by Nikki Toxopeus
The other day, my two woodland guides and I were coming back from a beautiful walk to Long Lake and one of my young guides leapt from the path and ripped out a solitary green stalk of Scotch Broom.
Continue reading “Alien Invasions in Yellow Point-Cedar”
Briony Penn’s A Year on the Wild side is a total delight. She wrote the essays over a period of 25 years, and every story is enriched by one of her gorgeous colour illustrations.
We now have 24 more copies, which we are selling for $25 (no tax) as a fundraiser for the Yellow Point Ecological Society. Pick-up from my home at 13561 Barney Road, in Yellow Point, just north of Ladysmith. Payment by cash, check or e-transfer. Call me to reserve a copy, Guy Dauncey, 250-924-1445 or email me: guydauncey at earthfuture dot com
She carries you through the year with two essays/stories for every week, from a washed-up Giant Octopus in January to the Rattle of Ravens in December. In between, in prose that is musical, magical and ecologically to-notch, she seduces you into the secrets of Nature’s glorious interconnected detail. As a writer, she makes me envious of her skills.
“How would you feel as you slide through the jaws of a snake? This question has cropped up in my life at various times.”
Each essay makes for great reading aloud to children or grandchildren – but not at bed-time, since your children will be sure to respond with many questions, leading to much discussion.
“I have always been very fond of toilet plungers. They remind me of hot summer evenings under a full moon at low tide on the steaming mud sands of the Salish Sea.”
And be warned! This book will seduce you and your family into getting out into the forest, into the tidal pools, and out on the water.
“Of late, my dreams have taken me into eelgrass meadows – those sanctuaries of emerald-green grass that grow below the sea in quiet bays and estuaries.”
You can learn more about Briony, her books and art at www.brionypenn.com
The Yellow Point Ecological Society is starting a regular biweekly blog.
Would you like to try your hand at writing?
by Guy Dauncey
We look forward to receiving your first submission. Please send it to yellowpoint2020@gmail.com.
Yes, even you, who is currently thinking “I could never write a blog!”
Every blog will be posted to our YES Facebook page, and the best will find a hallowed place on our website.
The Yellow Point Ecological Society is happy to announce the $250 Winner of our Nature Photo Contest:
Lynda Stevens, for her gorgeous photo of a Salmonfly Cicada resting on an Oregon Grape flower.
Lynda lives in South Nanaimo, and she got seriously into amateur photography when she moved here from Nelson five years ago, starting with her love of birds then moving onto insects.
She loves the parks and trails around Cedar and Yellow Point, and she took the photo in early spring close to the Coco Café in Cedar, at the start of the Morden Colliery Regional Trail, using an ordinary point-and-shoot camera – a Sony RX104 with a variable range lens.
Congratulations, Lynda!
These notes are adapted from these three documents:
An Official Community Plan (OCP) is a legal policy document intended to manage growth and guide future development. It represents the community’s vision for the future. The Local Government Act defines an OCP as “a statement of objectives and policies to guide decisions on planning and land use management.”
An OCP typically contains broad goals, objectives for particular land uses, specific policies for each land use, general advocacy policies, maps and development permit areas.
An OCP is not a regulatory bylaw. With the exception of Development Permit Areas, OCPs have no direct effect or authority on private landowners or other governments or agencies. Land Use Bylaws regulate the use of land.
To protect the Coastal Douglas-fir, OCPs should set goals, objectives, and policies that support CDF retention and protection, include strong language directing at protection of the CDF zone:
Galiano’s OCP includes the following Forest Objectives:
All land use decisions for lands in the Forest designation must be guided by the following objectives:
Suggested prose based on Galiano’s OCP: “This Plan supports the preservation and protection of the CVRD’s many and varied ecosystems, including the Coastal Douglas-fir biogeoclimatic zone, the smallest and rarest such zone in British Columbia with the highest density of species that are of both provincial and global conservation concern. These ecosystems provide key services that sustain human health and wellbeing, including clean air and water, nutrient cycling, carbon storage, and timber and nontimber resources. The forested landscape is integral to the CVRD’s character. Maintaining and restoring the forest ecosystem is critical for ecosystem-based sustainable forest management.”
South Pender Island’s OCP notes that the island is located in a threatened CDF ecosystem: “Protection is to be afforded to the island’s environmentally sensitive areas, according to particular circumstance, by means that may include: landowner stewardship; inter-agency planning and management agreements; protective covenants, voluntary and required; protective provisions in regulatory bylaws; development permit areas; and land acquisition.”
The Land Use Bylaw is the main tool for implementing OCP policies through land use regulations, particularly zoning. Land use bylaws designate the zoning and regulate land use within the area of covered by the bylaw. They contain regulations on the size and siting of buildings and structures and define setbacks from lot lines and water courses. The land use bylaw prescribes the number of new lots, and the shape, dimensions and area of new lots created by subdivision. A land use bylaw often incorporates parking regulations, subdivision servicing requirements, sign regulations, screening and landscaping requirements, flood plain regulations, and run-off control regulations.
The Province does not have legislation that directly regulates forestry on private land. Forestry is exempt from local government regulation and there are few tools to use to protect the integrity of the forest from timber extraction.
Forestry cannot be regulated by local governments. A longstanding common law principle known as profit à prendre entrenches the rights of people to extract profit from the natural resources of the land. Common law land ownership is typically characterized as a bundle of rights. These rights include the rights to use and occupy the land free from interference of non-owners, as well as the right to take or sever minerals, soil, trees and other resources from the land.
This principle was referenced in the reasons for decisions concluding that the Denman Island Local Trust Committee reached beyond its authority in its attempt to regulate forest practices on private land using a Development Permit Area. The BC Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal ruled that the DPA was not broad enough to allow the Trust Committee to regulate forestry, in part because the enabling legislation did not indicate a clear intention to curtail or interfere with the common law right to extract timber. As common law, profit à prendre is not found in statute. It represents deeply held social constructs that favour the rights of individuals to exploit natural resources on private property. Even if societal attitudes towards the best use of land were to shift, it would likely take an act of the legislature rather than a court decision to overturn this principle.
On the other hand, the ability of local governments to prevent logging within riparian zones on private land has already been accepted. So maybe profit à prendre is not such a strong argument, after all.
1. Acknowledge Growth Management as an Important Environmental Protection Tool
Many OCPs and topic-specific plans such as greenway or park plans address connectivity and site-specific environmental protection but fail to put them in the larger and more important context of growth management. A tightly delineated urban area with strong growth management policies that direct a large percentage, such as 90%, of new development into urbanized areas as well as large lot rural policies are better environmental protection measures than site specific regulations such as tree preservation. While both are important, the big picture should be the first order of priority. This includes linking specific policies to the relevant regional growth strategy.
2. Connect Biodiversity and Ecologically Sensitive Areas
It is well accepted that substantial corridors of biodiversity or ecosystem connectivity preserve ecological function better than islands of habitat. The ecological value of open space and parkland is significantly increased when it is connected to other areas of ecological significance. Biodiversity corridors, greenways with ecological values, and other connectivity must be planned before other land uses are layered onto the landscape.
3. Establish Criteria for Evaluating if New Greenfield Development is Needed
Decisions about allowing new development at the periphery of a community on greenfield sites rarely occurs in the context of whether that unserviced land is needed to fulfill growth management goals. It is often seen as an opportunity for new residential or commercial development without considering the direct link between density and environmental stewardship. Prioritizing ecological conservation means establishing a standard of buildout that should occur before a community-wide discussion considers designating further greenfield sites for servicing. Such a standard could be based on one of the following:
4. Do Away with “Residential Reserves” or “Urban Reserves”
Community plans sometimes identify residential or urban “reserves.” The intent is to identify areas or parcels where there is potential for future development that is not anticipated within the life of the current plan. These designations send the signal that the policies supporting infill and building in existing serviced areas are not firm growth management policies. Likewise, plans do not establish a benchmark for evaluating when existing residential areas are built out to the extent that it would be appropriate to consider urbanizing additional parcels. The identification of these residential reserve parcels lessens the incentive to fully build out existing urban areas and make the best use of infrastructure, thus there is no clear phasing for growth or encouragement to build in existing areas. If population growth projections do not indicate a need for these parcels in the next five years then leave them out of the community plan.
5. Do Not Use Small Lot Rural or Small Holdings Land Designations
Residential policies for small holdings are inconsistent with growth management goals, smart growth and sustainability. Generally, they are essentially rural sprawl. Parcels of 0.8 to 2 hectares are predominantly rural residential. They are not large enough to sustain agricultural or other land-based economic activities and significantly fragment the green infrastructure because of the large amount of each parcel that is dedicated to buildings, driveways and residential landscaping (primarily lawn). Concentrations of these parcels near to sensitive ecosystems increase the likelihood of pollution due to septic system failures and runoff from impervious surfaces. In short, they are an outdated land designation that is yielding to hard urban and rural designations. Large holdings of 5 hectares or more in size are more consistent with rural densities where the landscape is largely intact and parcels maintained for resource or agricultural uses rather than hobby farms or rural residential.
