Advocates say loggers aren't doing enough to save old-growth forests near Revelstoke, B.C. - Action News
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Advocates say loggers aren't doing enough to save old-growth forests near Revelstoke, B.C.

Logging companies near Revelstoke, B.C. saidthey're working to transition away from cutting old-growth, but advocates saidthey aren't doing so fast enough to save the habitat.

The unique area is home to trees that are hundreds of years old and to threatened mountain caribou

A long-haired man stands on a stump amid a beautiful forest.
Eddie Petryshen, a conservation specialist at advocacy group Wildsight, wants to protect the inland temperate rainforest near Revelstoke, about 570 km northeast of Vancouver. (Camille Vernet/Radio-Canada)

Standing among a series of stumps in the northern Selkirk Mountains, Eddie Petryshen pointedto a long, thick hemlock log on the ground.

"These trees are likely going to go make toilet paper," he said. "This tree right here, I would estimateabout a metre and a half in diameter ... anywhere from 500 to 600 years old."

The Selkirk Mountains are a subrange of the larger Columbia Mountains, which houses the Interior Wet Belt containing one of the world's only temperate inland rainforests, and a large ecological melting pot that contains thousand-year-old trees and protected caribou.

Petryshen, a conservation specialist at B.C.-based advocacy group Wildsight, is one of hundreds of activists that are trying to stop old-growth logging and habitat destruction in the area.

A giant tree with moss growing on it.
Some of the trees in the rainforest near Revesltoke, B.C. are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. The cooler temperatures also allow lichens to grow, which sustain local caribou. (Camille Vernet/Radio-Canada)

"We've had five caribou herds go locally extinct since 2014," he said. "We should just, potentially, stop logging some of these forests at the rate we're logging them."

The conflict between conservationists, First Nations and logging groups has been going onfor decadesnear Revelstoke, about 570 km northeast of Vancouver. Andin the past two years, it's ramped up amid a wider protest movement to protectold-growth forests.

Logging companies in the area saythey're working to transition away from cutting old-growth, but advocates sayit's not happening fast enough to save the habitat. Meanwhile, an old-growth logging deferral process from the B.C. government remains on the books.

WATCH | Logging continues near caribou habitat near Revelstoke:

Rainforest near Revelstoke, B.C. under threat

2 years ago
Duration 4:36
There is a rare old growth forest in southeast B.C. thats also home to endangered mountain caribou, and saving it might help keep the herd alive. But as the CBC's Camille Vernet found out, finding a balance between logging and preservation of the forest is not easy.

The corporation that manages the forests around Revelstokesays they're only able to log around half of the area they've bought. And within that area, they say they're not logging two-thirds of the old-growth.

"We do want to manage the forests, we do want forestry. So avoiding harvesting doesn't really answer that," said Mike Copperthwaite, general manager of the Revelstoke Community Forest Corporation (RCFC).

"In the next 20 years, our harvesting won't include old growth. Our harvesting is going to be solely in second row stands. But we've got this transition period where these younger [trees] have to get to a certain age."

Logging still allowed

In Revelstoke,logging is big business, despite the potential threat to wildlife and old-growth forests.

The city owns and manages 1,200 square kilometres of forest under the RCFC.

Three forestry companies Downie Timber, Joe Kozek Sawmills and Cascade Cedar Products have the rights to log those forests, of which they say only 590 square kilometres is usable. The RCFC states that the corporation is the town's biggest employer, with more than350 people involved in the operation.

A man walks away from a large log from an old tree.
Wood from old-growth trees is often desired for high-end and specialty products such as fine furniture, musical instruments, specialty finishing products and shake and shingle manufacturing, according to the B.C. Forests Ministry. (Camille Vernet/Radio-Canada)

Thousands of hectares of the forest are protected caribou habitat, and old-growth logging deferrals mean further blocks aren't able to be cut.

The Okanagan Nation Alliance released a statement on Aug. 23 demandingthat old-growth logging stop in their region. According to the government, deferrals went into place shortly before that.

But Petryshen said100-year-old trees are still cut away from deferral areas.

Copperthwaitesaid the deferrals were undoing "18 years of work" for the corporation.

"We are very focused on doing an environmentally sound job. We want to create beautiful forests for future generations in Revelstoke to benefit from," he said.

In a statement from earlier this year, the RCFC saidthey're not cutting 66 per cent of the old growth forests near Revelstoke.

A man in a hard hat is seen off in the dsitance, with a stump visible in the foreground.
Mike Copperthwaite, pictured here in the distance, said that the community forest corporation enjoyed support in the community and has been operating since April 1993. (Camille Vernet/Radio-Canada)

One-of-a-kind caribou habitat

Researchers called the Interior Wet Beltand the temperate rainforest"one of the world's most imperilled," in a 2021 studypublished on MDPI, a Basel, Switzerland-based publisher of academic jounals.

The forest stretches over 160,000 square kilometres all the way from Idaho in the U.S. to the north of B.C., straddling the Alberta border and containing numerous national parks including Glacier National Park.

Dr. Robert Serrouya, director of the caribou monitoring program at the Edmonton-based Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute, said the lichen that grows in the cool forests especially at higher elevations provides food for the endangered mountain caribou.

A caribou looks back at the camera.
A mountain caribou bull is pictured in the forests during winter. The species is listed as 'threatened' by the province. (Submitted by Cory DeStein)

Serrouya said it's crucial that the caribou population survives in the region not just because they're important to the local First Nations, but because their habitat is protected by both federal legislation and provincial Government Actions Regulation.

"If the caribou disappears, there would be a lot more pressure to cut down all those trees," he said. "We don't have federal legislation to protect old growth."

There are just over 1,200 southern mountain caribou in the region, according to the B.C. government's latest census, and the species is listed as "threatened" by the province.

Those numbers are down from more than2,500 in 1995, and over 40,000 in the century prior to logging activities beginning in the early1900s.

A man in a blue shirt places an instrument atop a tree.
Dr. Robert Serrouya places instruments to monitor caribou on a tree. He says that their main threat is predators and other species but those species are brought into the forest by human activity that disrupts ecosystems. (Camille Vernet/Radio-Canada)

Advocates remain skeptical

Petryshen saidhe wants the logging industry to "move beyond the rhetoric" that the industry would be decimated by deferrals.

"They can evolve and they can move forward as we make transitions," he said. "We can also build a more sustainable forest industry for workers."

A cut log stands on a hill, with forests visible in the background.
The B.C. government implemented a deferral on further old-growth logging on thousands of square kilometres of land in the forest in August this year after a request from local First Nations. (Camille Vernet/Radio-Canada)

Serrouya said research showed that timber supply curves are approaching a "precipice" in B.C., and that current harvest rates are simply not sustainable.

The RCFC said earlier this year that they would release community consultation plans about the future of their corporation going into 2023.