matter, this article only serves to mis-direct the reader based on the writers own anti industry agenda.

Hi Sean,

Thanks for sharing your concerns.

I mention in the story that about 20 percent of what's cut in BC is used for BC's own needs. There are currently around 50,000 people directly employed by the entire industry. As you know, most of those jobs are on the manufacturing side of the industry, and those jobs occur in urban centres like Vancouver, Nanaimo, Kamloops, Prince George and smaller cities/towns. Reducing the cut to one-fifth would reduce employment by 40,000 jobs if no attempt was made to transition to value-added wood product manufacturing.

Non-destructive use of the forest could produce far more jobs. As a carbon sink and a natural carbon sequestration system, BC's forests are more valuable to the public than they are as dead wood exports to China, the USA and Japan. Same applies to the potential for forests as a resource for recreation, education, research, medicine and spiritual well-being.

As you know, the logging-milling industry shed 50,000 jobs between 2000 and 2019, largely due to mechanization and reduction in the availability of old-growth. That's in just 20 years.  You've already lost most of the jobs and you will lose all of them—including the potential for non-destructive forest-related employment—unless you change. It's past time to be relying on the we-can't-change-or-we-would-lose-jobs excuse.

I believe there is adequate description in the story of the impact of logging that occurred as a consequence of the Mountain Pine Beetle. The story acknowledges that areas logged under the beetle salvage logging program, including the large areas of non-pine logging that occurred alongside it, are playing a significant role in some of the fires in that those large logged areas now have a higher fire hazard.

But the ministry and the industry have long used the beetle as a smoke screen to obscure the extent of logging of live trees that took place at the same time. As shown in the graph below, over 60 percent of the merchantable volume of trees killed in BC between 2000 and 2019 was a result of logging. 30 percent of the volume lost was from Mountain Pine Beetle kill. 10 percent was from fires.

That's for the province as a whole. When you look at the numbers for the Timber Supply Areas currently being hit hardest by large fires, the impact of MPB logging was much smaller. The following figures cover the years 2010-2019 (the years of the MPB salvage logging program) and include MPB salvage logging, MPB sanitation logging and salvage of lodgepole pine killed by fire: In the Okanagan TSA, where the White Rock Fire is burning, 94 percent of the cut was unrelated to MPB or fire-killed pine. In the 7 TSAs in the Kootenay-Boundary Natural Resource District, about 98 percent of the cut was unrelated to MPB or fire-killed pine. Yet that area has many large fires this year, including Octopus Creek and Michaud Creek at about 30,000 hectares between them. Logging in the Lillooet and Merritt TSAs (several big fires) was 80 percent unrelated to MPB or fire-killed pine. Of this year's fire stricken areas, Kamloops TSA had the highest percentage of MPB-related logging. Still, 76 percent of logging there wasn't MPB-related or fire-killed pine. You can find all these numbers in another article I wrote here.

You say that scientists warned that aggressive fire behaviour would follow the Mountain Pine Beetle. Did those scientists warn that aggressive wildfire behaviour would follow logging of live trees, too?

I think it's past time to stop using the MPB epidemic as the mindustry's get-out-of-jail-free pass.

1 hour ago, Guest Jim Smith, RPF (ret) said:

David, your article is well researched and presented.  The fire map overlays are truly enlightening.   

As a retired forester with over 40 years of operational experience with industry, government and community forestry, I wholeheartedly agree with this article.  I have witnessed, as a fire fighter, the speed at which fire travels through a plantation.  One instance I'll never forget is hearing the "whoosh" of ten foot tall Douglas fir trees in a clear cut block explode and race uphill.  Its speed was astounding and very scary.   You don't want to be anywhere near it.  I know from first hand experience that our landscape covered with dense plantations is very dangerous when it comes to wildfire.  

