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Prince George protesters show solidarity for Fairy Creek blockade

Saturday protest at Prince George Courthouse highlights threat to province's old-growth forests

Floyd Crowley doesn’t have to look far to see the scars.

Where there used to be big trees casting long shadows in coniferous forests less than a kilometre from his home on Adams Road in Summit Lake, only stumps remain.

“They’re just whacking them down, it’s death and destruction, this industrial logging for at least 100 years,” said Crowley, who made the hour-long drive to the Prince George courthouse Saturday to attend a protest in support of the Fairy Creek blockade on Vancouver Island, which for weeks has put people in front of bulldozers as they try to protect a stand of old-growth forest northwest of Port Renfrew. 

“They just destroy it. It’s swampy ground and there’s ruts where they’ve been skidding stuff in and out of there and it’s totally unbelievable. There’s been logging going on at Summit Lake for 100 years but they were using horses and hauling it to the mills and doing it in the wintertime. Now they don’t care about what they leave behind. A lot of it is old growth and it’s total destruction. One guy with an industrial piece of equipment can do in a day what 100 guys used to do in a day.”

Crowley said the village of Summit Lake still has about 250 large fir trees and residents attached bags of fir beetle repellent to try to protect them from beetles right next to where recent logging activity has cut huge swaths of forest to make way for the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline from Dawson Creek to Kitimat.

“We’re destroying a billion dollar ecosystem so the corporations can make millions and the guys who are paying for it, the provincial treasury, it’s only getting thousands, and the people at Fairly Creek are getting $2,000 fines,” said the 83-year-old Crowley.

“All my life I’ve been trying to protect the environment. We’ve been at Summit Lake 50 years and the people that logged there, including Howard Lloyd, went out and cut the big trees down and tried to save the little trees. There’s no advantage to going out and smashing down 15- or 20-year-old trees and planting new ones. We’ve had select loggers come in and a year later you don’t know they’ve been there.”

Floyd’s wife Hilary is equally passionate about protecting the province’s 13.2 million hectares of old-growth forests, which now contain just three per cent of the big trees that once stood in B.C. forests. She and her husband volunteered for several years in the project to build trails at The Ancient Forest/Chun T’oh Whudujut Provincial Park, 115 kilometres east of Prince George, and she worries about the future of the surrounding area which makes up the world's only inland temperate rainforest. She wonders why the provincial government has failed to act on its old growth strategic review policy paper released in April 2020, which recommended preserving B.C’s old growth reserves to save ecosystems.

“It’s so important to support the Fairy Creek defenders, but also to defend our own forests with all the logging that’s going on in Anzac (north of Prince George),” said the 76-year-old Hilary. “They’re not showing any respect to the old growth and cutting way too much. All of the primary forest should be kept to provide biodiversity for wildlife. Everybody’s wondering why we’ve got floods and we don’t have trees left to hold the soil in place and it just runs. It’s affecting the whole system and the government doesn’t seem to appreciate that. The forests have way more value standing alive than they have cut.”

Rob Mercereau of Dunster , three hours east of the city, spoke to the crowd of about 40 gathered for the noon-hour protest and he said it’s time for the NDP government to live up to its promises to adopt the policies recommended in the strategic study.  Mercereau, a 51-year-old CN Rail welder, points to the findings of the Wilderness Committee which shows that since the study was released a year ago, logging of old growth in B.C. has increased 43 per cent, from 59,228 hectares to 88.669 hectares.

“I came to hold the government to account on their commitment to following the old growth strategic panel’s recommendations,” said Mercereau. “I feel the Fairy Creek blockaders are creating action where the government is failing to act and that’s why I came to support this event.

“We have an ancient forest that exists throughout this entire region and much of it has been impacted by industrial forestry or by settler practices such as farming and ranching. The specific corridors along the highways (beauty strips) are specifically left from being logged so we cannot see as we drive as citizens and tourists the impact of these practices.”

Mercereau is especially concerned about the Raush Valley near Dunster which he says is the largest unprotected intact primary forest directly connected to the Fraser River watershed between Mount Robson and the Stein Valley near Lytton.

“The provincial government has legislated overharvesting for the last 100 years and their forest policy dictates what the lumber companies can do and can’t do and they’ve completely overharvested this region and the upper Fraser Valley and all of the side valleys beside the Raush Valley,” he said.

Conservation North, the Prince George-based organizer of the rally, has posted on its website an interactive map produced by independent forestry experts Rachel Holt, Karen Price and Dave Daoust which identifies the areas of primary forest in the province where they recommend commercial logging should be deferred. The researchers’ map was well-received by the BC Union of Indian Chiefs and was presented to the provincial government on May 13.

“Our next move is to go to some of these areas that need to be deferred because what that map shows is the most at-risk old growth and if you zoom into to Prince George, there’s quite a bit of it around here,” said Conservation North director Michelle Connolly.

“There’s little blotches of red which are the areas companies have targeted to log now and where there is permission to log. The Anzac is about two hours north of town and it’s in the Prince George timber supply area  and it’s being hit by a combination of logging and pipeline construction and that happens to be a one of the most precious areas for old growth and a hotspot for old growth loss. We’ve counted rings on spruce trees up there that are 400 years old.”

Connolly was also critical of what she says is the government’s failure to act to protect its oldest trees. Although the turnout for Saturday’s protest was small, she said it was a successful show of solidarity for the Fairy Creek defenders.

“There has been a lot of media on this and that’s because the B.C. government has done the same all across B.C., so what’s happening in Fairy Creek is also happening up here and they’re doing nothing to protect our last old growth,” said Connolly. “Some of the most endangered old growth is actually in our backyard here - it’s our old growth wet spruce forests as well as our cedar/hemlock forests. They’re in deep trouble and they’re not coming back if they get logged.

“Plantations are in no way comparable to old growth, they don’t provide the same habitat or anything like that and that’s why we’ve drawn people out today.”