The 85th of 90 Primary Watersheds on Vancouver Island is targeted for industrial logging.
by Jody MacKenzie, Sierra Club of BC
They say that when you fly over northern Vancouver Island after a heavy rainstorm, only two rivers run clear into the ocean — East Creek and the Klaskish River, both near the Brooks Peninsula. They are also the last two wild Chinook runs on the North Island, which is why Fisheries and Oceans Canada uses them as bellwether streams for determining Chinook trends for western Vancouver Island.
But in 1999, Interfor clearcut the Klaskish. Now East Creek is the last of the large intact watersheds on northern Vancouver Island, and it was just approved for logging in January.
East Creek and its tributaries stretch over 5000 hectares (ha) from the ocean to the sky, making it a primary watershed with invaluable ecological significance. (A 'primary' river flows directly into the sea.) Only a dozen decades ago, there used to be 90 such watersheds across Vancouver Island. Today, East Creek is one of the six remaining primary watersheds that have not been devastated by logging and fragmentation. Now LeMare Lake Logging's plans to log East Creek have been approved.
East Creek is located at the base of the Brooks Peninsula, and in the heart of the largest intact ancient rainforest left on north Vancouver Island. Combined with the Brooks protected area, and the Nasparti and Power River parks, 55,000 ha of ancient forest still stand intact. This area is an oasis of ancient cedars, hemlock and giant Sitka spruce among the surrounding watersheds that have been devastated by earlier logging (e.g. Mount Paxton, Red Stripe Mountain, Ououkinsh Valley). The Brooks Peninsula itself is estimated by Royal BC Museum scientists to have escaped the ice age, making it the oldest ecosystem on the island. East Creek's location at the base of the Brooks means it would have been the first valley to be re-colonized with life after the ice receded, undoubtedly holding secrets to the evolution of many island species.
This ancient rainforest is also the last intact valley in the traditional territory of the Quatsino First Nation and an invaluable history book depicting hundreds of years of sustainable human interaction and stewardship of the environment.
A critical refuge for wildlife, East Creek is currently a healthy home for eagles, marbled murrelets, wolves, bears, black tailed deer, Roosevelt Elk, and all five species of salmon.
LeMare Lake Logging's proposal calls for an extensive road network, and up to 17 cutblocks (most of them clearcuts) over the next few years.
The Sierra Club of BC estimates that the costs of logging this remote area are so high that the profits will be very low, if there are any profits at all. We have already seen the impact of unsustainable, subsidized forestry practices — unhealthy wildlife populations and loss of jobs in our communities.
Despite huge shifts in public values, increased scientific concern for endangered species, a UN call on Canada to retain our intact forest ecosystems, and clear indications that ecotourism is a growing and sustainable part of North Island economic diversification, the BC government has so far failed to help create a different future for East Creek.
Look around Vancouver Island and it is all too apparent where this is headed. A little logging now, a little later, and in a decade or so, we will have yet another "managed forest" where once there stood a miracle of nature. The trees will grow back, but never to their original grandeur, and never with the stories of their cultural and evolutionary history intact.
Given that almost every other major watershed on Vancouver Island has been used for industrial logging, surely we could try something different here. Instead, the public is now faced with a typical Forest Development Plan — one that proposes to protect "biological diversity" by leaving "coarse woody debris" and "wildlife tree patches" in place of this ancient intact valley.
* For more information: www.saveeastcreek.com. Please write to:
- Premier Gordon Campbell, Parliament Bldgs, Victoria, BC, V8V 1X4. Fax: (250)387-0087. Email: premier@gov.bc.ca
- Honourable Robert Thibault, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6, fax: (613)952-1458; email: Min@dfo-mpo.gc.ca
[From WS February/March 2002]