6. Cluster Development Away from Functioning Ecosystems
Any new development has the opportunity to cluster new development to protect biodiversity corridors and ecological features, even if on private land. Clustering is used in both urban and rural areas to strictly limit the footprint of development across the landscape with the intention of maintaining designated ecosystem services. These services (riparian corridors, greenways, and sensitive ecosystems) should be included in OCPs as clear designations where development will not occur. Development can be clustered away from these sites.
7. Clarify the Boundaries of Any Amenity (Density) Bonus Program
Whether for rural or urban areas, amenity bonus can assist local governments to achieve goals for community amenity provision, in particular the donation of parkland. However, the majority of local government plans say very little about the parameters of amenity bonus. At minimum, community plans should address three factors to promote understanding of amenity bonus. The first is to define the maximum uplift that a local government will allow in defined neighbourhoods or under a specific zoning. For example, thirty percent uplift over base zoning may be appropriate if other criteria are met. This allows the amount of the bonus to be discussed beforehand with the community and will likely be different for downtown versus rural areas. The second is a list of priority amenities on a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood or municipal-wide basis so that each neighbourhood is receiving the appropriate amenity contributions. Thirdly, a clear formula is required for calculating the value of the uplift in density and the value of the amenities provided in return. Developers who opt into the amenity bonus program should be providing 50-60 percent of the increase in land value to the community in the form of amenities. Local governments may consider including in the list of community amenities “extraordinary environmental protection measures.” See the Denman Island Official Community Plan treatment of amenity bonus.
8. Plan for Water
Water is clearly an important issue for all communities and will become more critical in the next decades as climate change alters how ecosystems function. There will be more water in undesired places and less water in desired locations. Community plans traditionally have focused on establishing policies for land use but are changing to include planning for water management and establishing policies to develop long-term water demand management programs. Water will become more important than land use, and community plans are beginning to reflect this reality.
9. Define Development Permit Areas for Protection of the Natural Environment by Using the Provincial Government’s Sensitive and Other Ecosystems Map Codes and Descriptions
The trend for local governments in BC is to define ESAs based on the provincial government’s approved sensitive and other ecosystem map codes and descriptions. This provides a province-wide definition for different ESAs, and allows local governments to tailor environmental DPA (EDPA) guidelines to the specific needs of each particular ecosystem-type such as subsections on riparian or watercourse protection, wetlands, grasslands, woodland, mature forest, and other ecosystem types unique to the region. Some general guidelines can apply to all ecosystem types to deal with water and water quality, air and air quality, species at risk, and agriculture and ESAs.
10. Create and Track Environmental Indicators
Indicators can target a specific policy, or be a community-wide indicator of climate impact and ecological health. The following are strong indicators:
11. Create Ways to Enable Farmers to Live on Farm Land
12. Create Ways to Protect the Forest
Map areas where the Coastal Douglas Fir ecosystem needs to be protected, and develop tools to protect it:
Produced by the Yellow Point Ecological Society
January 2020
Go wandering. Find a place where you can sit and listen quietly to the poetry of the forest. Take time to look at the different trees, to observe the way they grow. Learn the names of the ferns, wildflowers, and forest birds. Find a space to lie down and gaze up, and wonder. The forest has been here for a long, long time.
The forest ecosystem on Vancouver Island is 12,000 years old. Until loggers started clearcutting in the 1940s every forest was an oldgrowth forest, with trees up to a thousand years old. This is the astonishingly rich ecosystem we have lost – but it is slowly returning with each successive year that a forest is not clearcut.
The integrity of the forest is essential for the health and resilience of our watersheds and our drinking water, since the forests filter and clean the water. It is essential for all the wildlife for whom it is home. It is essential for carbon storage, making protecting the forest a key solution to the climate emergency. If you visit Wildwood you can join a workshop or a forest tour where you can learn more about the forest ecosystem.
We also suggest these books:
Working to protect the forest will be more effective if you can find friends who share your concern, and work with them to make a difference. It will also be more fun. These are some of the groups that are working to protect the forest here on Vancouver Island:
When it comes to the law and regulations intended to protect the forest there are four different forest jurisdictions on Vancouver Island:
This is an area that has not been explored much, since many people believe that governments should not interfere with a private landowner’s rights. These rights are already governed by zoning laws and bylaws, however, and by Development Permit Area rules, so there’s good reason to engage with the rules. Often, where forested land is in a Development Permit Area (DPA), there are many exclusions that make the rules irrelevant. We need to discuss ways in which DPA exclusions can be reduced, and the DPAs themselves can be widened to allow logging using ecoforestry principles, while ending clearcutting.
Members of organizations such as the Sierra Club and the Ancient Forest Alliance have been working for years to try to influence government forest policy, but so far, it has been a slow, uphill struggle. In the 1990s we had success in protecting various areas completely, such as the Carmanah, parts of the Walbran, and the development of the 1990s Forest Practices Code. That was abandoned under successive BC Liberal governments, but we hope for more success under the current NDP/Green Party Alliance. Oldgrowth forests the size of 34 soccer fields are still being clearcut every day, and only 10% of the biggest old trees are left. You can send a letter to Minister Doug Donaldson here.
All over the world, forests are in need of restoration. This is a big topic that people study in universities. If you know of land locally that is in need of restoration, you can plant trees, making sure to install a deer-protector for each sapling. You can also ask your friends to help you clear invasive species such as broom, using advice on how and when to cut from Broombusters.
If it’s a creek or stream that needs restoration, this is a more complex matter that needs care and skills. Dave Polster has some good advice.
If you want to build a home or a workshop, or clear a a spot for a tiny home, the most useful advice is Don’t Rush In. Live on your land for a year to see where the sun falls, where it floods in winter, which way the wind blows, and which species live where. If you cluster buildings together, there will be much less damage to the forest. You may have friends who say “It’s okay to clearcut the forest because it will grow back,” but in areas where the forest has been cleared such as Timberlands south of Cassidy, and along the Nanaimo River Road the temperature on the ground can be ten or twenty degrees warmer on hot days, compared to within the forest. Deer may eat any new trees that try to get established, and the ‘new normal’ of the climate crisis with its extended summer droughts may mean that the forest never grows back.
If you are thinking of working in a riparian area close to water it’s important to know that fish, frogs and salamanders breed in the water and spend much of their lives in riparian areas, as do many birds, invertebrates, including dragonflies, snails, slugs, and native pollinators like bumblebees and butterflies. For these reasons, it’s important to protect riparian areas:
In the CVRD, development is not allowed:
In the RDN, riparian setbacks range from 9 meters to 30 metres depending on the slope of the land and the nature of the watercourse.
If you own a parcel of forest and you manage it ecologically using ecoforestry methods you will speed its restoration to its original oldgrowth character. A good way to learn about ecoforestry is to attend a workshop at Wildwood: it’s all about retaining the canopy, preserving the strong seed trees, preserving wildlife trees and protecting the soil. Here’s a short video that can get you started.
If you own a parcel of forest and you want to protect it forever, you can work with a Land Trust to place a Conservation Covenant on it. This will bind future owners to protect it, with a heavy penalty for a breach of the covenant and a requirement for restoration. The downside is that it will cost you around $25,000: $12,000 for surveying and legal work and $12,000 for the Land Trust whose staff and volunteers will need to visit the land to monitor the covenant every year or so, for eternity. One option is to write the wish that you want your land covenanted into your will, leaving money to cover the cost. On Vancouver Island, you can discuss placing a covenant on your land with these organizations:
You have heard a rumour that a forest you love is threatened with being clearcut. What to do?
We need to develop a vision of the future in which Nature is respected and protected. We need to hold a clear intention that forests will be valued for all that they offer, with proper protection under the law. The trees and wetlands cannot speak for themselves: we have to speak for them: that is what ecological democracy means. And they need rights.
Christopher Stone, a law professor at the University of Southern California, has written that just as we have given legal status to non-human entities such as ships and corporations, society should also give legal rights to forests, oceans, rivers and other so-called ‘natural’ objects in the environment. Corporations cannot speak either: lawyers speak for them. In 2017, New Zealand’s lawmakers granted the Whanganui River the legal rights of a human, ensuring that it will be represented by guardians in all legal matters that concern the waterway.
