BC Timber Sales has come forward once again with an ill-advised plan to clear-cut log across the S. Elphinstone Forest slopes that will impact many values, including removing Mature native forests, changing the existing hydrology that will result in impacts to water flow, reduces habitat for many species, loss of recreational opportunities (hiking & biking) and a flawed public process that undermines public confidence in the government’s own logging agency.
BCTS has a contract with Polar GeoScience to provide them with a watershed assessment with an object to propose mitigation measures to the logging & road building to reduce downstream hazards (peak flows, landslides) and risks (road washouts, property damage, loss of life, etc.)
These logging plans include Blocks TA0521, TA048, TA0519 between Robinson Creek to the west to Chaster Creek to the east. The Polar GeoScience report failed to show recent cutblocks that BCTS completed between 2015 and 2020. This brief report will show these recent cutblocks using Google Earth images to graphically show the locations of these blocks and block numbers.
Since all of this logging has occurred in the past 14 years, we don’t consider any of these tree farms hydrologically-recovered, so any Equivalent Clearcut Area should be considered at 0.
These findings show that the S. Elphinstone Forest slopes have already been heavily logged of important intact forests causing fragmentation of the landscape. Many of the creeks that flow off this slope have been affected by scouring due to increased water flows resulting from loss of forest cover. All remaining forest cover on the S. Elphinstone slopes need to be kept intact as to preserve the hydrology and the many other undocumented values that BCTS and Polar GeoScience are not addressing.