As Fairy Creek activists mark the five-year anniversary of the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, new old growth logging is set to begin in two key areas — where some trees are as ancient as more than a thousand years old.

The new old growth logging by First Nations and their industry partners is set to resume just 50 kilometres away along the Little Nitinat River and in the storied Walbran Valley. A blockade along the Walbran Main Road, by former Fairy Creek participants, was set up this weekend. Blockade organizers, many of whom were at the original Fairy Creek protests, have constructed a wooden cougar to block the road to industry, while making a statement with a piece of artwork. 

“This is very disheartening news for fans of B.C.’s old-growth forests. Some of the largest individual trees, groves and forest stands remaining on earth are in the Walbran and along the Nitinat River,” ecologist and author Andy McKinnon told Ricochet. 

The Dididaht, the Pacheedaht, and Huu-ay-aht Nations have all signed partnership agreements with industry to harvest irreplaceable forest ecosystems. First Nations are calling the agreements part of the process to re-assert economic sovereignty over their territories. 

Ricochet reached out to all three Nations, but did not receive a response prior to publication.

Predominant old growth tree species include western redcedar, western hemlock, balsam and Douglas fir. Royann Petrell, University of British Columbia chemical and biological engineering associate professor, says the western cedar trees under threat are between 800 and 1000 years old, and are home to the endangered Marbled Merlett, among other treetop species. She says cutting down any more old growth in the Walbran “will doom these threatened red-listed birds forever.” 

American forest conservationist Joshua Wright has been tracking, photographing and archiving threats to old growth forests in his home state of Washington and on Vancouver Island since he was 17. He’s been documenting logging roads that have been quietly cut into the Little Nitinat River valley on Ditidaht territory by contractor developer Marbled Canyon Holdings Ltd. The company is working with Dididaht Forestry Ltd. to build roads for logging trucks, he said. The Fairmont Hot Springs-based company did not respond to Ricochet’s request for comment.

Wright told Ricochet that the company is expected to start work imminently.

“They built roads to the edge of the second growth,” he said. “And I’m not sure if it’s next week or when, but they’re going to go in there and cut down the old growth.” 

Wright says the province is “letting First Nations do the dirty work for them,” that by partnering with First Nations “the province is deflecting public criticism of their failure to permanently protect old growth.” 

Huu-ay-aht Nation, who reached an agreement in 2020 with Western Forest Products to purchase a majority tenure ownership of the TFL 44 (a tree farm licence in B.C.), and a seven per cent interest in the Alberni Pacific Division sawmill received a license in 2023 to cut in the Walbran valley, adjacent to Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park on Vancouver Island.

The area is famous for being one of the last intact old-growth Pacific temperate rainforests and containing Canada’s tallest Sitka spruce, the Carmanah Giant. A Wilderness Committee map shows the delineation between logging areas and the provincial park. 

At a recent Indigenous Resource Opportunities Conference in Nanaimo, John Jack, chief councillor of the Huu-ay-aht First Nations, said the Huu-ay-aht First Nations people need to understand the real economic landscape to be competitive and employ the tools to build their community. “When we look at economic development, we know that that is a vital pillar for what it is we need to do as a community to help create all of those things that my community needs, not only to rebuild our nation, but catch up and keep up.”

For Jack, keeping up also means contributing to Canada’s competitiveness on a global scale. He reminded conference participants that First Nations, who now hold 20 per cent of forestry tenures in B.C., help keep Canada competitive in the global lumber market against countries like Finland and Russia. 

The ministry of forests confirmed that a cutting permit has been issued to Tsawak-qin Forestry, which is a limited partnership between Huu-ay-aht First Nations and Western Forest Products. Huumiis Ventures Limited Partnership (beneficially owned by Huu-ay-aht First Nations) owns a 35 per cent equity interest in C̕awak ʔqin Forestry, with Western Forest Products Inc. holding an equity interest of 65 per cent. Seven of the eight cutblocks in the cutting permit are in the Upper Walbran, which is in Pacheedaht territory. 

Jason Tollman, spokesperson for the B.C. Ministry of Forests, says Pacheedaht Nation is supportive of the harvesting. However, the ministry acknowledges that it does not speak for the Nation. 

According to the ministry, the cutblocks were not deferred, “but there is some overlap with old growth technical advisory panel deferral areas,” Tollman said, meaning that they did not take the recommendation of the panel to fully protect old growth on those blocks.