Yellow Point Ecological Society, November 2019
The members of the Yellow Point Ecological Society work to understand, appreciate, protect and restore the ecosystems and watersheds in the Yellow Point area of Vancouver Island, and to inspire and support local residents and visitors to do the same. www.yellowpointecologicalsociety.ca
This paper is also available as a PDF Y.E.S. PMFLP Submission.
July 22, 2019
In BC, we have Crown forests. We have private forest lands, where most people live. We have public forests that are protected as parks. We have community forests, such as North Cowichan’s. And we have the Private Managed Forest Lands, which are actively harvested while being under private ownership.
Each type of forest is governed by different people and different rules. The urgent need that faces us, at this unprecedented time of climate and ecological emergency, is to find ways to manage the forests in which our needs for timber, income and jobs can be met while nature is nourished, carbon is stored and water is protected.
Very much to the point, the BC government is asking for our ideas on how the governance and management of Crown Lands and Private Managed Forest Lands might need changing. This paper is focussed on the latter. Our thoughts about Crown lands can be found on our website.
The climate emergency is such that we need to reduce our harmful carbon emissions as rapidly as we possibly can, while simultaneously increasing the means by which Earth’s forests, farms, grasslands and oceans re-absorb the dangerously excessive carbon.
The ecological emergency is such that the team of scientists who have written the Global Deal for Nature are urging that we need to preserve 50% of Earth’s lands in a natural state by 2030 if we are to have a hope of keeping global heating under the “danger zone” target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, and prevent the world’s ecosystems from unravelling.[1]
The Private Managed Forest Lands on Vancouver Island have their origin in the 1875 E&N Rail Grant, when a quarter of Vancouver Island from Sooke to Campbell River (two million acres) was given to Robert Dunsmuir as part of the arrangement to build a railway on the Island. In the years between 1925 and 1960 the Dunsmuirs sold most of their lands to coal and forest companies.
Two big companies own the most Private Managed Forest Lands on Vancouver Island: TimberWest and Island Timberlands. Some of the Dunsmuir forest lands were bought by MacMillan Bloedel, which was later bought by Weyerhauser, parts of which were later bought by Brookfield Asset Management, which then created Island Timberlands, seeking a 12-15% return on equity, presuming industrial logging followed by real estate development.
Other forest lands were bought by the American pulp and paper conglomerate Crown Zellerbach, parts of which were bought by Fletcher Challenge, which over time became TimberWest in 1997. In the late 1990s, TimberWest developed a sustainability agreement with the government in which their Oyster River Division in the Comox Valley would harvest 400,000 cubic metres a year. In the late 1990s, however, TimberWest’s owners decided to become an Income Trust, which required them to provide a guaranteed 8% return to their unit holders. In pursuit of this they ditched the sustainability agreement and increased harvesting to 1.2 million cubic metres a year, to much community protest. In the years between 2008-2011, Brookfield Asset Management, Western Forest Products, Weyerhauser and TimberWest donated $290,000 to the BC Liberals.[2]
In 2011, TimberWest[3] and Island Timberlands[4] were bought by the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, the Public Sector Pension Investment Board and the Alberta Investment Management Corporation for just over $1 billion. TimberWest’s core business is selling hemlock and Douglas fir logs from their 327,000 hectares to B.C and Pacific Rim markets. In 2011, Asian exports accounted for 70% of their log sales and revenue. In 2018 the two companies entered into an agreement to provide for shared use of facilities, align best practices and enhance forest stewardship, and they are now managed jointly by Mosaic Forest Management.[5]
With an eye on the long-term, TimberWest has earmarked 17% of its 322,000 hectares as being suited for real estate development in addition to forestry. Island Timberlands has done the same for 5% of its 256,000 hectares.
The Private Managed Forest Lands in total includes 278 private managed forests covering 818,000 hectares, from which 4.76 million cubic feet were harvested in 2017, representing 7% of BC’s timber harvest.
On Vancouver Island there are 201 managed forest, on which 33 owners harvested 8,861 hectares of forest, yielding 4.27 million cubic metres of timber (482 cubic metres/hectare), 28% of the Island’s timber harvest.[6] At 40 cubic metres per logging truck, that’s 107,000 trucks, which parked nose-to-tail would stretch 1819 km from Vancouver to Winnipeg.[7]
BC’s total average annual timber harvest is 77 million cubic metres, or 1.95 million logging trucks, which parked nose-to-tail would stretch for 33,000 kilometres, 7,000 km short of the circumference of the Earth.
The wants and needs of investors are defining motivators at heart of modern economies, accompanied by the externalization of costs to nature, communities and workers, in accordance with the principles of neo-classical economics. The natural growth rate of timber in forests on the east coast of Vancouver Island is 2%-4%, but TimberWest’s investors at the time demanded 8%. The only possible sources of a return higher than the natural growth rate are increased productivity, which is currently pushed to the limit with the use of feller-bunchers, decreased wage-costs, reduced payment of taxes, or unsustainable harvesting. The additional return could be achieved by liquidating the forest over 20 years and then selling the company to a private equity (leveraged buy-out) firm, but this would be vulture capitalism at its worst, close to piracy, with the forest being the stolen booty.
As the sole intermediary between the government and the private sector, the Private Managed Forest Lands Council bears the responsibility for ensuring that large land-owning companies do not abuse the privileges they receive through the Program by exploiting the forests under their stewardship in a non-sustainable manner. The forests have been here for 12,000 years, and if we manage them responsibly, and if they can survive ecological disruptions caused by the climate crisis, they will be here for many thousands of years to come.
Island Timberlands Forest Lands
TimberWest Forest Lands
Vancouver Island Private Managed Forest Lands https://engage.gov.bc.ca/app/uploads/sites/491/2019/05/PMFL_Lands_Southwest.pdf
Many people in the Comox Valley, the Nanaimo watershed and the Cowichan Valley have been troubled by the way the big companies have been logging. In the Comox Valley, mountainsides have been stripped bare of their timber, silt and mud is being washed away, the rivers are flooding in winter, and there are boil water advisories in the summer. In consequence, the CVRD is having to build a sophisticated underwater pumping station and an onshore pump station with filtration, chlorination and UV treatment, costing local taxpayers a probable $125 million. When New York City’s 9.5 million residents were faced with a $10 billion cost to build new water filtration plants, plus $100 million a year to maintain them, they found that they could achieve the same result by investing $1.5 billion in watershed restoration with 368 local landowners.[8]
In July 2019 the Narwhal reported that: “In Peachland in the Okanagan, where extensive logging has taken place nearby, a landslide downslope of a logging road contributed to boil-water advisories and the need for a new $24 million water treatment plant funded by the community. In Grand Forks, sprawling clearcuts are believed to have played a major role in a monster flood in 2018 that inundated houses and led to the closure of 28 downtown businesses. In the Regional District of Central Kootenay — which stretches from the U.S. border to north of Nakusp and includes Glade and the cities of Nelson and Castlegar — at least seven communities face clear-cut logging on slopes that are home to the creeks that supply their drinking water.”[9]
Because of the heavy logging, the Columbian blacktail deer that used to browse on lichen hanging from old growth trees at upper elevations to get them through the winter have been forced down into the valleys to feed on gardens and fruit trees. In the Cowichan Valley, similar problems have arisen: mountainsides stripped bare, flooding in winter, and the Cowichan river drying up in summer, threatening the spawning grounds of the coho, and the spring salmon, on which the southern killer whales depend.[10] The warming climate and shrinking glaciers are also contributing, demonstrating how the different impacts combine.
Clearcut logging has big climate impacts. A healthy growing forest is a carbon sink, absorbing CO2 through photosynthesis and storing it as carbon in the timber and soil. In consequence, over the millennia BC’s forests have become a huge store of carbon. Old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest with a timber volume of 1500-1800 cubic metres per hectare hold carbon stocks that vary from 750 to 1130 tonnes per hectare, with 30-50% being stored in the soil and 400 to 500 tonnes in the trees.[11]
When the timber is cut and used for pulp or paper and the soil is disturbed each cubic metre of timber releases a tonne of CO2. The 4,270,000 cubic metres that are logged each year in the Private Managed Forest Lands on Vancouver Island therefore release some 4.27 million tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of a million cars driving on the road for a year. BC’s total harvest, averaging 77 million cubic metres, releases 77 million tonnes of CO2, compared to 62 million tonnes for BC’s annual emissions from everything else.
