The Sechelt First Nation is taking another look at a Sunshine Coast Community Forest (SSCF) cutblock near Angus Creek after environmentalists said they identified a number of suspected culturally modified trees (CMTs) in the block.
“The harvest plan says there’s no archeological site in the block, but between eight and 10 trees that we saw showed classic signs of bark stripping,” Ross Muirhead of Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) said in a recent interview.
An original survey of the cutblock by Sechelt Nation archeologist Kenzie Jessome found no archeological remains, but Jessome said Monday that the Band has requested GPS coordinates of the suspected CMTs for a follow-up site visit.
“We do want to go back because we want to double-check,” Jessome said. “You can’t judge scientific data from a photo. What we’re going to do is collect more data from these trees, and confirm.”
Jessome said disease or other factors could cause trees to crack, but telltale signs of genuine CMTs include tool marks, patterns, scars and the height of the stripping, which typically starts at waist level. “There are a number of variables we look at.”
If CMTs were confirmed, he said, the options would be to create a buffer around them, apply for a site alteration permit, or remove the block from harvesting. “Most of the time we pull the block,” he said.
SCCF has hired a local contractor and is hoping to move forward with plans to log two cutblocks above East Porpoise Bay — the Angus Creek block and one near Burnett Creek, operations manager Dave Lasser said last week.
Lasser said SCCF was cooperating with the Band’s request to re-evaluate the Angus block for CMTs, but noted that, “based on the photos I’ve seen, they don’t look like CMTs to me.”
Responding to ELF’s other concerns about the harvest plan, Lasser said the environmental group was “just clutching at straws.”
In a press release issued last month, ELF said its main concern with SCCF logging in the Angus Creek watershed was the importance of the creek to salmon spawning and possible upstream impacts from more forest cover loss. Lasser called those claims “completely ridiculous.”
“There are numerous fish barriers way down by Sechelt Inlet — the fish don’t come up that far,” he said. “If I thought we were going to be impacting fish, we wouldn’t be touching it.”
He said there was also “absolutely no need for a coastal watershed assessment,” which ELF is calling for to determine if the Angus Creek watershed can support more logging.
“It’s just a non-issue, in my opinion,” Lasser said, suggesting anyone with concerns look at Google Earth to obtain a true picture of the state of the forest in the area.
Muirhead said ELF is aware fish do not travel as far upstream as the cutblock, but the group’s concern is that upstream erosion would wash finer sediments downstream and fill up the gravel spawning channels.
He also defended ELF’s call for a watershed assessment, saying the Angus Creek drainage system is comparable to the Wilson Creek watershed, where logging plans were put on hold so an assessment could be conducted.
The net amount that can be logged is 40 hectares in the Burnett Creek block and 14.5 hectares in the Angus Creek block, Lasser said.
