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East Creek - Klaskish Inlet -
Vancouver Island – British Columbia – Canada May 11, 2008 update by Richard Boyce East Creek - Klaskish Inlet - Vancouver Island – British Columbia – Canada May 11, 2008 update by Richard Boyce Just outside of Port Alice, driving up a steep slope crisscrossed by switchbacks and covered with 20 year old trees, we followed a massive Grapple-Yarder Tower/Machine on a flat bed truck being towed by a giant off-road logging truck and also being pushed by a 2nd off-road logging truck. Slowly but surely this massive rig, owned by Western Forest Products, was making its way towards another fresh clear-cut to pull the carcasses off another hillside where old growth forest stood for many centuries. After driving 100km through a maze of rough logging roads west of Port McNeil we finally drove over the ridge that separates the valley of Klaskish Creek from East Creek. Both of these watersheds flow into Klaskish Inlet, which opens out into Brooks Bay just north of the Brooks Peninsula. In the past I have explored the low valley bottom of East Creek, accessing this lush rainforest by kayak. Ancient trees grow in the rich alluvial plain of this ancient valley. Water flow carved this valley out of the mountains over millions of years, leaving rich deposits of soil along the creek as it today meanders to the Pacific Ocean. The temperate rainforest canopy is a complex and interconnected ecosystem that took 10,000 years to evolve since the last ice age. Towering Sitka Spruce, Massive Candelabra Western Red Cedar, Giant Western Hemlock, Pacific Yew, Balsam Fir, and many smaller deciduous trees. The ground cover is lush with shrubs off many species, abundant with flowers and later berries. Moss and lichen drape everything. Wildlife is abundant. The temperate rainforests found in the low valley bottoms on the west coast of Vancouver Island have a biomass greater than anywhere on earth, meaning that the density of living organisms per square meter surpasses even the famous Amazon rainforest. Science has determined that rainforests are extremely important to the life cycles and functions of this planet. Trees filter air by taking carbon, nitrogen, phosphates, and other airborne chemicals in the atmosphere and fix them into the soil where they provide nutrients, in turn producing vast amounts of oxygen. Forests are the lungs of our planet. Trees redistribute water, functioning as huge sponges to retain water and pumping vast quantities of water back into the atmosphere. Rainforests greatly affect weather patterns. The remote and rugged location of this virgin pristine wilderness has protected it from one hundred and fifty years of industrial logging until today! Less than 9% of the original old growth forest remains in low valley bottoms on Vancouver Island. 85 of the original 91 watersheds have been completely devastated by logging to date. Old growth temperate rainforests are on the verge of extinction. After passing over the last mountain ridge, through a tunnel plowed through 10 feet of snow at the peak, we descended into the East Creek valley where we came upon many clear-cuts devoid of life. Roads blasted through the mountainsides linked large areas of stumps along the natural watershed of East Creek. In the past few years LeMare Logging, operating out of Port McNeill, has felled most of the old growth forest in the upper watershed of East Creek. Each of the clear-cuts is focused around a creek or tributary where the largest trees once grew. Massive stumps from ancient Yellow Cedar, Mountain Hemlock, Pacific Red Cedar, and Balsam Fir trees and line the banks of these waterways. We watched as more trees were being felled; lots of mess, and a deadly silence after the crew trucks had left the valley. Hundreds of truckloads of logs are lying on the sides of the roads, waiting for the snow to melt so they can be hauled to the boom yards for shipping. This will happen in the next few weeks. Ironically the fresh cut trees seemed almost natural lying on the ground surrounded by branches and needles. Soon Grapple-Yarders will move in and drag the logs to the roadsides, devastating everything in their paths. The upper valley is now almost completely logged and the lower valley will be cut down next. The really big trees are still standing in an intact pristine rainforest, which stretches from the East Creek estuary at Klaskish Inlet upstream about 4 km where LeMare Logging has already logged the watershed. Western Forest Products will be moving in to replace LeMare Logging in the next couple of months and they will destroy the lower valley. This transition will occur in the next few months. As far as the BC Ministry of Forests is concerned this is a done deal with no public process for approval. Along the largest tributaries, the final two waterways that flow into the lower East Creek at a junction fork, stand a row of single trees along the water. Many of the ‘leave’ trees have blown down in winds funneled by clear-cuts in the forest structure. The public has been lead to believe that roads and logging are kept away from the watershed of creeks. Upper East Creek Tree Buffer – LeMare Logging 2007 Klaskish Creek Tree Buffer – LeMare Logging 2005 The logging of East Creek appears to be an improvement from logging in the neighbouring Klaskish Creek valley where stumps stand on the banks of the waterway and even on small islands in the middle of the creek. The fragmented strips of forest that are left behind contain the smallest trees, growing on the rock outcropping between the soiled areas along the waterways where the heaviest logging has occurred. The biggest fear of logging companies is that the public will find out what is happening on public land and put a stop to logging of old growth temperate rainforest. East Creek is designated as a Special Management Zone by the Vancouver Island Land Management and was considered a Natural Disturbance type #1 by the Forest Practices Code. Both these distinction would have the public believe that the highest standards of logging regulations would be upheld in this ancient forest. However, the ‘Results Based Forestry Code’ leaves it up to the logging companies to report on their logging standards with no public approval process in place to monitor environmental or ecological degradation in the old growth forest. Western Forest Products holds the ‘Timber Lease’ on the old growth trees in the lower East Creek Valley, meaning the have no obligation to work towards standards required by a ‘Tree Farm License’ where planting, and cultivation of a second harvest would be the goal. Regardless, the old growth temperate rainforest of East Creek will be blasted for logging roads, the trees will be cut down, yarders will drag the logs across the watershed, and the ecosystem will be destroyed. Based on what I witnessed last week, the public does not know this is happening today, and the Ministry of Forests has approved it. East Creek’s Pristine Rainforest to be logged by Western Forest Products -30- Certified by Forestry Renewal BC as a Woodlands Manager he also writes a column for the PQNews. Find out more at: www.islandboundmedia.ca |
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