Once clearcut, a hectare of forest debris becomes a net source of 22 tonnes of CO2 per hectare per year. The shift from source to sink occurs at around 17 years, and a near-end-of-rotation stand (50-60 years-old) stores 15 tonnes per hectare.[12] The Sierra Club has estimated that Including forest fires, BC’s net forest emissions totalled 209 million tonnes a year in 2017 and 2018, three times more than all other emissions combined.[13] For the average log, the Sierra Club estimates that 23% of the carbon is stored in timber products; the BC government estimates 52%.[14]
In 2004, the Forest Land Reserve Act was repealed, the Forest Land Reserves were dissolved, and the Private Managed Forest Land Act was enacted “to encourage sustainable forest management and protect key environmental values on private managed land.” The owners of the 278 managed forest properties, which range in size from 3.5 hectares to 166,000 hectares, make a commitment to meet five general environmental objectives, covering soil conservation, water quality, fish habitat, wildlife habitat and reforestation. They pay for the program’s operating costs through a levy of 13 cents/cubic metre, and in return they receive a municipal tax reduction. In 2011, on Cortes Island, Island Timberlands paid $5-6/acre, compared to $62/acre for other landowners. On its 1,800 hectares, over 20 years the program will save Island Timberlands $4.7 million in property taxes.
The program is managed by a five-person Private Managed Forest Land Council, consisting of two owner reps, two government reps, and a jointly chosen chair. They make and enforce regulations, make compliance determinations, conduct inspections and audits, review landowner applications, and review annual declarations by the owners. Inspections are made by hired professional foresters at least once every 5 years, and they boast a 99.5% compliance rate, based on a 15% inspection rate. There is no First Nations engagement, no community engagement, no public environmental engagement, no public input into logging plans, and no long-term planning.
Regarding methods of logging, forest landowners are not required to submit a plan for approval, and they are not constrained on their annual timber volumes – there are no sustainable harvest level requirements. They have to follow standards of practice with regard to harvesting, stream protection, road construction/maintenance, and reforestation, and they have to honour the five environmental objectives. The devil is in the details, however:
How can a broader, more ecologically inclusive perspective be brought to the governance of the program?
When considering how forest owners respond to the proposed new mandates, we recommend that a distinction be made between large and small landowners, since there is a big difference between the management of forest land covering 166,000 hectares and land covering 40 hectares.
When the Forest Practices Board studied community watersheds managed under the FRPA in 2014, they found that:
In support of the FPB’s recommendations to ensure that the government’s objectives for community watersheds are achieved, we suggest that the Private Managed Forest Lands Program:
We further recommend that members of the Private Managed Forest Lands Council urge the government to fully implement the Water Sustainability Act, which would go 60% of the way towards protecting critical community watersheds.
We would like consideration for these related suggestions, which may or may not fall under the Private Managed Forest Land Program’s remit:
END
Contact: Guy Dauncey, President. guydauncey@earthfuture.com 250-924-1445
[1] Global Deal for Nature: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/science-study-outlines-30-percent-conservation-2030/
[2] Private communication from Rick James, Comox Valley resident.
[3] TimberWest: https://www.timberwest.com
[4] Island Timberlands: https://islandtimberlands.com
[5] Mosaic Forest Management: https://www.mosaicforests.com
[6] Managed Forest Council Annual Report, 2017/2018. http://mfcouncil.ca/2017-annual-report/
[7] Trucks 17 metres long, distance 1,819 kilometres
[8] New York City: https://www.edf.org/blog/2018/08/28/how-300-farmers-are-saving-new-york-city-billions
[9] Narwhal: https://thenarwhal.ca/you-cant-drink-money-kootenay-communities-fight-logging-protect-drinking-water
[10] Cowichan River: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/low-water-levels-cowichan-river-hatching-salmon-1.5049794
[11] Carbon storage: https://pics.uvic.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/WP_Forestry_November2008.pdf
[12] https://pics.uvic.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/WP_Forestry_November2008.pdf
[13] Sierra Club: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/sierra-club-report-forest-carbon-emissions-1.4995191
[14] BC forest carbon emissions: https://sierraclub.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Forest-Emissions-Detailed-Backgrounder_June22.pdf
[15] Wildlife guidance: https://www.cab-bc.org/file-download/guidance-resource-professionals-managing-species-risk-bc
[16] Right to Roam: https://mountainclubs.org/right-to-roam/
[17] Glyphosate: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/it-blows-my-mind-how-b-c-destroys-a-key-natural-wildfire-defence-every-year-1.4907358
[18] Glyphosate: https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/14/health/us-glyphosate-cancer-study-scli-intl/index.html
[19] IUCN Study: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/18/iucn-red-list-reveals-wildlife-destruction-from-treetop-to-ocean-floor
[20] Community drinking water: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/air-land-water/water/water-quality/community-watersheds
[21] Forest Practices Board: https://www.bcfpb.ca/news-resources/news-releases/protection-of-drinking-water-in-community-watersheds-examined/
[22] Qualifying agricultural use: https://info.bcassessment.ca/Services-products/property-classes-and-exemptions/farm-land-assessment/farm-classification-in-british-columbia/Apply-for-farm-classification
[23] CleanBC: https://cleanbc.gov.bc.ca
The BC Ministry of Forests is asking for our thoughts on how they should reform the Forest and Range Practices Act, with a deadline of Monday July 15th for comments.
https://engage.gov.bc.ca/govtogetherbc/consultation/forest-and-range-practices-act/
To help in your considerations these are our suggested changes, drawing on thoughts from the Sierra Club, the Ancient Forests Alliance, the Forest Practices Board, and others.
Continue reading “Some Suggested Changes to the Forest and Range Practices Act”
The American Robin is the quintessential ‘Bird of Spring’ for most of North America, but we’re lucky enough to have them as year-round residents on eastern Vancouver Island. They’re common almost everywhere but are especially visible after rain (so, yeah, mostly in the winter months) chasing down worms that wriggle to the surface to avoid drowning in the soaked soil. They have a gentle call and a sociable nature, preferring to roam in flocks (almost herds at times), but will scold you if you get too close.
I first moved to the West Coast in the winter, and while exploring the Lower Mainland’s waterfront one day in January I came across a truly unbelievable sight—a hummingbird in a tree! I couldn’t believe my eyes. I figured this poor little thing had somehow gotten caught up in a storm in California and blown north, which seemed an unbelievable journey for such a small and delicate creature. But of course, we West Coasters know an even un-believabler truth; these perky creatures are year-round residents. I’ve taken photos of them in raging snowstorms, sipping perkily on the sugar blend in my feeders, and I recently found out that local birds are even choosing to BREED in the winter, presumably to reduce competition from their territorial summer humming-mates, the Rufous Hummingbirds. They originally only overwintered on the Baja California Peninsula and Southern California, but the slow and steady march of exotic ornamental plants and willing feeder-fillers northwards has allowed them to spread their incredibly small wings and capitalize on an incredible opportunity.
For more, please read Anna’s Hummingbird on Wikipedia.
The bald eagle is an iconic bird of the Canadian West Coast, although its range essentially encompasses all of Canada and the United States, outside of the Arctic tundra. Their population density is highest on the coastal Pacific, due to the incredible variety of easily accessible food, and they tend to concentrate near known salmon runs in the winter months…although they seem to be found at their highest density near the Cedar Dump. They’re not dumb. They know what’s there.
I’m about 60% certain the above owl is a Barred Owl. The only photo I have is from directly beneath an owl perched on a power line, and it’s not very flattering. The WordPress royalty free photo service’s search function for specific birds is…challenging, to say the least.
The barred owl has about the most distinctive call you could imagine—the quintessential ‘who cooks for you?!’ you’ve probably heard in the distance as the sun sets (or, more alarmingly, from directly overhead and the cats are still out).
They’re a large owl, native to eastern North America and generally considered invasive here on the West Coast. Invasiveness is a difficult thing to measure sometimes—typically if something is introduced by mankind and outcompetes the local species, it’s an easy call. But the Barred Owl is a tougher nut to crack…it came here all by itself, enabled by our unfortunate ability to wittingly and unwittingly change the landscape around us as we settle. The straw that breaks the camel’s back in this case seems to be that they also handily outcompete our local owls, such as the Burrowing Owl.
These cheerful little birds are easy to hear and difficult to spot, sharing the usual wren traits of flitting quickly and noiselessly from branch to branch while seeming to scold you from 12 directions at once. They’re fairly ordinary looking but are full of character, being especially curious in the early spring while they look for a spot to settle down and nest. I’ve come across their nests in a variety of unlikely locations, but my favourite so far has been in the eaves of my shed, nestled into the insulation. One of the reason they’re less known is that they’re obligate insectivores—you’re not going to see these at your seed feeders, unless the seed feeders happen to attract large numbers of bugs (in which case you should probably get that checked out). Nonetheless, I find their antics make them one of the most enjoyable yard birds to observe, particularly when they arrive with a beak full of spiders.
For more, read Bewick’s Wren on Wikipedia.
