Skip to content

Elphinstone Logging Focus seeks stronger language from SCRD on logging

Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) directors chose not to incorporate comments by a local environmental group into their feedback on BC Timer Sales’ (BCTS) logging plans.
Cutblocks
An SCRD map showing the Elphinstone Provincial Park expansion area and proposed BCTS cutblocks.

Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) directors chose not to incorporate comments by a local environmental group into their feedback on BC Timer Sales’ (BCTS) logging plans.

Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) provided a series of points to directors for consideration in response to BC Timber Sales’ 2020-24 operating plan.

That plan, presented in January, proposes 17 new cutblocks, with five cutblocks comprising 117 hectares scheduled to be logged next year, two of which are on Mount Elphinstone.

Directors received the suggestions from ELF at an April 23 corporate and administrative services committee meeting. The week before, they had voted to move ahead with comments of their own, including requests for a review of how cutting would impact groundwater and collaboration on a “watershed governance model,” among other requests. The deadline for referral comments was April 24.

ELF wanted the SCRD to express its opposition to proposed blocks “situated directly in the Mt. Elphinstone Provincial Park expansion area,” and which overlap its boundaries, and to oppose a cutblock (TA0526) planned for 2024, which ELF claimed falls within the Chapman Creek Drinking Watershed.

SCRD staff found none of the cutblocks identified are within the Chapman watershed or the park expansion area.

“There was a note on some different boundaries that ELF had put together as compared to what we have in our Official Community Plan and they clarified that was sort of their artistic licence that they took and that’s something to keep in mind,” said Roberts Creek director Andreas Tize at committee.

ELF also noted that cutblock A87126, located in the Dakota Community Watershed, has a “high black bear den population” and is home to culturally modified trees, which are protected by the Heritage Conservation Act, but staff couldn’t confirm the black bear population and said the “SCRD does not have the ability or mandate to be a watchdog or enforce provincial government legislation.”

ELF also brought up the modernized land use plan (MLUP) – suggesting the SCRD state its opposition to any logging sales until it is complete. The MLUP came out of the Foundation Agreement signed between shíshálh Nation and the province in 2018.

While none of ELF’s suggestions were taken up by the SCRD, directors acknowledged the need to carve out more advocacy work.

“Obviously the directors play a role in advocating and our board has committed to advocating with senior government, so our work is cut out for us,” said Elphinstone director Donna McMahon.

Tize said ELF’s comments “give us some food for thought as to where we want to advocate in the future.”

Directors did, however, vote to invite the province to explain how the MLUP will work, who will be involved and how long it will take to complete.

They are expected to endorse the decision at a May board meeting.

Some of the cutblocks on Mount Elphinstone lie within shíshálh Nation and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Nation territory, causing some ambiguity about how the MLUP will be applied to logging decisions.