FOREST PRACTICES CODE

The following changes are needed to make the Code a minimally useful regulatory document until a new Code can be developed as per recommendation (b).

eliminate the wide discretionary powers of the District Managers which allow them to disregard most aspects of the Code including provisions regarding road building, regulations in riparian zones, biodiversity, and slope stability restrictions

replace District Managers' discretionary powers with fixed, measurable standards

eliminate the exemptions from accountability provided to all government agents. Currently a government employee (ie District Manager) can use discretionary powers to exempt a company from provisions of the Code. Currently in the event that such an exemption leads to environmental degradation (ie landslides or fish stream damage) the government employee is exempt from responsibility and liabilities.

phase in mandatory alternative harvesting and logging systems to replace all clearcut logging provisions in the Code. In the interim, include in the section regarding cutblock layout that cutblocks be not only of a variety of shapes and sizes across a landscape but that they also be of a variety of silvicultural systems (logging methods).

immediately impose no-harvest buffer zones for ALL streams. Currently only fish-bearing streams over 1.5 metres wide have no-harvest areas beside them. However, as smaller streams flow into larger fish-bearing streams, silt and debris flow from the small streams into the larger streams. S4 (fish bearing streams under 1.5 metres) currently have no protection along their banks under the Code. Under the previous provincial Fish Forestry Guidelines these streams were protected.

increase width of no-harvest buffer zones along streams to match National Forest standards in the US states of Washington and Oregon

prohibit logging or road-building on steep, unstable slopes

immediately eliminate Section 3(ii)(a) of the Forest Road Regulations which gives the District Manager the authority to allow road building in riparian zones when "no other practical option exists". This allows economics of road building costs to be factored above environmental concerns in extremely sensitive areas and gives access privileges to inaccessible areas utilizing an environmentally dangerous, and very broad reason for exemption from a provision of the Code

eliminate Section 45(vi) of the Code which exempts a company from responsibility for actions which they knew or should have known would cause environmental damage if they had a permit from the Forest Service. Companies should at all times be held responsible for actions which they knew or should have known would damage the environment.

give Ministry of Environment joint approval authority and decision-making power on all aspects of the Code

immediately designate Landscape Units, Sensitive Areas, Wildlife Habitat Areas and Old Growth Management Areas and Identified Wildlife Species

designate the guidebooks (ie Biodiversity guidebook) as binding within any permit to log

give the public the right to appeal Ministry of Forest decisions

give the public rights of prosecution for violations of the Code as is possible under the Fisheries Act

establish an independent enforcement unit

PROTECTED AREAS

lift the 12% cap on protected areas and institute a conservation biology planning process for the entire province with the goal of maintaining healthy populations and historic distributions of all species native to British Columbia

FOREST ACT

revise the volume based system of calculating the AAC. The rate of cut must be determined under guidelines for ecosystem based management. A cut would be available in areas determined not to be netted out for ecological integrity and utilizing systems based on natural disturbance patterns.

in the interim, as ecosystem based planning is phased in, implement an immediate reduction of the AAC to Long Term Harvest Level under current methodologies of determining the rate of cut

ENDANGERED SPECIES

The Code will not protect endangered species in British Columbia, nor will the Federal Endangered Species Bill. Both governments should introduce Endangered Species legislation that:

• includes a scientific listing process
• prevents harm or killing of listed species
• protects critical habitat of listed species
• ensure recovery plans are developed and implemented
• ensures advance review of projects that may harm listed species or their habitat
• allows for protection of endangered ecosystems as well as endangered species

b) Within the next two years the government should introduce an improved Forest Practices Code that:

• bans clearcutting
• ends road-building into non-fragmented areas
• requires mandatory biological inventories and wildlife assessments prior to any logging or roading approvals
• is based on the recommendations of the Clayoquot Sound Scientific Panel

c) In the Coastal temperate rainforest Greenpeace demands immediately:

• no logging in the remaining pristine rainforest valleys
• no new roads in the temperate rainforest
• an end to clearcutting

In the longer term Greenpeace is seeking a phase-out of industrial logging in the old-growth rainforests and a shift towards logging in second-growth forests according to ecological principles.

Greenpeace supports First Nations' cultural use of the temperate rainforest and community controlled ecoforestry in second-growth forests and areas where some logging has already occurred.