The B.C. government is now allowing one of the last small patches of coastal Douglas fir forest in existence to be logged. This is happening near Nanoose Bay in a cutblock known as DL 33. Is the B.C. government mad? Is this a Third World country, such that we need to stamp out one of the last small fragments of a globally endangered forest type for a temporary shot of cash?

It is sad to see the Snaw-Naw-As First Nation being the up-front party to do this, when giant, hugely wealthy TimberWest is lurking in the background with a purchase agreement for the wood. For TimberWest, this provides a way to deal in logs from a globally endangered forest without blowing its cover as an “environmentally responsible supplier of forest products”.

Just go to the website of TimberWest and view the claims it makes about itself: “TimberWest manages its assets for long-term sustainability....Protection of biodiversity is a key element of sustainable forest management and TimberWest continually strives to improve efforts to sustain key habitat for plants and wildlife.” Tell that to the blue-listed Roosevelt elk that are losing their life support system to provide logs to TimberWest.

TimberWest boasts certification by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) as its “verification of sustainable forest management”. TimberWest describes SFI as “a rigorous system of environmental and conservation practices for wildlife and water quality protection, biodiversity conservation, sustainable harvesting practices and a wide range of other forest management goals”.

However, a brief search on the Internet reveals that forest certification advocate ForestEthics has denounced SFI, saying that the acronym stands for “Selling False Information”. According to ForestEthics, SFI was “developed and funded by some of the biggest forest destroyers in North America”.

But even if that weren’t so, what happens when TimberWest gets another company to do the logging? TimberWest gets to buy and sell logs obtained by destroying habitat for red-listed plants, while wearing the green halo of certification for being a company that sells environmentally ethical wood.

Court documents indicate that the logs are to be shipped to a Vancouver Island company by the name of Long Hoh, a specialty lumber export company that originated in Taiwan but expanded into North America in 1998. Its website also boasts certification by the PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification). Long Hoh says that this will “give its customers added peace of mind that they are purchasing a green product harvested in a sustainable and un-controversial manner”.

Uncontroversial? There have been at least three complaints to the B.C. government’s forest watchdog, the Forest Practices Board (FPC), on this subject. The FPC has pointed out that the coastal Douglas fir (CDF) forest type has the highest density of species at risk of any ecosystem in B.C. There are 29 endangered (“red-listed”) plant communities associated with CDF. Due to logging and other development, only 0.5 percent of the CDF is old-growth; in fact, 49 percent of it has been totally wiped out.

Documents submitted in court show that Snaw-Naw-As Forest Services Ltd. agreed to deliver 17,000 cubic metres of logs to Long Hoh for the purchaser, TimberWest. The agreement stipulated that the wood must come from the Nanoose site, which is odd because the permit signed by the government allows only 15,000 cubic metres to be logged. So it appears that we have 65 extra truckloads of wood slipping out of the forest, over and beyond what the government approved in writing.

According to the Forest Practices Board, the coastal Douglas fir forests are home to numerous “critically imperiled” plants—defined as having fewer than five known viable occurrences in the province, and as being at very high risk of extinction. Perhaps, somewhere in the world, purchasers of wood products from DL 33 will soon be having their “peace of mind” disturbed by nightmares of sending red-listed species into oblivion forever.

Anne Sherrod is the chair of the Valhalla Wilderness Society.