Directors at the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) were due to hear a staff report on BC Timber Sales (BCTS) operations in the area at the April 13 meeting of the planning and community development committee.
Last year saw some of the biggest protests against logging in several years, including two protests led by Elphinstone Logging Focus that led to court injunctions and arrests.
The most contentious of those protests was in Roberts Creek, where demonstrators tried to stop logging on cutblock A87125. At the last SCRD board meeting, Roberts Creek director Mark Lebbell said he was looking forward to the report “as a means to enhance public engagement around forest practices.”
The SCRD staff report says cutblock A91376 located on District Lot (DL) 1313 in Elphinstone has been delayed another year “to enable the SCRD to continue dialogue with the Squamish Nation and FLNRO [Forests Lands and Natural Resource Operations] to determine how to protect the lot from timber harvesting.”
The SCRD board passed a resolution last year saying it does not support any logging of that block, but the report notes that “delaying harvest of DL 1313 increases pressure to harvest timber in other areas within the 1,500-hectare ‘proposed Mt. Elphinstone park’ identified in the Roberts Creek Official Community Plan.”
The report also says several proposed or ongoing cutblocks could impact mountain biking trails.
SCRD staff are making several recommendations, including:
• Reaffirming the regional district’s opposition to logging on DL 1313.
• Calling on FLNRO and BCTS to have a strategy in place for “the protection and/or restoration of trails surrounding cutblocks G041C4F6 (West Sechelt), G042C4F8 (Mt. Elphinstone), G043C3ZJ (Mt. Elphinstone) and Licence A93884 (Mt. Elphinstone) to be confirmed with local trail groups.”
• Restating that the “SCRD does not support logging in Community Watersheds for the purpose of protecting drinking water quality.”
The SCRD report went before directors following the annual meeting of the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Com-munities (AVICC), where delegates heard from the Truck Loggers Association (TLA).
In the leadup to the AVICC meeting, the TLA released a study following up on a survey it did with community leaders. This time the TLA surveyed residents of coastal communities. It found nearly 60 per cent believed forests are being managed sustainably, but when the TLA asked people if they were satisfied with how land use issues were dealt with in their communities, 47 per cent responded that they “felt more needs to be done.”