The bushtit commonly adheres to the Milford School’s mantra of being ‘neither seen nor heard’. On the rare occasions you do notice a flock, it’s usually little more than a bit of an extra rustle in the leaves of a nearby bush, or maybe a very quiet peeping if you’re really paying attention. They’re very plain looking and flit quickly between the branches searching for ants and other small bugs to eat. And if you’re really, REALLY paying attention, you might spot their very distinctive nests high in the trees or bushes; it resembles a pendant, built with moss and lichen, assembled with spider silk, and lined with the bird’s own feathers.
Southern BC is actually the very northernmost tip of the bushtit’s range, but they can be found all the way south to Guatemala and southern Mexico.
Read more about the American bushtit on Wikipedia (they’re the only New World bushtit, so we omit the ‘American’ part for brevity).
The California Quail is one of my favourite birds, if for no other reason than its perfectly ridiculous plume. They’re year-round residents on the Island, though their behaviour changes radically throughout the season. As I type this in the spring, the quail have paired off and can be found two-by-two while they accomplish their courtship, mating, and nesting. Typically in the early summer they’ll take a page from the bushtits and be ‘neither seen nor heard’ while they raise their chicks hidden deep in the brush, but come late summer they’ll emerge with their fully mobile chicks and join together into much larger groups, often twenty or thirty strong. They’ll remain like this through the fall and winter, staying in their large groups until the spring comes again.
I had a covey of quail who decided to settle into my lilac bushes for the winter, and it gave me great excitement to see them swing by my ground feeders (and the ground under my non-ground feeders) as part of their daily circuit. Alas, the excitement was short lived, as what started off as a group of ten seemed to dwindle by one or two birds per week, getting smaller and smaller as December ground into January. By early February, only two birds were left, and I was confused—why did the others leave? Watching from my basement window one day, my question was answered—the remaining two were flushed from their ground feeder by a very plump looking Sharp-shinned hawk. After that, one remained—and she, only for a week. So ended my winter with the quail.
As a pilot, I have a very conflicted experience with Canada geese. On the one hand, they’re loud, gather in large groups, poop everywhere, and are known to be somewhat ornery when approached. On the other hand, they fly into airplanes with somewhat alarming regularity. So that’s…well, I guess that’s not very conflicted.
Many Canadian cities struggle with large number of Canada geese—Toronto and Montreal in particular have seen an explosion of the geese in their downtown parks, with all their concomitant issues. Vancouver has a similar issue, but with snow geese, and only in the spring when they stop in for a nibble in Richmond winging their way north to the Arctic. Here on the Island, we’re just far enough off the western flyway that we have neither of these issues, for which we are mostly thankful.
That said, we do have a fairly healthy population of Canada geese resident throughout the year. I’m just now in from mowing the lawn, and one of these geese in particular took a disliking to me encroaching on his territory (read: my lawn). Hissing ensued, and then I got to mow through a large pile of goose poop. It was delightful.
The Cedar waxwing, in my eyes, is one of the most beautiful birds we have here on Vancouver Island. Despite their bright plumage, I really only notice them in late spring, when the cherry trees are bursting with fruit and large (10-12) flocks of waxwings wing out of nowhere and begin to gorge. I’ve heard they’re far less common in built up areas, but in our part of the world, if you have cherry trees, you’ve probably experienced the waxwings. (Alternatively, if you’ve noticed many of your fruit have small triangular beak-marks removed, then you’ve DEFINITELY experienced the waxwings).
My first experience with this west coast chickadee was while visiting a friend in Vancouver. Walking through Stanley Park, I found myself being followed quite closely by a bird resembling the black-capped chickadee I knew from Ontario, but not quite. It seemed very inquisitive, and on a whim I held out my hand to see what it would do. It cocked its head, seemed to think for a moment, and then flitted over and perched on my finger for a few seconds before flitting away again. Our eastern birds were MUCH ruder than that. I was instantly in love. It wouldn’t be a huge stretch to say that this one experience played an outsized role in convincing me to move here. And I’m happy to report that Vancouver Island’s chickadees more than rise to the level of their mainland counterparts—if you’re out for a hike, visiting a friend’s house, or even just see one near you feeder, try holding out your hand—you might be in for a delightful experience.
The common raven is simply one of the most impressive birds you could ever hope to meet. I can’t even hope to describe it myself, so I’ll just defer to the Wikipedia description.
The common raven (Corvus corax), also known as the northern raven, is a large all-black passerinebird. Found across the Northern Hemisphere, it is the most widely distributed of all corvids. There are at least eight subspecies with little variation in appearance, although recent research has demonstrated significant genetic differences among populations from various regions. It is one of the two largest corvids, alongside the thick-billed raven, and is possibly the heaviest passerine bird; at maturity, the common raven averages 63 centimetres (25 inches) in length and 1.2 kilograms (2.6 pounds) in mass. Common ravens can live up to 21 years in the wild,[2] a lifespan surpassed among passerines by only a few Australasianspecies such as the satin bowerbird[3] and probably the lyrebirds. Young birds may travel in flocks but later mate for life, with each mated pair defending a territory.
Common ravens have coexisted with humans for thousands of years and in some areas have been so numerous that people have regarded them as pests. Part of their success as a species is due to their omnivorous diet; they are extremely versatile and opportunistic in finding sources of nutrition, feeding on carrion, insects, cereal grains, berries, fruit, small animals, and food waste.
Some notable feats of problem-solving provide evidence that the common raven is unusually intelligent.[4]Over the centuries, it has been the subject of mythology, folklore, art, and literature. In many cultures, including the indigenous cultures of Scandinavia, ancient Ireland and Wales, Bhutan, the northwest coast of North America, and Siberia and northeast Asia, the common raven has been revered as a spiritual figure or godlike creature.[5]
In conclusion, big, smart, fast, widespread, long lived, godlike. Questions?
These beautiful little birds are commonly heard near ponds and lakes, living and collecting small bugs and flies among the reeds and grasses. They’re far less common in dry areas. You’ll probably recognize their ‘wickety-wickety-wickety’ call if you’re spent any time hiking near a marsh, but they’re fairly retiring and will leave quickly if they sense you nearby. I set up a small viewing platform with a lawn chair in a tree overlooking our small beaver pond and was rewarded for sitting still for long periods of time with the above shots, which I considered a win. My wife considered it all ridiculous.
Read more about the common yellowthroat on Wikipedia.
The Dark-eyed juncos took a while to grow on me when I first moved here—they’re pretty plain looking birds, and seem entirely too abundant in the fall and winter to really leap to the eye. But they’re surprisingly complex little birds—their plumage varies wildly across the species, ranging from dominantly black to containing little to no black at all. I’ve often seen strange looking birds at my feeders in the winter and have spent many minutes excitedly searching for my binoculars only to realize “it’s just another junco” once I get close up. They also have a very nice little song, being known within the birding set as an excellent bird through which to study ‘bird language’. I’m not QUITE at that level yet, but, you know…good to know.
The Eurasian collared dove is, as you might guess, invasive in North America, and pretty much everywhere else on the planet too (but not Iceland, which says more about Iceland than it does about the Eurasian collared dove). Evidence suggests that they’re not overly damaging to their environment, nor do they tend to outcompete the local mourning doves, so their presence here merely…is. They’re fairly unremarkable, but they do tend to make some unexpected noises that’ll have you reaching for your binoculars and then disappointedly realizing “oh, it’s just a dove”.
I was actually thinking to myself, “You know, there’s not really much to say about the golden crowned sparrow—wait, I’ll check Wikipedia to see what interesting facts I can dig up to seem knowledgeable!” And Wikipedia in one line tells me…
The golden-crowned sparrow (Zonotrichia atricapilla) is a large American sparrow found in the western part of North America.
I feel less bad about my ignorance now. There is one small note, which is that the golden crowned sparrow is very similar to the White-crowned sparrow, which has (you guessed it) a white crown instead of a gold one. Apparently the lineage split very recently. My entry on the white crowned sparrow, it seems, will be equally short.
You know how it’s a thing now that birds are modern day dinosaurs? Maybe you’d find that difficult to believe, up until you heard two Great blue herons yelling at one another. I KNOW what they sound like, and to this day hearing one nearby makes me nearly jump out of my skin and run for cover. They’re quite beautiful, beyond the noises they produce.
Southern Florida boasts a sub-population which is coloured entirely white, and is known as the Great white heron, which is kind of neat. Beyond that, Wikipedia tells me that we grow ’em large here in BC—our average heron is almost half a pound heavier than those found further east.
Try not to think about that next time one yells at you from a nearby tree or bush.
The House finch seemed all too common and unremarkable to me to be worth much attention. Coming from out east, I had a variety of experiences with the similar but smaller purple finch, and kind of assumed the House finch was a large, duller, and less interesting version of my beloved Purple finch.
