A Vancouver Island-based logging company’s announcement of its timber harvest plans within the City of Powell River has created an outpouring of reaction on social media as well as concern in city hall.
Morgan Kennah, manager of sustainable timberlands and community affairs for Island Timberlands, provided the Peak with a press release on Wednesday, April 22.
The company, which is headquartered in Nanaimo, has timber reservations on PRSC- and Catalyst Paper Corporation-owned lands as well as parcels of private managed forest land within the city limits.
As soon as news of the plans broke, concerned residents took to social media to start talking about the issue and organize community meetings.
Road building has begun in the northeast corner of the company’s private managed forest land in Lot 450, an area east of Timberlane track, and the company is planning to harvest timber there over the next several months, Kennah said. Road building and harvesting on the PRSC and Catalyst parcels is expected to commence in the following weeks.
“Once activities commence, Island Timberlands anticipates workers to be in the area weekdays,” Kennah said. “Depending on how our activity progresses, there may be a summer suspension of activities with further work scheduled in the fall. This is subject to change with little or no notice.”
She added that the company employs qualified professionals to ensure “our forest activities have considered a full range of public values including but not limited to localized riparian areas and recreational trails.”
Island Timberlands will work within the confines of the city’s bylaw on noise disturbance “to best maintain the peace and enjoyment during our operations,” Kennah said.
Future land use decisions for the PRSC and Catalyst properties are unrelated to the current harvesting activities, Kennah added.
She said that the company is “harvesting its trees previously not capable of harvest under a municipal bylaw.” Mayor Dave Formosa took exception to this reading of the situation. The Peak sat down with Formosa and Councillor Russell Brewer to discuss the forest company’s plans and what impact they could have on Millennium Park, on Friday, April 24.
“Their press release said that this logging couldn’t happen without the tree cutting bylaw being changed,” said Formosa. “This is something we’re not happy with.”
According to Formosa and Brewer, the Tree Protection Bylaw 2176, 2008 did not prevent the company from harvesting the trees. It allowed for trees to be cut over a period of one to five years in rotation. On April 2, city council voted to amend the bylaw to allow the rate of tree harvest to increase.
“Everyone assumes that the bylaw change was made and now they can log where they couldn’t before,” Brewer said. “But that’s not the case. It’s totally false.”
Private managed forest land is regulated by the BC government’s Private Managed Forest Land Act. Regulations state that land owners are not constrained on the level of harvest of their privately held land beyond commitment to protect environmental requirements of soil conservation, water quality, fish habitat, critical wildlife habitat and reforestation.
When news broke that logging was starting in the area, Formosa was concerned that people thought trees in Millennium Park were falling. “That’s not the case,” he said.
Formosa wanted to clarify that even though the deal to purchase Millennium Park trees has yet to be signed, “logging on the PRSC lands is not predicated on whether or not the contract gets signed.” The mayor expects the $1.25-million deal for the trees on the Millennium Park land to be signed this week, he said. Formosa said the deal has been long in the making with an ongoing negotiation for a price. He said that the city, with the financial backing of Powell River Community Forest, will make a lump sum payment for trees, instead of spreading it out over two payments.
Formosa said he feels “it is unfair for people to say that we’re not protecting our parks or trees,” adding that council recently purchased a 10-acre parcel of land in Cranberry to improve the connection of the Sunshine Coast Trail.
In 2010 the city paid $1.4 million for the land where upper and lower Millennium Park is located.
“On the land we do own, not one tree is being touched,” Formosa said. “We’ve saved every stick in Millennium Park.”
Brewer added that the people of Powell River have already spent close to $3.5 million for the land and trees on Millennium Park. “There’s just not the money to buy the trees on the PRSC properties. Not only that, we don’t own the land so we’d have to buy those properties too, and that’d defeated the purpose of that land.”
The initial purpose of PRSC Limited Partnership, created in 2006, was to purchase some of the mill’s land in a three-way partnership between Tla’amin First Nation, Catalyst and the city to attract new industry to Powell River which could aid in rebuilding the city’s tax base and create new jobs, Formosa said. “We need to take care of economic revitalization,” the mayor added. The timber reservations on the PRSC land transferred from MacMillan Bloedel to Weyerhaeuser and then to Island Timberlands when it bought all of Weyerhaeuser’s BC coastal timber holdings in 2005.
Scott Randolph, the city’s manager of economic development, said that once Island Timberlands has concluded its one-time-only timber harvesting rights on PRSC lands the company will be required to clean up and remove any debris that was created during the harvesting.
PRSC only has a say in the condition of how the lands are left post-logging, he said. “We have no say in how the lands are harvested or if they are harvested.” Randolph added that they will be doing inspections with the company to make sure “they deliver on the agreements they’ve made with us.”
Formosa said it was unfortunate the way the information was rolled out and he would have preferred to work with the forestry company to issue joint press releases and public information sessions where questions could be answered directly.
Readers who are concerned about Island Timberlands’ plans can send their concerns by email to [email protected].
Concerned Citizens of Island Timberlands Clear Cutting in Powell River, BC can be found on Facebook.
A larger version of the map can be found here.
