In the Kootenays, MoF agrees to try manual brushing. Here's how it happened.
Sometime before noon July 6, 2000 a green Ministry of Forestry (MoF) pick up pulled into the Non-Violent Action Group (NAG) information camp, 10.5 km up the Duncan Lake forestry road at the Glacier Creek bridge.I was there alone, enjoying the mid-morning sunshine. Fretting a little about the business not getting done because of time spent trying to save the stupid world. "Why Me?" I'd strum down the guitar strings in mournful blues, "Why me?"
NAG's beef with the MoF was long standing and simple: No 2,4-D, no Glyphosate, no Triclopyr, zero Release. Chemical brushing was not allowed in the clearcuts our kids worked on. The west and northeast side of Kootenay, the entire Duncan, Slocan and Arrow Lakes forest districts have been effectively free of herbicides. These chemicals are sprayed in British Columbia clearcuts more and more, poisoning plants like thimble berries and fireweed as a conifer release tool.
In 1985, Jack Ross and Inger Kronseth among others formed NAG to oppose MoF's plans for extensive aerial spraying of 2,4-D on clearcuts above Meadow Creek, one of Kootenay Lake's most prolific Kokanee spawning channels. A year of letter writing and petition signing could not undo the magic spell that engulfed the powerful MoF staff. They were politely going ahead with the heli spray.
NAG politely blocked the road, surrounded a helicopter, and finally camped on the cut block. Eventually the spray weather was over. MoF got enough bad press that summer to keep them off our backs for fourteen years, with their silly notion that spraying bad logging practices with poisons was better bad logging.
But early in the spring of 1999, Inger called me: "Did you hear MoF is applying for a spray permit in the Duncan?" NAG re-formed and went to the simple work of doing what is right.
NAG bridge blockades went up on Rory Creek and the Westfall River: an intense fun-filled month of bureaucrat training began. In the end MoF backed off pending an Appeal Board hearing.
We figure the cards are stacked against us. But at least we had stopped them for the season. And lots of chores were not getting done in our daily lives. So we agree, knowing full well the Board is likely not to rule our way.
The appeal process is a story of sadly wasted time. We lose, they win and there I was back by a bridge. Waiting for dust to settle as Garth Wiggle and Larry Peitzsche, MoF staff, got out of their rig. What followed was a civil, long-needed conversation, that resulted in a no-spray solution. I agreed to take the contract and do it manually for half the cost of spraying it chemically.
Wish me luck, we all need it.
* At Press Time, Tom Prior was organizing a crew of workers to manually brush the cutblock.