The stage is set for another potentially rancorous winter in the woods. After salvaging its share of burnt-out timber from the Old Sechelt Mine fire, the Sunshine Coast Community Forest (SCCF) is poised to return to a real hot spot – the Wilson Creek area, scene of multiple confrontations and mass arrests in 2012.
As well as an approximately 13-hectare cutblock in Halfmoon Bay, the Community Forest is planning to log a 27-hectare block in Wilson Creek this winter and build roads through a second block preparatory to logging it within about two years. One of the blocks is EW28, which Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) has dubbed the Chanterelle Forest owing to its favoured status among local mushroom pickers.
EW28 has been at the centre of ELF’s campaign to preserve the remaining natural stands in the Community Forest’s Wilson Creek tenure. Since the District of Sechelt is the Community Forest’s sole shareholder, ELF has made its case repeatedly to Sechelt council. It received some encouragement, from one councillor at least, during a February 2015 meeting, but since then there has been no indication that council has wavered in its support of the Community Forest work plan.
Another key governmental player is shíshálh Nation, which has officially signed off on both Wilson Creek cutblocks. The decision was made under the previous council. For their own reasons, some individual band members may join protests against the logging, but the nation is officially onside.
The chief authority is the province, which issues cutting permits after obtaining First Nation consent and sets strict rules under which the Community Forest must operate. One SCCF official said candidly this week that they have a tenure area to harvest in and if they don’t do it, to paraphrase the old Dr. John song, the ministry will make sure that somebody else will.
Activists have downplayed the economic benefits derived from logging a single cutblock such as EW28, dismissing it as merely a couple of weeks of work for a couple of tree fallers. The Community Forest’s operations manager has tried to correct the record, estimating that between 80 and 105 people are directly employed on a project. They include the engineers, planners, fallers, road builders, loggers, scalers, the dry land sort, tree planters, spacing crews, fertilizers crews, and the Community Forest staff itself. The employment generated is not insignificant.
Renewed logging activity in Wilson Creek will be a heartbreaking spectacle for some nature lovers who have walked those woods and treasure their unique character. ELF and its supporters have every right to call on the B.C. government to cancel its permits, or the shíshálh Nation to withdraw its consent, or the District of Sechelt to order a halt to the Community Forest’s work plans.
Those are the last avenues of rational resistance. If they fail, a showdown in the woods will serve only to divide the community, risk lives, and cause delays that will result in the work being done with greater haste and less care than is necessary.
Something to bear in mind when the roads start going in this winter.
