At the beginning of May, Whistler’s Cheakamus Community Forest (CCF) released its Draft Five-Year Harvesting Development Plan, laying out the future of logging in the forest and providing an opportunity for the public to provide input on the plan.
According to CCF executive director Heather Beresford, the goal of moving to a five-year harvesting plan is to allow the community to have a better understanding of where harvesting will take place in the 33,000-hectare forest, and allow folks the chance to provide their opinion on where the forest should head.
“In the past, the community forest has only put out sort of a one-year plan … when we do just a one-year plan, there's not really much time to talk with the community, identify those areas of sensitivity, and make a change,” Beresford said.
“It's only fair to the community [to let them] know what we're planning on doing over a bit of a longer timeframe.”
The draft five-year plan lays out all the “areas of interest” for harvesting in the CCF (see for yourself at cheakamuscommunityforest.com/harvesting-plans).
In 2023, the CCF plans to harvest on five blocks along 16 Mile FSR; three parcels in the Callaghan Valley; and to conduct wildfire fuel treatment work in the WedgeWoods area.
The CCF launched a survey on the five-year plan on SurveyMonkey and in person at a handful of public information booths, and received substantial input from the community, collecting more than 500 responses in under a month.
Some of the community's concerns included questions on why harvesting was taking place in the forest at all, particularly with the resort so dependent on outdoor recreation, as well as a desire to protect old growth (the CCF extended its moratorium on cutting down any tree older than 250 years earlier this year, and it will remain in place until more info is gathered to make a long-term decision).
Beresford noted the Whistler Off Road Cycling Association (WORCA) is worried about the planned logging of an area above Cheakamus Lake Road, which is currently home to several popular mountain bike trails. WORCA encouraged its members to voice their concerns regarding the logging, which will take place in 2026, in the CCF’s survey.
According to WORCA’s trails and planning administrator, Nicole Koshure, the association has concerns with proposed harvest blocks in the Cheakamus and West Side areas.
“Our aim is to work towards developing an operating agreement that outlines the planning and implementation process for managing trails and harvesting activities in the CCF, and how the CCF and WORCA will work together to achieve that,” Koshure said in an email. “It is our hope that by the time five-year plans are presented to the public they have already been collaboratively discussed, adjusted and a mitigation strategy implemented so that WORCA and the public can be assured that an agreed-upon set of standards and procedures have been applied to the harvest plans before they are announced.”
The harvest plans which most affect WORCA’s trail network are the layouts for 2023, 2025 and 2026, Koshure said, adding that the plans could potentially impact trails like AM/PM,
Business Time, HiHi, High Side, Highline, See Colours and Puke (and its
access), as well as trails in the Jane Lakes area including Salsa Verde and Southern Accent.
The 2023 plan also impacts WORCA’s proposed Mystic Function trail location (for which WORCA is still waiting on provincial approval).
Beresford noted that the CCF is talking with WORCA about the concerns, highlighting it as an example of the value of longer-term planning so that these types of situations can be dealt with far ahead of the cut, and result in saving capital on engineering and planning.
“I take the word ‘community’ in our name very seriously, and I want to be able to talk with our community,” Beresford said.
In mid-July, the CCF intends to visit the Cheakamus Lake Road trails with WORCA’s trails committee and consider the group’s feedback. The CCF will not finalize its Five-Year Plan until later in the fall, and it will continue to evolve as circumstances change.
Douglas fir, hemlocks, and balsam fir are the most commonly logged trees in the CCF, Beresford said. Once the larger trees are harvested, they are sent to Richmond Plywood, while the smaller pieces are transported to Plywood Veneer Products near Nanaimo across the Salish Sea, she said.
While the areas planned for logging are a relatively small percentage of the overall forest, some Whistler residents remain apprehensive about allowing commercial logging to continue in the CCF at all.
Whistler Councillor Arthur De Jong wants the RMOW to ban any form of commercial logging within the municipality’s boundaries, except for First Nations logging operations, making it a part of his campaign platform in the 2022 municipal election.
“Our forests are our most important natural asset, because if you take it away, [if] it becomes diseased or burns, then we have very significant problems,” De Jong said. “Whistler is 100-per-cent designed for tourism, and has hit it out of the park economically for tourism, so how does that fit with managing our forests?”
De Jong said the community forest must operate within the sensitivities of Whistler's social and economic realities, and with climate change, it's imperative to be strategic about where and how much of the forest is logged.
“When it's purely for profit, for commercial reasons only, I don't support it. It has to check some of the other boxes, and check those boxes compellingly, and then I'm in support of it,” De Jong said.
Started in 2009, the CCF is a partnership between the RMOW, Squamish Nation and Lil'wat Nation. It operates under an ecosystem-based management plan, which protects the most sensitive ecological areas.
“This resulted in the Ministry of Forests approving an annual allowable cut that is about half the ‘business as usual’ scenario that would happen under the Forest and Range Practices Act if a private company operated in the same area,” Beresford said in a June 12 letter to Pique.
“In 2015, the CCF spent two years talking to community stakeholders including WORCA and AWARE to identify other areas to set aside for recreation or ecological reasons for its Integrated Resource Management Plan.
“As a result, not only does the CCF harvest less, almost 50 per cent of the CCF license area is off-limits to harvesting. From the set aside areas, we sell carbon offsets to companies that want to reduce their carbon footprint—the only community forest in B.C. doing that.”
The CCF is “considered a leader in our forestry approach,” Beresford added. “But will continue to try and do better.”
Read more at cheakamuscommunityforest.com.