When the agreement was first announced, Huu-ay-aht First Nation Chief Councillor Robert J. Dennis Sr. said “Being the majority owner, we will be able to advance Huu-ay-aht’s forestry principles and, over time, the deal will provide real benefits for Huu-ay-aht citizens, including the opportunity to diversify our economy and manage our forest resources in accordance with our sacred principles.” 

The three Nations, on whose traditional territories the tree farm licence sits, have agreed to develop an Integrated Resource Management Plan (IRMP) for forest and ecosystem management that the province says will “consider the present and future needs of the Nations and ecosystems while bringing together the teachings of the Nations’ ancestors, the wisdom of the nations’ elders and the input of the nations’ citizens and members,” C̕awak ʔqin Forestry wrote in 2022. 

At the height of the Fairy Creek demonstrations five years ago, Pacheedaht Chief Frank Queesto Jones, Huu-ay-aht Chief Dennis, and Ditidaht Chief Brian Tate signed the Hišuk ma c̕awak Declaration. It states that third parties such as companies, organizations or other governments would have no right to speak on their behalf or on behalf of the lands, waters, or resources in their ḥahahuułi (combined territories). In his statement of response, then-Premier John Horgan said “We recognize the three Nations will continue to exercise their constitutionally protected Indigenous interests over the protected areas.”

The Declaration states “for most of the past 150 years, we have watched as others decide what is best for our lands, for our waters and for our people. Our three sacred principles are often ignored. We are too often the last to benefit from what is taken out and the last to be asked what must be put back in. That time is over.” 

Tsimshian (Kitsumkalum/Kitselas) and Nuu-chah-nulth (Ahousaht) Simon Fraser University Resource and Environmental Management scholar Clifford Atleo and his colleagues Michael Simpson and Bruce Braun explained in a recent journal article the intersecting crises of the B.C. forestry sector as “the result of tensions of a resource economy founded on dispossession.”

Forestry presents one of few available own-source livelihood options for many First Nations, which is in itself a legacy of colonialism.

Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chief Na’moks of the Wetsuwet’en Nation was a logger for years. He advises those who would judge First Nations who have signed onto forestry revenue sharing agreements, “not to hate the people trying to do good for their communities; hate the systems that put them in the position of selling out their land to do it. People are hurting,” he said. “That’s intentional.”

Today, 126 of 204 First Nations in the province have signed Forest and Range Consultation and Revenue Sharing agreements. 

The Fairy Creek protests ran from 2020 to 2022, and created considerable tension among those who supported the demonstrations and some members of the Pacheedaht Nation who wanted decisions made about logging there left exclusively up to them.

In a signed statement issued on April 12, 2021, Pacheedaht Hereditary Chief Frank Queesto Jones and Chief Councillor Jeff Jones said their Nation has always harvested forestry resources, including old-growth cedar, for “cultural, ceremonial, domestic and economic purposes.”

“Our constitutional right to make decisions about forestry resources in our Territory, as governing authority in our Territory, must be respected,” the statement read.

Having been shut out of economic benefits for centuries of colonial extraction in their territories, First Nations receive a percentage of the stumpage fees from timber harvested on their own territories. In 2022, the province announced it would increase the percentage of revenues shared from three to five per cent to eight to 10 per cent. In the case of Pacheedaht, the percentage is 35 per cent. Na’Moks warns those revenues and jobs won’t last. 

The Huu-ay-aht Economic Development Plan, which runs to 2029, suggests the old growth logged in the Upper Walbran will be used to produce bio-based energy (pellets), chemicals and materials such as shingles, furniture and flooring veneer, and particles (particle board). 

Wood pellets are marketed by the province as renewable fuel energy. In 2022, the CBC’s Fifth Estate did an exposé on the harvest of B.C.’s non-renewable old growth for Drax UK to burn in Britain’s largest power station. The Guardian reported last year that the Drax North Yorkshire power station, which regularly sources pellets from B.C., was responsible for four times the carbon emissions than the UK’s last coal-fired plant. 

In 2020, the province issued grants to four major projects that turn wood waste from slash piles on cutblock into pellets. “Old growth stands are the cathedrals of B.C.’s coastal rainforest.  Shredding them for bits of wood is like turning unique medieval stone cathedrals to gravel for road construction.” said Yves Mayrand, member of the Friends of Fairy Creek Society.

