FFWD Weekly
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by Maureen McNameeAlberta conservation groups get support on logging concerns
Alberta conservation groups have received the support of a major American conservation group in ensuring the integrity of certification standards for Alberta logging companies.
Albertans for A Wild Chinchaga (AWC) and the Edmonton chapter of Canadian Parks And Wilderness Society (CPAWS) have submitted comments to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) regarding a certification application by CANFOR Ltd., a Canadian logging company.
The Alberta groups have stated that large wilderness areas adequate for wildlife protection should be established before timber products can be certified, and they have received support from the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC). A 400,000-member U.S environmental group, NRDC is involved in campaigns in the U.S. and Canada to protect old-growth forests and to improve forest practices – together with Forest Action Network, it has focused on companies like Home Depot and helped pressure them to use FSC-approved products by increasing public awareness.
"What’s important is that it carries a lot of weight in the U.S., where the markets for certified timber are," says CPAWS spokesperson Sam Gunsch.
"They’ve been moving the retail industry away from sites that are particularly important for conservation areas," says Gunsch, who is involved in the effort to protect the Chinchaga area of the foothills natural region in northern Alberta.
The province has designated an 800-square-foot Special Places in the foothills forest at Chinchaga, but AWC and CPAWS say the site is too small and contains little habitat for the region’s herd of endangered woodland caribou, is mostly peatlands, contains no old-growth forests, and is too small to sustain the natural cycle of fire and forest renewal. The government’s Special Places site also contains oil and gas which will be permitted to be developed under provincial parks laws.
The groups point out that the provincial government’s current parks planning process, Special Places 2000, aims to protect less than two per cent of Alberta’s foothills’ natural region – leaving the remaining 98 per cent open for logging and petroleum development.
Gunsch says Alberta’s logging companies will not have the market security that FSC certification can provide until Alberta’s forests and endangered wildlife have protection in large wilderness areas, and that the provincial government’s plan to protect only two per cent of its foothills forests will leave Alberta logging companies vulnerable to international competition when it comes to meeting consumer demand for certified timber products.
"The government’s role is to ensure the highest standards possible for logging," he explains. "And the logging standards in Alberta don’t account for preservation of old-growth forests... and they don’t account adequately for the needs of species like warblers....
"It’s the government policies and rules that are putting industry at a disadvantage."
CANFOR has logging permits in the northern foothills near Grande Prairie as well as just across the border in British Columbia near Chetwynd. For the site to be considered suitable for FSC certification standards, the Alberta conservation groups want to ensure there is at least a 6,500-square-kilometre protected wilderness site, almost the size of Banff, in the Chinchaga region northwest of Peace River, which is just north of CANFOR’s logging operations.
FSC is an independent, non-profit organization governed by conservation groups, logging companies, forestry professionals, indigenous people’s and community forestry organizations and certifiers. The council’s principles and criteria require logging companies to settle land use issues and to achieve a high standard of forest management before their timber products can be certified.
The Alberta groups made their FSC certification submission as part of the public input process on the CANFOR application being led by KPMG, which is now preparing a summary draft of the certification standards based on the input.
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