As the provincial government undertakes a review of its strategy for old-growth trees—with an eye to submitting recommendations to the government in spring 2020—Whistler's Cheakamus Community Forest (CCF) is gearing up for the new year.
Harvesting plans for 2020 posted to the CCF's website on Dec. 10 are largely the same as those floated in 2019.
Aside from the wildfire fuel thinning project on Cheakamus Lake Road, the CCF didn't harvest anything in 2019 due to poor market conditions.
"It is very similar to what we had proposed for last year ... so there's a list of areas that are potential for this coming year, but we really don't know at this time, " said CCF forest manager Simon Murray, who took over the role from Tom Cole earlier this month.
"Everything in forestry right now is a little bit up in the air, so it could very well be another year where we really just do the fire hazard abatement treatments and we don't really do any actual logging at all."
The 2020 plans—which can be found at cheakamuscommunityforest.com/harvesting-plans—cover eight different sites, with 23,300 cubic metres and about 105 hectares estimated for log production next year.
That's slightly above the CCF's five-year annual harvest of 21,000 cubic metres (for perspective, a typical logging truck holds about 50 m3, depending on species. The 2020 estimated cut would amount to about 460 logging trucks).
The CCF board was set to meet with the provincial old-growth panel this week, Murray said.
"The community forest, really at this point, we can't necessarily say, 'No we're not going to log old growth trees,' but the focus in the future is to wean ourselves off of that," he said, adding that the CCF's carbon project complicates things.
"It really locks up all those younger plantation-aged forests out of the harvesting landbase, because those are all tied up in the carbon credits, so this is a real tough thing for us ... We really can't go into these younger stands and start harvesting them yet, because then we wouldn't be meeting our carbon sequestration targets."
To find the volume for its harvests, some old growth will have to be cut, Murray said, though the old growth the CCF is looking at removing might not be how the public perceives it.
"People think of them as big, giant trees, [at the] valley bottom ... Generally that's not what we're after. We're after sort of higher-elevation, marginally valuable balsam and hemlock trees, sort of similar to what you would see when you go skiing," he said.
"Anything that's got big, big trees that are significant, we're retaining those in any of our logging plans, so when we come across big cedars or old big giant veteran Douglas fir trees, we leave all those behind."
Whistler Councillor Arthur De Jong, who serves on the municipal Forests and Wildland Advisory Committee (FWAC), spoke often of protecting Whistler's old growth forests during the 2018 election campaign.
"What I can say from the discussions at FWAC is there is a strong, collective will—desire—to no longer cut, or harvest old growth in Whistler, and of course I deeply share in this," De Jong said.
Whistler is about nature-based tourism, not logging, he added.
But the matter is nuanced, and there are some instances where the removal of old growth is justified, he said—like in wildfire fuel thinning projects, or trying to create a defensible zone closer to town boundaries.
"I say this with absolute sincerity, that the most sustainable thing that this community can do is not burn itself down," De Jong said.
"So if it involves safeguarding our community, absolutely, the old growth should be removed, in a very balanced and ecosystem-sensitive way, but for me, that's a given."
It could also be acceptable in developing recreation, building necessary infrastructure for tourism, or in cases of diseased trees, he added.
"There's a whole list, I'm sure there's more, where we should be removing old growth, because it supports our tourism economy," he said.
"But beyond that, no."
Whistler's submission to the provincial panel on old growth—which is accepting submissions from across the province until Jan. 31, 2020 at engage.gov.bc.ca/oldgrowth—highlighted the tourism value of old-growth trees, and the massive financial contributions Whistler makes to provincial and federal coffers, De Jong said.
That includes $1.3 billion per year to the provincial GDP—equal to the combined contributions of the agriculture and fisheries sectors—and about $428 million in tax revenue per year (or $1.17 million per day) to local, provincial and federal governments.
"This one time economic value and job creation of harvesting old-growth trees within the Resort Municipality of Whistler cannot be compared to the long-term sustainable tourism and environmental benefits," De Jong said, reading from the submission.
With the second phase of Cheakamus Crossing moving ahead, the CCF is also looking at its access options to the surrounding valley to avoid having logging trucks rolling through the new neighbourhood.
One option is to reconnect an old road system off Jane Lakes Road and concentrate industrial access through the Whistler Aggregates quarry rather than the existing Loggers Lake FSR.
To do so, about 535 metres of new road is needed, at a total cost estimate of about $96,000.
"Really what [Cheakamus Crossing Phase 2] is going to end up doing is constricting our access into that valley considerably, and I don't really think that the public is going to want to have technically a logging road going right through their community," Murray said.
"What we're looking at is getting an alternative access around up into that valley that would go past where the quarry is and then join up with some older roads that are in there ... It's a matter of money at this point, and political will, and the wishes of the public."
While there is certainly a benefit to keeping logging trucks away from neighbourhoods, De Jong said he doesn't see the new access as an absolute necessity.
"What I've seen on a map so far, and the cost, I'm somewhat skeptical, but I need to walk the proposed alignment and then weigh its cost versus what short- and long-term benefits are we getting out of it," De Jong said.
"As a conservationist I'm very careful to not open more access into ... backcountry or frontcountry, without understanding all the implications of it."
The public will be able to share its own thoughts on all things CCF at its annual open house, tentatively scheduled for February.
The CCF—a partnership between the Resort Municipality of Whistler and Lil'wat and Squamish nations—covers more than 33,000 hectares around Whistler, and timber harvesting has been ongoing in the forest since 2010.
