Tag: forestry

B.C. order pro­tect­ing old growth exten­ded

RCMP prob­ing reports of deadly tree spik­ing

This article was written by Marcy Nicholson of the Associated Press and was published in the Toronto Star on January 31, 2025.

VICTORIA The Brit­ish Columbia gov­ern­ment has approved a legal order to extend tem­por­ary pro­tec­tions to an old­ growth forest on Van­couver Island even as the min­is­ter of forests acknow­ledged the RCMP are invest­ig­at­ing reports of tree spik­ing in the area.

Ravi Par­mar said he was informed of the reports last week, call­ing the news of such van­dal­ism “incred­ibly alarm­ing.”

Spikes are typ­ic­ally metal and can injure or even kill a per­son who attempts to cut down or mill the tree.

“I want to be very crys­tal clear to Brit­ish Columbi­ans, any­one who goes out and spikes a tree, puts the lives of forestry work­ers on the line, risks their safety, poten­tial death each and every day, I want to con­demn these actions,” Par­mar told report­ers.

The min­is­ter said spik­ing is a “dan­ger­ous crim­inal activ­ity” that puts health and safety of forestry work­ers at risk, adding the province imme­di­ately noti­fied both the forestry licensee and the local First Nation.

“It is out­rageous that indi­vidu­als and the groups they are con­nec­ted to feel that caus­ing ser­i­ous injury to work­ers fur­thers their cause,” said Brian But­ler, pres­id­ent of United Steel­work­ers Local 1­1937.

The Fairy Creek area received inter­na­tional atten­tion in recent years due to protests after log­ging per­mits were gran­ted in 2020. This allowed the cut­ting of tim­ber, includ­ing old­growth trees, in areas in and around the Fairy Creek water­shed.

Almost 1,200 oppon­ents of old­growth log­ging were arres­ted at Fairy Creek for defy­ing court orders pre­vent­ing inter­fer­ence with har­vest­ing oper­a­tions.

The pro­vin­cial gov­ern­ment’s announce­ment that it gran­ted a log­ging defer­ral exten­sion to Sept. 30, 2026, applies to the order first issued in 2021.

It fol­lows the first exten­sion that expires Sat­urday and came at the request of the Pacheedaht First Nation, whose ter­rit­or­ies encom­pass the entire water­shed.