Tollman, speaking for the Ministry, told Ricochet that the ministry “cares deeply about our forest. First Nations throughout British Columbia have made it clear that they want a greater say in how forests on their territory are managed.”  

With approvals in the bag and logging roads being laid, that plan may have come too late for some areas with old growth trees. The ministry confirmed that Nations within traditional territory in the Little Nitinat river valley are working to finalize Nation-lead Integrated Resource Management Plans (IRMP) that “will help to guide the long-term management of forests in the area,” he said. 

Beyond issuing licenses, the province says it is advancing First Nation’s participation in the forestry industry on a number of fronts. Following the First Indigenous Forestry Conference was held in Port Alberni last year, the province assembled a task force to lead a review process of B.C. Timber Sales (BCTS), which hasn’t undergone any legislative changes since 2003. 

Lennard Joe, from Nlaka’pamux First Nation, CEO of the BC First Nations Forestry Council was named to the task force this year. The BCTS manages 20 per cent of the province’s allowable annual cut for Crown/public timber. Providing predictable markets for BC fibre and strengthening partnerships with First Nations are two of the BCTS’ main aims. 

“First Nations are no longer just a stakeholder. Now we have opportunities to start influencing change at the larger level and creating an environment in which others can grow and succeed,” Joe said, referring to the creation of his joint forestry venture Stuwix Resources. 

The ministry also confirmed in an email that Ditidaht Forestry has received a replaceable forest license on its traditional territory with a “four-year cutting permit.” The license gives Dididaht access to roughly 5,000 cubic metres of timber per year and the ability to manage that cut over a five-year period. 

Western Forest Products, partnered with Pacheedaht Nation, is leaving a much larger carbon footprint overall. The company logged 3,023,058 cubic metres of fibre in 2021, resulting in nearly five million tonnes of forest carbon emissions, according to data by researchers with the Evergreen Alliance. Western Forest says it “works to strike a balance between manufacturing wood products and protecting the environment.” 

On its website, Western Forest Products, speaking to its Big Tree Protection program, says “Any live tree greater or equal to 80 metres tall or meeting the following diameter by species will be retained and buffered.” By buffered, they mean left standing alone, or left in a patch. This is important because trees rely on their surrounding soil ecosystems and understory — the layer of smaller trees and plants growing beneath the dominant canopy of a forested area — to survive. That relationship is reciprocal. 

Through decades-long research that led her to her ground-breaking memoir Finding the Mother Tree, ecologist Suzanne Simard confirmed trees share resources and communicate through underground networks. These connections are lost when single trees, like infamous Big Lonely Doug, are left standing alone, or secluded in small patches of forest surrounded by decimated cutblocks.

The bargain being made by Ditidaht First Nations leaders to generate revenue from extractive projects to lift their people out of poverty is a Faustian one, Wright says, but it doesn’t make the prospect of losing rare valley bottom old growth trees any less upsetting. 

“They’re in a tricky economic situation,” he told Ricochet in an interview, “and the government is failing to provide adequate alternatives for First Nations and doing that proactively. They’re making this decision, and it’s not their fault. They’re making this decision about old growth that we’re not going to have back.”

Once that old growth is gone, it’s gone forever, he said. Old growth forests are irreplaceable within a human timeframe. It’s possible that it may be irreplaceable, now, in any timeframe given the impacts of escalating climate breakdown. 

Ditidaht First Nation member Vera Edgar-Cook is upset about the logging. “I totally dislike all the logging going down. A lot of logs are being taken from our territory. It’s not right!” She said Council Chief Thomas has not consulted with the rest of the Nation on this latest development.

Ditidaht First Nation Chief Thomas could not be reached for comment. 

After voicing his own concerns about the Walbran to the August 10 reunion gathering of about 75 participants, Will O’Connell, one of the original founders of the Fairy Creek blockades, was informed days later that logging in the Walbran had already begun. “The Walbran really touches something in a lot of people when they visit it.” Reflecting on what the Fairy Creek blockades accomplished, he said he thinks “they’re going to have to pry it [Central Walbran] from people, because of this consciousness generated out of the ‘War in the Woods’ and Fairy Creek around old growth.”

In 2021, the world watched as RCMP-CIRG violently descended on peaceful demonstrators trying to stop the clearcut of ancient old growth trees in the Fairy Creek watershed.