But MAN can these guys sing. The audio file doesn’t really do them justice (notwithstanding the bonus raven)—they have one of the most varied and interesting songs of any of the common feeder birds here on the Island. Wikipedia further tells me
Originally only a resident of Mexico and the southwestern United States, they were introduced to eastern North America in the 1940s. The birds were sold illegally in New York City[6] as “Hollywood Finches”, a marketing artifice.[5] To avoid prosecution under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, vendors and owners released the birds. They have since become naturalized; in largely unforested land across the eastern U.S., they have displaced the native purple finch and even the non-native house sparrow.
So that’s kind of interesting. Honestly, any bird that can outcompete a house sparrow is ok in my books.
It’s a Mallard.
And here’s some video of mallards, by Mark from www.avibirds.com
The Marsh wren is another very common summer bird in local marshes and wetlands—chances are you’ve heard its distinctive chitter from afar as you hike nearby. Our very small beaver pond hosts three or four of them in our reeds, and it’s about as small as wetland habitats get. Like most wrens, they’re very entertaining to watch, and generally quite curious about interlopers, but I’ve never managed to get as close to one as I have to the Bewick’s. Also like the Bewick’s, their nests can be quite easy to find—you just have to watch the bird with binoculars for a few minutes and see where it concentrates its time.
Read more about the Marsh wren on Wikipedia—and be sure to check out the range map. I find it oddly beautiful.
The Northern flicker is another of those local birds that I would describe as ‘weirdly beautiful’, not that my photo does it much justice (and searching the WordPress royalty-free image gallery for ‘Northern flicker’ returns three pages of aurora borealis and (for whatever reason) two blue-footed boobies, so that’s not much help). They live here year-round, although I’ve come to associate their screeching cries with the onset of fall. They’re virtually silent the rest of the year, but when the rain starts to fall—boy-o, that’s their time to shine.
Flickers are woodpeckers, as you’d come to know if you ever had one take a sudden interest in your eaves. Putting aside the somewhat alarming fact that they’re only there because you have tasty bugs in your walls, they can be fairly difficult to dislodge once they’re there—and they can do damage ranging from ‘why won’t he leave the chimney alone?!’ to ‘screw it, I’m just going to replace the entire wall’. Our friend in the BC interior had difficulty tracking down an odd knocking in her furnace, incurred two separate repair callouts, and finally had the guy come in while the noise was still occurring—he knew exactly what it was. She then invested in a slingshot and proudly told us later that it took her a while but she’d ‘gotten some feather’ and thought the episode at an end.
Our fingers are crossed.
Also, simply because it’s delightful—from Wikipedia:
Over 100 common names for the northern flicker are known, including yellowhammer (not to be confused with the Eurasian yellowhammer), clape, gaffer woodpecker, harry-wicket, heigh-ho, wake-up, walk-up, wick-up, yarrup, and gawker bird.
The Northwestern crow is a slightly smaller analogue of the American crow, which is why they are known to defend themselves with knives.
I’ve only ever seen the Pacific wren in coniferous forests, and then only incidentally—they’re tiny, virtually noiseless, and about as flit-ty as they come. Wikipedia really says it best:
Its movements as it creeps or climbs are incessant rather than rapid; its short flights swift and direct but not sustained, its tiny round wings whirring as it flies from bush to bush.
Virtually poetic.
The Pileated Woodpecker is the second-largest woodpecker in North America, or even the largest if you (like most experts) consider the Ivory-billed woodpecker to be extinct. ‘Pileated’ refers to its bright red chapeau, but in far fancier terms, which is unfortunate when you think about it. Wouldn’t a black-pileated chickadee seem much more exotic?
Based on my personal experience, the best spot by far on the Island to spot a Pileated Woodpecker is on the telephone pole in front of my house. I’m assuming this means it’s full of tasty, tasty grubs, which I try not to think about whenever the wind is blowing.
The red-breasted nuthatch is given entirely short shrift by Wikipedia.
Its call, which has been likened to a tin trumpet, is high-pitched and nasal. It breeds in coniferous forests across Canada, Alaska and the northeastern and western United States. Though often a permanent resident, it regularly irrupts further south if its food supply fails. There are records of vagrants occurring as far south as the Gulf Coast and northern Mexico. It forages on the trunks and large branches of trees, often descending head first, sometimes catching insects in flight. It eats mainly insects and seeds, especially from conifers. It excavates its nest in dead wood, often close to the ground, smearing the entrance with pitch.
High-pitched and nasal?! I find the ‘meep meep’ of the nuthatch to be among the more calming of the songbird calls. It doesn’t hurt that the bird is just bursting with character, full of curiosity about its surroundings, poking pretty much every hidey-hole it finds for morsels of food, and seemingly defying gravity by hopping up and down vertical tree trunks facing whichever direction it likes. As for calling it a vagrant, well…I guess that’s fair. Vagrant in this sense just means that it shows up where it shouldn’t, which is a little judge-y, but you’d think the people on the Gulf Coast and northern Mexico would be delighted.
Anyways, count this among my favourite birds (there’s more than a few of them in this list I’ve called my favourite, I know, but I have a big heart).
Have you ever been out walking and come across a tree riddled from root to canopy with lines of little horizontal dots? That’s this guy at work, drilling out the wounds in the tree to get sap flowing to the surface. Akin to a beaver, the sapsucker actually creates food and habitats for other creatures while going about its day.
A sapsucker’s tongue is adapted with stiff hairs for collecting the sap. Red-breasted sapsuckers visit the same tree multiple times, drilling holes in neat horizontal rows. A bird will leave and come back later, when the sap has started flowing from the holes. Repeated visits over an extended period of time can actually kill the tree.[3] The insects attracted to the sap are also consumed, and not only by sapsuckers. Rufous hummingbirds, for example, have been observed to follow the movements of sapsuckers and take advantage of this food source.[2]
That’s actually a pretty nice segue to the
…which is, unsurprisingly, one of my favourite birds on the Island! I know, I know. I promise this one is the last one. The rufous is noticeably smaller than the Anna’s, but makes up for its small size by packing in three times as much personality. These birds are astounding migrants, making a circuit up to 3600 km long throughout the year. They show up here surprisingly early in the spring, often in late February or early March, and almost immediately begin their very distinctive aerial mating display. I’ve tried to describe it to friends and family in the east using a combination of hand motions and enthusiastic noises, but I always feel like I’m giving them short shrift—there’s only so much you can do with your hand to make it seem like a hummingbird’s rear waggling in mid air while you say ‘buh-buh-buh-BEW!’ over and over. I’ve tried to get a video of the tiny hummingbird moving at high speed from a hundred feet in the air in an parabolic arc curving towards wherever you are not, but that turns out largely as you might expect…so hand waggling and weird noises it shall have to be.
Once they’ve fledged their chicks, the whole kit and caboodle take off for the upland wildflowers as the summer wears on, meaning they’ve often left our little corner of the Island by mid July. They’ll follow these alpine wildflower blooms all the way back down to their overwintering grounds in the Mexican state of Guerrero (think Acapulco—not so different from the average Canadian).
I highly encourage you to check out Wikipedia for more on this incredible bird.
I have a bit of a conflicted relationship with the Red-winged blackbird. They’re beautiful, yes, but we live near a small beaver pond that boasts a THRIVING population of these birds. It turns out there IS such a thing as too much of a good thing—I found that I was having to fill up my bird feeders once a day because the blackbirds were happily popping over from the bullrushes to feast. They will happily eat anything that is accessible, and they have a voracious appetite. I finally achieved a semblance of balance when I figured out what size chicken wire was enough to keep the blackbirds out, but let the towhees in (they’re pretty close in size). Notwithstanding the fact that my feeders all look like tiny little bird prisons now, and the smaller females and young birds are able to get in, I’m happy with the status quo.
The Song sparrow is a very plain looking bird with two wonderful features—they like to eat spiders and bugs, and they have a beautiful song. That, as they say, is good enough for me.
From Wikipedia:
Singing itself consists of a combination of repeated notes, quickly passing isolated notes, and trills. The songs are very crisp, clear, and precise, making them easily distinguishable by human ears. A particular song is determined not only by pitch and rhythm but also by the timbre of the trills. Although one bird will know many songs—as many as 20 different tunes with as many as 1000 improvised variations on the basic theme,[citation needed]—unlike thrushes, the song sparrow usually repeats the same song many times before switching to a different song.
Song sparrows typically learn their songs from a handful of other birds that have neighboring territories. They are most likely to learn songs that are shared between these neighbors. Ultimately, they will choose a territory close to or replacing the birds that they have learned from. This allows the song sparrows to address their neighbors with songs shared with those neighbors. It has been demonstrated that song sparrows are able to distinguish neighbors from strangers on the basis of song, and also that females are able to distinguish (and prefer) their mate’s songs from those of other neighboring birds, and they prefer songs of neighboring birds to those of strangers[11].