Of course, there are many other issues that make the agricultural model of clear cut/plantation forestry wrong, as this article and comments highlight.   However, I know from experience that there are much better ways to manage our public forests.  Partial cutting systems that truly respect all the values in our forests have been available for decades.   They work!  The simple reason they aren't used is that industry, government and forest professionals prioritize short-term profits over the public interest.  For years many "real" foresters like Suzanne Simard and Herb Hammond, as well as First Nations, have been crying for change.  It's time to seize upon this "burning" issue of forest mismanagement and make a paradigm shift.   Intense public pressure is needed NOW to implement a much better vision for our forests.    

Jim, thanks for your comments. We need to hear from more foresters on this issue and I appreciate that you were willing to share your thoughts.

I am continuing to update the fire perimeter-RESULTS mapping and will add new and updated maps.

50 minutes ago, Guest Steve Cooley said:

Does anyone remember the picture of one log on a truck that was going through Nanaimo? It was spruce going to a speciality mill that makes acoustical instrument (guitars) sound boards. 

Yes, the log had been purchased (from an unknown seller) by Port Alberni's Acoustic Woods, mentioned in this story.

7 hours ago, Guest Michael Linehan said:

Please stop calling it "BC’s forest industry". That's just 1984 doublespeak, a la "Ministry of Truth", etc.  It's BC's LOGGING industry.

Thanks for your comment Michael. I hear you, but the components of the industry include more than just logging. More people in the industry are employed in mills of various kinds than in the logging sector. There's also people involved in different aspects of forestry, like tree planters and thinners, and so on. There's also the people who work at the "ministry of forests" who are actually working for the "forest industry." I have called it "the mindustry" from time to time. I would be happy to hear other people's ideas about what this forest-wasting machine should be called.

The map below shows the "old-growth deferral areas" designated by Order in Council in September 2020. Read the story about these deferral areas here: 

13 hours ago, Guest JOEY said:

A Forestry Consultation Revenue Sharing Agreement is a boiler plate Agreement signed by nearly every nation across BC. It gives us three per cent of stumpage for logging in our territory. 

We also have annual tenures.

 

My band has 110,000 cubic meters annually and we do what what Pacheedaht have done. Sell it to someone else to do the logging and we collect that money.

 

You're so dishonest.

Hi JOEY,

Thanks for your comment. I think you may be reading into my report something that wasn't intended. It is well known that the Pacheedaht have forestry agreements regarding logging on their traditional territories. The comments above are in reference to a specific agreement between the Province and the Pacheedaht that was initiated by the Province in response to the blockades. The Province bought the Pacheedaht's cooperation and attempted to silence any Pacheedaht who disagreed. This agreement was made just before Teal Cedar Products Ltd filed its application for an injunction.

I am surprised that you think getting 3 percent of the stumpage for logging in your territory is a fair exchange. Stumpage represents, on average in BC, about one-quarter to one-fifth of the market value of a log. In many cases it is far less than this. Bigger companies seem to know how to get stumpage down to the ground. So you are getting 3 percent of that one-quarter to one-fifth. That works out to between eight-tenths of one percent of the log's value and six-tenths of one percent.

Your First Nation owns the resource, according to Supreme Court decisions. Getting between eight-tenths of one percent and six-tenths of one percent of the value of your resource doesn't strike me as a good deal.

In the case of the Pacheedaht, the exploitation may be even deeper. According to the Province's Harvest Billing System, Pacheedaht Forestry Limited cut 16,925 cubic metres in its territory in 2020. For that they paid the Province $736,101.11 in stumpage. This worked out to $43.49 per cubic metre.

In 2020, Teal Cedar Products Ltd harvested 801,064 cubic metres. This was spread between TFL 46 and other forest licences the company has. All those licences are on some First Nations' unceded territories. What stumpage rate did Teal pay? It averaged out to $14.87 per cubic metre.

Why are the Pacheedaht paying $43.49 per cubic metre for a resource they own and Teal pays $14.87 per cubic metre for a resource it doesn't own?

