In many ways, the inherent dilemma—some might say, contradiction—at the heart of Whistler’s publicly managed forest, the Cheakamus Community Forest (CCF), is the same that the resort itself continues to grapple with.
Since its inception as a ski resort, Whistler has tried to strike a delicate balance of the ecological and the economic, teeter-tottering between the need to feed the chugging tourism engine that drives this town and the need to preserve the vital natural assets that attract legions of visitors here in the first place.
The CCF, meanwhile, is a 33,000-hectare forest, co-managed by the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW), and the Lil’wat and Squamish Nations, that was one of the first forest operations in B.C. to employ a holistic, ecosystem-based management (EBM) approach that is designed to consider all aspects of ecosystem health and ensure its long-term viability. But, of course, the CCF is also a business, and the commercial logging that takes place there, as well as the jobs it provides, are important, and often misunderstood, aspects of that viability.
It’s a dynamic the CCF’s new executive director and former RMOW environmental stewardship manager Heather Beresford knows full well.
“For me, my main goal, obviously, to keep the community forest going,” Beresford, who assumed the role in October, told Pique in an interview this month. “It’s a business. We have to be able to harvest enough to keep the business going. Because the alternative, in my mind, is way worse.”
That alternative would see the CCF revert from a publicly managed forest to a provincially managed one, which would inevitably result in more logging, not less, Beresford said.
“If we lose the community forest license … then all of the wood in this area goes on the auction block, and the [Ecosystem Based Management] plan, all that is just out the window,” she said. “It will [fall under] the province’s Forest & Range Practices Act, and their model is to cut all the old growth as fast as you can, get it replanted and cut the second growth. So, we are between a rock and a hard place.”
Will the CCF harvest old growth again?
For years now, the CCF has had its annual allowable cut set by the province at 21,000 cubic metres, a total the forest’s partners have consistently struggled to meet, due in part to a dearth of commercially harvestable old growth. (It’s worth noting that, generally speaking, the amount of timber harvested on public lands across B.C. regularly falls below the set annual cut.)
Even before protests at Fairy Creek put an international spotlight on the issue, old-growth logging in the CCF was a contentious issue locally. In June 2021, the board decided to defer old-growth logging for the remainder of the year, a moratorium that has continued until today. Local ecologists, conservationists, and the wider public, meanwhile, have called for that temporary ban to become a permanent one.
So, does the CCF’s new director think Whistler’s public forest will ever see another old-growth tree—defined in B.C. as 250 years or older—logged commercially?
Well, it’s complicated.
“With the historical logging that has happened in the past, they went in and they just really took out all the stuff that was available in the lower areas. So, we’ve got this sort of 20-year gap where the trees are not big enough to harvest yet. And that’s why it’s kind of forcing us to go into those older-growth areas,” Beresford explained. “I think what we’re going to see is minimal. We want to harvest as little old growth as possible. I’m not the board; they’re going to make that final decision. But the scenarios that I’m seeing come out look like we’re going to have to probably harvest some smaller portion of old growth, and try to do the selective harvesting in the second-growth areas as much as possible. We’re just fine-tuning those models right now.”
Of course, emphasizing second-growth harvest eliminates future old growth, a vital component of a forest’s health and an important recreational draw. Beresford said the CCF is factoring that into its modelling, with plans to focus on harvesting younger trees while preserving mature second growth.
“We’re trying to leave that older mature stuff, between 150 to 250 years old, so we’re not cutting into all the mature forest that’s going to graduate into old growth first,” she said. “We’re trying to even out the lumps. If you looked at a bar graph of the age demographic of the forest, it is like nothing, nothing, nothing, and then it gets quite lumpy. Because the original guys that were up here 100 years ago, they were doing it by hand. They couldn’t do that mass removal that happened starting in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. So, we can play a bit there. We’re definitely cognizant of that issue.”
Indigenous rights
The CCF also provides needed employment to its partners, particularly for the Lil’wat Nation, which has in recent years trained several members as forest technicians and on whose unceded traditional lands the CCF sits. Beresford believes the continued push in B.C. from Indigenous communities to claim greater control of their lands and forests will signal a sea-change in how forests—the CCF included—are managed.
“If you look at the BC Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, I think that’s something that’s really going to play a key role in the future,” she said. “What does that look like? What do our forestry act and practices look like with Indigenous Nations having more of a say in it? I think that’s probably going to be the biggest thing that will influence what happens with forestry.”
Carbon credits
Without the same level of available commercial timber as in the past, the CCF board has had to look at other ways to diversify its revenue. One stream that Beresford plans to grow as director is the CCF’s carbon credit program, which she estimated brought in just under $70,000 last year, the lion’s share of the forest’s revenue, with little commercial harvesting taking place. (In a more typical year, however, carbon sales would make up only a fraction of the CCF’s revenue.)
While controversial in certain circles for effectively allowing large corporations to “greenwash” their emissions without having to take a hard a look at their own operations, Beresford said the CCF’s carbon sequestration initiative will target primarily Sea to Sky and tourism-based companies and will have specific criteria attached to ensure purchasers have already taken concrete steps to reduce their carbon footprint.
“Certainly, there have been problems with carbon projects around the world. Some of them have been just outright B.S.,” she said, adding that there are two large credit sales currently being finalized. “We’re not just going to take your money. We want to see how you’ve done other things that are reducing your operational carbon footprint before we’re just going to let you buy your way out of that.”
Wildfire management
Managing the risk of wildfire is another important element of the CCF’s operations, but opinions have differed locally on the best approach to take. The debate centres around a question that has divided researchers and ecologists: is it best to cut dedicated fuel breaks, or to largely leave the forest as is to regenerate post-fire?
“I’m in the middle on it,” said Beresford. “There just isn’t the research done here in the coastal forests, because we haven’t been as concerned about wildfire until the last five years. There’s been lots of work done in the Interior on those drier forests, but not on the coast. So, we don’t really know.”
Saying she often felt like “the monkey in the middle” on this debate in her former role at the RMOW, Beresford said the municipality will undergo its own research this year to come to a better understanding on the best approach to managing wildfire.
“We’ve got, I think, four or five locations that haven’t been touched. They’ll be studying wind and soil moisture and all that kind of stuff … and then looking at the areas we have treated to see what’s the difference and then keep this going over time,” she added.
But Beresford wants to be clear: managing the threat of wildfire must be a collective, community effort.
“The community really needs to dig deep and FireSmart their own properties,” she urged. “Don’t have a false sense of security that that forest thinning [in the CCF] is going to save this community. We have to take individual responsibility and make sure our homes are as FireSmart as possible.”
The CCF will host an open house on its three- and five-year plans sometime in May, with the exact date and location to be confirmed.
Learn more at cheakamuscommunityforest.com.