These swans are welcome visitors to our island in the fall, winter, and spring, migrating much further north in the summer for their breeding season. They, along with many ducks and other waterfowl, call the often-unfrozen waters of Vancouver Island home at the southern terminus of their migration, which is a wonderful feature of life on the island—there are often just as many migrant species here in the winter as in the summer, compared to the quiet winter forests and lakes of the rest of the country. My favourite part of hosting these birds on my pond in the winter is their tendency to keep together in large groups and ‘dance’ with one another—heads bopping along to a beat only they can hear.
From Wikipedia:
The trumpeter swan (Cygnus buccinator) is a species of swan found in North America. The heaviest living bird native to North America, it is also the largest extant species of waterfowl with a wingspan that may exceed 10 ft (3.0 m).[2] It is the American counterpart and a close relative of the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) of Eurasia, and even has been considered the same species by some authorities.[3] By 1933, fewer than 70 wild trumpeters were known to exist, and extinction seemed imminent, until aerial surveys discovered a Pacific population of several thousand trumpeters around Alaska’s Copper River.[4] Careful reintroductions by wildlife agencies and the Trumpeter Swan Society gradually restored the North American wild population to over 46,000 birds by 2010.[5]
The Spotted towhee is most notable for its bright red eyes, but the rest of it is almost as striking. They’re a very common feeder species in our neck of the woods—in the winter months to only birds more common than the towhee at my sunflower seed feeders are the house finches. They have a very inquisitive sounding call that almost sounds like they’re asking a question.
From Wikipedia:
The spotted towhee is a large New World sparrow, roughly the same size as a Robin. It has a long, dark fan shaped tail with white corners on the end. They have a round body (similar to New World sparrows) with bright red eyes and dull pink legs. The spotted towhee is between 17 cm (6.7 in) and 21 cm (8.3 in) long, and weighs in at between 33 g (1.2 oz) and 49 g (1.7 oz).[3]
Adult males have a generally darker head, upper body and tail with a white belly, rufoussides and white spots on the their back and white wing bars. Females look similar but are dark brown and grey instead of black. The spotted towhee has white spots on its primary and secondary feathers, the Eastern towhee is the same bird in terms of its size and structure but does not have white spots.[3]
These birds are characters of the first order—like many jays, they’re curious and entertaining to watch. They tend to summer high in the mountains, which means that we tend to see them in the fall and winter, when they drop to the lower elevations seeking food. If it’s a good year for pinecones in the montane areas, though, they might not show up at all.
From Wikipedia:
The Steller’s jay (Cyanocitta stelleri) is a jay native to western North America, closely related to the blue jay found in the rest of the continent, but with a black head and upper body. It is also known as the long-crested jay, mountain jay, and pine jay. It is the only crested jay west of the Rocky Mountains.
Steller’s jay shows a great deal of regional variation throughout its range.[2]Blackish-brown-headed birds from the north gradually become bluer-headed farther south. The Steller’s jay has a more slender bill and longer legs than the blue jay and has a much more pronounced crest. It is also somewhat larger.
The head is blackish-brown, black, or dark blue, depending on the latitude of the bird, with lighter streaks on the forehead. This dark coloring gives way from the shoulders and lower breast to silvery blue. The primaries and tail are a rich blue with darker barring. Birds in the eastern part of its range along the Great Divide have white markings on the head, especially over the eyes; birds further west have light blue markers and birds in the far west along the Pacific Coast have small, very faint, or no white or light markings at all.
The Swainson’s thrush makes one of my favourite calls, commonly heard in late spring and early summer as the sun is setting and the air is cooling (although you do hear the same call during the day, it’s competing with far more bird calls for your attention—at dusk, they stand alone). I’ve spent long periods of time seeking to photograph a bird I hear calling in a nearby tree or bush, only to give up in frustration when this reclusive thrush keeps deep in its hiding place. They’re fairly common in our area, though, as you can tell from the preponderance of its calls as the sun sets.
From Wikipedia:
The breeding habitat of Swainson’s thrush is coniferous woods with dense undergrowth across Canada, Alaska, and the northern United States; also, deciduous wooded areas on the Pacific coast of North America.
These birds migrate to southern Mexico and as far south as Argentina. The coastal subspecies migrate down the Pacific coast of North America and winter from Mexico to Costa Rica, whereas the continental birds migrate eastwards within North America (a substantial detour) and then travel southwards via Florida to winter from Panama to Bolivia.
The varied thrust is largely a forest bird, and I’ve only ever seen them out in the open in our winter months. They’re absolutely beautiful birds, though, about the same size as the American robin. With their distinct orange colours, there’s no mistaking one when you see it.
From Wikipedia:
“The varied thrush breeds in western North America from Alaska to northern California. It is migratory, with northern breeders moving south within or somewhat beyond the breeding range. Other populations may only move altitudinally. This species is an improbable transatlantic vagrant, but there is an accepted western Europeanrecord in Great Britain in 1982.[10]
Nests in Alaska, Yukon Territory, and mountains in British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. Prefers moist conifer forest. Most common in dense, older conifer forests in high elevations. Moves to lower elevations during the winter where it is often seen in towns and orchards and thickets, or migrates to California. Seen in flocks during winter of up to 20 birds. It is well known for individual birds to fly eastward in winter, showing up in just about any state, then returning to the west coast for breeding.”
The rail is a bird commonly heard, but not seen. I’ve gotten lucky twice—both times while occupying the lawn chair I set up on a platform I built on a tree overhanging our pond, and reading quietly for tens of minutes and then noticing subtle motion incidentally out of the corner of my eye. They’re secretive, but their loud chuckles as the sun sets are pretty distinct.
From Wikipedia:
The Virginia rail (Rallus limicola) is a small waterbird, of the family Rallidae. These birds remain fairly common despite continuing loss of habitat, but are secretive by nature and more often heard than seen.[2] They are also considered a game species in some provinces and states, though rarely hunted.[3] The Ecuadorian rail is often considered a subspecies, but some taxonomic authorities consider it distinct.
As promised above, I have very little to add to Wikipedia‘s short description:
The white-crowned sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys) is a species of passerine bird native to North America. A medium-sized member of the American sparrow family, this species is marked by a grey face and black and white streaking on the upper head. It breeds in brushy areas in the taiga and tundra of the northernmost parts of the continent and in the Rocky Mountains and Pacific coast. While southerly populations in the Rocky Mountains and coast are largely resident, the breeding populations of the northerly part of its range are migratory and can be found as wintering or passage visitors through most of North America south to central Mexico.
From Wikipedia:
The Audubon’s warbler (Setophaga auduboni or Setophaga coronata auduboni) is a small New World warbler.
This passerine bird was long known to be closely related to its eastern counterpart, the myrtle warbler, and at various times the two forms have been classed as separate species or grouped as the yellow-rumped warbler, Setophaga coronata. The two forms probably diverged when the eastern and western populations were separated in the last ice age.
In North America, the discovery of a hybrid zone between the two forms in western Canada led the American Ornithologists’ Union in 1973 to recognize them as a single species.[1]
Audubon’s warbler has a westerly distribution. It breeds in much of western Canada, the western United States, and into Mexico. It is migratory, wintering from the southern parts of the breeding range into western Central America.
The summer male Audubon’s warbler has a slate blue back, and yellow crown, rump and flank patch. It has white tail patches, and the breast is streaked black. The female has a similar pattern, but the back is brown, as are the breast streaks.
This form is distinguished from the myrtle warbler by its lack of a whitish eyestripe, its yellow throat, and concolorous cheek patch.
The breeding habitat is a variety of coniferous and mixed woodland. Audubon’s warblers nest in a tree, laying four or five eggs in a cup nest.
These birds are insectivorous, but will readily take berries in winter, when they form small flocks.
The song is a simple trill. The call is a hard check.
By Guy Dauncey
There is a forest in Germany that people are talking about. While most of Germany’s forests are in a sorry state, losing their magic, losing nature and lacking older trees, this forest is gaining magic and supporting nature while providing its foresters with a steady income.
The forest belongs to the city of Lübeck, a beautiful Hanseatic port north-east of Hamburg, close to Denmark, whose tourist officers have labelled it ‘The Venice of the North’ because of its many canals, just as ours have labelled the Cowichan Valley ‘The New Provence’. Its community forest, some 5,000 hectares in size, is mostly beech and oak, mixed with ash, maple, hornbeam, elm, birch and alder, with some coniferous spruce, pine, larch and Douglas fir.