From the outside, this appears to be just a continuation of hundreds of years of exploitation. Why are you settling for that?

For us ordinary settlers, we might want to check whether our wallet is still in our pocket, too. The stumpage collected by the Province doesn't come near to paying for the ministry of forests’ expenses. 

3 hours ago, Guest Northern Dude said:

I agree with your conclusions, but you've got a lot of details wrong about "treaties" and how government to government negotiations work.

First, debt from treaty negotiations is far less of a burden after the Federal government forgave treaty loans in 2019.

Second, the BC treaty commission has been stalled for years, and is not the preferred forum for negotiations for most First Nations in the province. A number of "reconciliation agreements," being stepwise and not final, and tailored to each First Nation, have been signed in recent years under both Liberal and NDP governments. These have transferred cash, land, and decision-making authority to First Nations.

Third, Horgan's reference to title holders is to the Pacheedaht First Nation and their request for protesters to leave. These protesters are free to continue to protest both the NDP and the Pacheedaht governments.

Hi Northern Dude, thanks for your comments.

You are correct that Canada forgave debt incurred by First Nations negotiating treaties in 2019. That did not undo the 30-year-long impact on First Nations communities trying to negotiate treaties at the expense of being able to address other pressing problems in their communities. The impact was cumulative and began long before treaty negotiations began, as you know. Forgiveness of the treaty debts didn't instantly make good the long years of financial repression. The debt has been built into these communities' physical condition.

Under those conditions of economic repression, who could fault First Nations that entered into agreements focussed on extraction of natural resources? The ministry of forests is the primary agency through which the substance of these agreements is determined.

With the interests of the ministry of forests and the interests of the forest industry being indistinguishable, such agreements naturally represent the interests of the forest industry.

No community in BC, First Nations or otherwise, is unanimous in its view of these issues. A part of the Pacheedaht community wrote a letter that asked protesters to leave. That part of the Pacheedaht were apparently influenced by the BC government to write such a letter. The roots of that letter were apparently created by the resource agreement the Pacheedaht have signed with Teal and the Province. Other members of the Pacheedaht have welcomed the efforts to protect old-growth forest in Pacheedaht territory.

We don't know the details of the agreement between the Pacheedaht, Teal and the ministry of forests. The ministry's Harvest Billing System shows no volume going to the Pacheedaht, whereas it does show a small volume going to Ditidaht Forestry (TFL 46 includes both Ditidaht and Pacheedaht traditional territories). How small? About one-half of one percent of the cut on TFL 46 is assigned to the Ditidaht. How much goes to the Pacheedaht? We don't know, but if it's similar to the Ditidaht, it's a tiny fraction of what Teal Cedar is booming off to Surrey.

This sounds like continuing economic repression to me.

20 hours ago, Guest Irrelevant argument said:

This is what happens when a "journalist"  tries to write on a legal ruling but is ignorant of the law.  "Irreparable harm" has a distinct and unique legal definition for injunctive relief.  It need not be quantified.  

Broadland ought to leave the criticisms of legal rulings to lawyers.  

Thanks for your comment.

Readers may want to review Verhoeven's judgment, which I reviewed here. In his consideration of whether Teal had suffered "Irreparable Harm," Verhoeven restated the economic arguments that had been presented to him in affidavits prepared by Teal's legal team.

While the above commenter would have readers believe the law is too mysterious for anybody but lawyers to understand, there is no mystery about how Verhoeven arrived at his decision that irreparable harm had been done—its in his judgment. But the numbers he uses in his consideration, which were provided by Teal and not questioned in court by either Verhoeven or the defendants' legal team, are deeply flawed. Any journalist could have found the factual information that the lawyers didn't. That's the service journalism is meant to provide.

The Rainforest Flying Squad announced today that its legal team has filed an appeal of Justice Verhoeven's judgment granting an injunction to Teal. The appeal asked that the order be said aside due to: