Editor:
Readers may recall an article in early December 2023 regarding the Sunshine Coast Community Forest’s (a logging company owned by the District of Sechelt) five-year logging plan indicating that the public had just up to Dec. 20 to provide feedback. They expected people to wade through their website, analyze the block list, cross-reference maps, and then provide some kind of intelligent input. ELF penned a letter to the editor afterwards asking SCCF to extent the feedback period to April 1, 2024, so we could get people out to see new areas being planned. That request was ignored. The new blocks planned out to 2028 will come back around to comment on; however, ELF sees this as a flawed engagement process since SCCF doesn’t hold “walk-in-the-woods” to visit the forests under question.
One “engineered” block we finally got out to see this week is HM64. It’s 14 ha in size, Age Class 5 (trees aged 81 to 100 years on average) and situated in the Wakefield Creek Watershed.
Wakefield Creek flows out of Crowston Lake, crosses a forest service road beginning its journey to the Salish Sea.
Sections of HM64 lie directly above the creek. Clearcut logging and roadbuilding will result in changes to the site’s hydrology resulting in increased surface runoff during rainy events affecting the creek’s high flows. The loss of the forest cover will then dry out the site in the summer resulting in low flows. When combined these two dynamics threaten the integrity of the creek. We thus conclude that SCCF should not be logging directly in the Wakefield Creek Watershed as the watershed should be classified as a “sensitive area.”
Ross Muirhead
Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF)