The land has been covered by forest for more than two hundred and fifty years, but in 1994 Lübeck’s chief forester proposed a change in the way it was managed. Instead of the conventional method of logging with heavy machinery followed by replanting he wanted to try a new approach called ‘close to nature’, or ‘near-natural forest use’, which was developed in cooperation with scientists and nature conservationists. The city approved the change to “use wood and preserve the forest”, the citizens endorsed the change by referendum, and the forest has been managed this way ever since.
The city manages its forest with four objectives in mind. First, to be a natural forest for the people of Lübeck to enjoy, where nature can teach the residents of Lübeck and visitors about the natural functions of a forest and how a healthy forest can help sustain life on the planet. Second, to meet the commercial needs of the forest industry through sustainable management, with a focus on felling large trees on a needs basis, with buyers going into the forest to select the trees they want. Third, to contribute to the conservation of nature, enhancing biodiversity through the preservation of natural habitats. And fourth, to be a store of carbon, contributing to efforts to slow the climate crisis.
The chief forester, Knut Sturm, says their primary rule is to allow the forest to follow its own ecological nature. He uses the phrases ‘close to nature’ and ‘near-natural forest use’ to describe their guiding principles. Over the long-term, he seeks a forest management path that will yield the lowest risk and the most productive development. To achieve this, he and his team of thirty district foresters and forest workers harvest mature trees while working to improve the closeness of the forests to nature and to raise the quality of the remaining trees.
In practical terms, this means no clearcuts; no use of toxins or fertilizers, ensuring that forest-walkers can breathe pure air; no drainage of wetlands; no surface clearing or slash-burning of brush piles; no work during ecologically sensitive seasons (spring and summer); and no use of large machines that would damage and compact the soil. Large trees are felled individually or in groups of two or three. They are dragged out of the forest by horses, which slalom their way between the trees, having minimal impact on the soil, and brought to assembly areas where they are winched onto trucks and taken to a local sawmill.
Soil impact is a big consideration for Knut Sturm and his team. They are inspired by the findings in the book The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World by the German forester Peter Wohlleben, who has worked alongside Suzanne Simard, a professor of forest ecology at UBC. The trees have an underground network of canals and pores that aerate the soil, ensuring water absorption and the conveyance of nutrients. The roots are connected by fungi, enabling them to exchange information about water and nutrients. When soil is loose, the trees root more deeply, giving them better protection against storms. When the soil is compacted by heavy machinery their roots have to grow closer to the surface, making them more susceptible to blow-down.
471 hectares are left entirely untouched to serve as reference areas for nature’s ways; the goal is that the managed areas should look almost identical to the reference areas. They never plant any trees, but leave that to nature, and the millions of seeds that fall each October. In doing so, they have learnt that trees germinated naturally grow better than sown or planted trees, the same lesson that our local ecoforester Merv Wilkinson learnt in his forest at Wildwood, Cedar, just north of Ladysmith.
They protect wildlife trees and dead trees for birds, bats, insects and fungi, and are proud that their forests support otters, the endangered black stork, and 180 pairs of breeding middle-spotted woodpeckers, whose numbers have increased significantly in recent years.
On good beech tree sites, where trees are competing, thinning is done two or three times until the trees reach 40 cm diameter at breast height, after which no further thinning is needed to improve the quality of the beeches. The target diameters for commercial felling are 45 cm for spruce, 50 cm for pine, 75 cm for beech and 80 cm for oak.
So what of their timber data? I know this will be of interest to those who want to consider different ways to manage North Cowichan’s Municipal Forest, which is a similar size. Lubeck’s goal is deliberately not to maximize the forest yield; they want to balance social, ecological and economic needs, while growing the forest as a whole. In the timber-managed area of 4,670 hectares, in 1996 the forest held 315 cubic metres of timber per hectare (m3/ha). By 2004 this had increased to 340 m3/ha and by 2018 to 429 m3/ha. In 1994 the annual incremental growth was 8-10 m3/ha; now it is 10-12 m3/ha. Their goal is to reach a total forest inventory of 600 to 800 m3/ha, both as a store of carbon and as the forest recovers its old-growth characteristics. For a comparative table, see below.
In 2016 they cut 14,500 m3 at a rate of 3.2 m3/ha, including 800 m3 of high-quality oak, which sells for around 430 euros per cubic metre (Can $609). They also provided 2,500 cubic metres of timber for firewood and other wood products for the people of Lubeck. On average, the trees felled are 10-20 cm wider than those felled in conventional forests. The older a beech tree, the firmer its wood, and the more it sells for. Their rule of thumb is that wood from deciduous trees should sell for three times the harvesting cost, while coniferous wood should sell for 1.5 times. Of the 14,500 cubic metres felled, 3,500 m3 was left in the forest for soil improvement and as dead wood, and 11,000 m3 were sold:
By following their ‘close to nature’ methods their costs have been reduced drastically, and their timber, since it has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, sells for a premium. The Otto Group, which has pledged itself to offer exclusively FSC certified furniture until 2025, has shown a great interest in the Lübeck forest. On average, the sale of timber generates $1.9 million a year.
Their employees do not just work at their forestry jobs. Theirs is a municipal forest pursuing multiple objectives, so they are also responsible for the maintenance and care of the nature reserves, and 250 kilometres of hiking, equestrian and cycling trails. The trails are well-used, with more than 120 events including many educational school trips a year, as well as daily enjoyment by Lübeck’s citizens.
Germany’s environmental and business communities have sat up and paid attention to what’s happening in Lübeck. They have been supported by large organizations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Robin Wood, and have received awards from the European Paper Industry and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Environment. In 2018, Dr. Lutz Fähser (Chief Forester from 1994-2009) and Knut Sturm were awarded the renowned B.A.U.M. Environmental Prize for their role in making Stadtwald Lübeck an internationally recognized role model for near-natural forest-use and sustainable forest management. The B.A.U.M. award is one of the best-known and most coveted sustainability awards among German companies.
Dr. Lutz Fähser and Knut Sturm
Lübeck’s public is happy too. In 2017, two-thirds of respondents to a survey said they preferred the wilder forest look and feel to more orderly conventional forests. Social acceptance by environmental organizations and by the citizens of Lübeck is important, providing an important foundation for successful forestry. Their methods of ecoforestry have recently been adopted by other German cities, including Berlin, Munich, Bonn, Saarbrucken, Wiesbaden, Hannover, Uelzen, Mühlheim an der Ruhr and Göttingen.
Our Coastal Douglas fir forests on Vancouver Island are a world away from Germany’s forests of beech and oak, but forests follow nature’s rules all over the world. The parallels between Lübeck’s experience and ours in North Cowichan are fascinating, and I hope they receive further exploration. Merv Wilkinson operated his much smaller Wildwood forest on these principles for seventy years in Cedar, south of Nanaimo. He harvested the annual growth without any clearcutting, and after sixty years his forest had more timber in it than when he started, showing that the ‘close to nature’ method of managing a forest can happen here too, on Vancouver Island.
Coastal Douglas fir forest at Wildwood, managed on the same principles as Lübeck
To learn more about Lübeck’s experience, find yourself a German speaker and settle down to enjoy these videos, which take you into the forest itself.
www.tinyurl.com/lubeckforest2 www.tinyurl.com/lubeckforest3
| North Cowichan | Lubeck | |
| Size of harvestable forest (hectares) | 5,000 | 4,670 |
| Size of no-harvest reference forest (hectares) | 0 | 471 |
| Total timber volume per hectare (cubic metres) | 486 | 429 |
| Average annual allowable cut (cubic metres) | 20,000 | 14,500 |
| Actual cut in 2017 (cubic metres) | 10,585 | 14,500 |
| Replanting (seedlings in 2017) | 49,000 | 0 |
| Average clearcut block size (hectares) | 7 | 0 |
| Jobs created (2017) | 8.5 | 30 |
| Income (2017) | $1,152,000 | $1,900,000* |
*Average income, 2015-2018.
Many thanks to Knut Sturm and Torsten Welle and the Naturwald Akadamie in Lübeck for their assistance. More Lübeck photos below.
Published in Valley Voice, February 2019.
Hyla Woods, Oregon. Another great example of ‘close to nature’ forestry on 1,000 acres: http://hylawoods.com/about/video
Guy Dauncey is President of the Yellow Point Ecological Society and the author of Journey to the Future: A Better World is Possible. www.journeytothefuture.ca
https://www.wheredowestand.ca/letter-to-the-mayor-and-council-january-2019
On Tuesday March 5th: The Secret of the Six Forests: A Community Assembly for Public Forests, in the Performing Arts Centre, Duncan. Speakers include Icel Dobell, Andy McKinnon, Erik Piikkila and Guy Dauncey.
Yellow Point Ecological Society 