After 1,118 arrests, nearly $19 million in enforcement costs, and 500 formal complaints about the force’s behaviour to the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, the blockade resulted in a temporary logging deferral in 2021. In January of this year, the Ministry of Forests announced it was extending that deferral to September 2026. The province released a map of the areas included in the deferral which, until now, inspired a false sense of enduring protection for old growth on the Island.  

O’Connel says when he asked McKinnon what he should be fighting to protect he said his mentor told him without hesitation, the Walbran. “If you’re going to save a place, you save it based on the watershed, because the water connects everything else. And when logging in the tributaries of the Walbran, you’ll start seeing the effects downstream.”

In the 2020 report “A Strategic Review of How British Columbia Manages for Old Forests Within its Ancient Ecosystems” the old growth strategic review technical advisory panel led by Al Gorely and Gerry Merkel identified the Upper Walbran as priority deferral of old growth in an area it indicated should be permanently deferred. It wasn’t. 

“It’s not surprising that the Province is ignoring the Panel’s recommendations,” McKinnon told Ricochet. “I think it’s safe to say at this point that the province has all of the information, guidance and direction they need to move towards sustainable resource management in our province. “I think it’s important to remember that there’s nothing “sustainable” about logging old-growth forest.” 

In his own technical report titled Ecological Resilience and Complexity, McKinnon and his colleagues submitted to the then-Ministry of Forests and Range nearly 20 years ago, they write “forest ecosystems have ‘memory,’ meaning biological legacies of a forest’s previous state influences its present and future states.”

O’Connell says our collective futures depend on the survival of these fragile ecosystems, and it’s our responsibility to fight for them. “The ecosystem in the Walbran is slightly different than in any other valley because of its topography and sediment. And once it goes, that memory is going to be lost, he says.

According to the Ancient Forest Alliance, more than 80 per cent of the productive old-growth forests in B.C. have been logged, including well over 90 per cent of valley bottoms like the Little Nitinat, where the biggest trees grow and the richest biodiversity resides. An Alliance timelapse video illustrates the extent of logging of old growth forests on Vancouver Island from 1900 to 2016. 

The logging of old growth in B.C. never stops. Most people don’t see it happening, but it’s always there. 

“If you go out into the woods, you’ll see huge cedar trees being hauled out of our forests. And if you drive to the right place, you’ll see them falling, still. I think the general population doesn’t realize you can go out in the forest any day and see a 1000 year-old cedar tree being cut down.” 

In September 2020, the B.C. government issued a “Special Tree Protection Regulation” that reduced the protection of old growth by increasing eligible tree size requirements. Previously identified Coastal Legacy Trees fell below the new requirements and lost their protection. The changes meant logging companies could file for a permit to cut an identified Special Tree and/or its supporting trees. 

In 2021, researchers Johanna Paradis and Lannie Keller discovered that only three of the fourteen Douglas-fir trees in Cathedral Grove are large enough to qualify for B.C.’s Special Tree Protection status. None of the biggest cedar trees in the park are big enough. Šuučabisapuuw, “a place of big timber,” is the Ditidaht name for land in the Nitinaht River valley. 

Wright says “the grandeur of the old growth within the Ditidaht’s license is comparable to Cathedral Grove.”

 “When you’re at the end of a resource and you’re just dragging your feet, you’re just functionally letting that resource get destroyed.” 

O’Connell is less circumspect about the impending losses. “Old growth forests have a myriad of values to different people,” he says. “We should be more specific than just saying old growth. We should be saying we’ve got to manage for biodiversity, we’ve got to manage for human resources, we’ve got to manage to have some forest left for people to appreciate, some forest left for animals and plants to exist, and some forest less left for harvesting. We’ve got to make sure we can overlap them, and sometimes they’re all in the same forest.”

He hasn’t lost hope in what he says is an increasingly concerning world. “Sometimes I feel like somebody just took all the things we love and threw them up in the air. And you see people running, trying to catch everything, and they’re just losing everything. And I’m just like, catch this one [Walbran]. It’s the one we can catch. It’s in our backyard.”

Klasom Satlt’xw Losah (Rose Henry), perhaps one of the best known faces of the Fairy Creek movement, is calling for people to re-focus on the Walbran. “This whole movement for saving the old growth is over forty years in the making, from Clayquot Sound to the Walbran to Carmanah to Fairy Creek. And here we go again. We need to stand up.”