The Sunshine Coast Community Forest has been granted cutting permits allowing it to start logging in its Angus Creek zone east of Porpoise Bay.
It’s the first harvest for the Community Forest and its operating company Sechelt Community Projects Inc. (SCPI) since 2018.
There was no logging in 2019 while SCPI waited for the province to sign off on a new Forest Stewardship Plan (FSP), which also required input from the shíshálh Nation.
The FSP approval came in April, and operations manager Dave Lasser said the first cutting permits under the plan were issued in late August, allowing SCPI to call for tenders for road building and harvesting in the blocks known as AN11 and AN12.
Lasser said three local companies bid and the successful contractor started work in late October.
The Community Forest is hoping to have a combined 11,500 cubic metres of timber from the two blocks “in and scaled” by the end of the year, which will give SCPI some revenue for 2020 after posting a loss of $391,700 for 2019.
Lasser said COVID precautions are now part of the how SCPI and its contractors have to work, but loggers were already doing things like distancing because of the safety zones needed between workers falling trees.
“There’s a lot of naturally built-in safety processes that exist all the time in the industry, but they also happen to be very well suited to COVID,” Lasser said.
Lasser said SCPI is currently awaiting approval of a cutting permit that would allow it to begin harvesting on part of its tenure in the Halfmoon Bay area in the first quarter of 2021.
The two-year harvesting plan presented at an open house in March also called for logging in the East Wilson Creek area.
