Old-growth logging of previously deferred forest in Foster Creek
By Wildsight
Foster Creek is a stand of rare, old and ancient rainforest on the Kinbasket Reservoir the Province’s own Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) had previously recommended for immediate deferral.
Now, big trees are falling in Foster Creek and mountain caribou are losing even more connectivity in their endangered habitat. Wildsight conservation specialist Eddie Petryshen has received satellite images showing logging underway in previously mapped at-risk old-growth forest. Wildsight has been pushing the provincial government to cancel the planned logging since May of this year.
“This signals we’re willing to continue logging a lot of our last old and ancient forests,” says Petryshen. “This is a very out-there place, but that’s where this kind of thing is happening. And that’s what’s challenging for the public to see, it’s in these wild places at the back end of valleys where we’re still doing logging like it’s 1970.”
The three Foster Creek cutblocks cover 120 hectares between Revelstoke and Valemount. This spring, BC Timber Sales (BCTS), part of the Ministry of Forests, confirmed to Wildsight the blocks had been field-verified as meeting old-growth deferral criteria. After Wildsight’s own field verification, BCTS quietly removed the deferrals from the provincial database. The agency then auctioned the blocks in June, sold them in early July and issued cutting permits shortly after. Now the logging has started.
More than 100 hectares of the blocks overlap deferrals recommended by the TAP. According to the province’s own Vegetation Resource Inventory, the trees are 350 to 367 years old, and some cedars measure 2 metres across. The blocks sit within a 6 square kilometre patch of old and ancient forest that extends into the neighbouring Foster Arm Protected Area. Reactivation and creation of logging roads puts added pressure on the struggling Columbia North caribou herd, which is in danger of being extirpated. The former Columbia South herd is already gone — extirpated.
Wildsight is calling on the new provincial government to halt the logging and do what the NDP government failed to do: implement protected status for all remaining at-risk old growth. Studies consistently show B.C.’s inland temperate rainforest is imperiled, and we’re at an ecosystem tipping point.
“Foster Creek is emblematic of a problem because we know better. The public understands why old forests are important, but the province and BCTS don’t seem to understand that,” Petryshen says.
Like all deferrals, these were only ever meant to be temporary, and many were never fully implemented—only mapped. The NDP government promised to convert them to permanent protections, but never did.
“There’s nothing but goodwill protecting those deferrals,” Petryshen explains. “There’s no legal mechanism saying these deferrals need to be implemented.”
Wildsight sent letters to the NDP government this spring to let them know BCTS was unilaterally removing deferrals, alerting the deputy minister of forests and others in the ministry, but never got a reply.
Wildsight is now asking the BC Conservatives to implement the Old Growth Strategic Review, to halt work on the Foster cutblocks, and to defer harvesting and development in all blocks in timber sale TA2933 under Part 13 of the Forest Act. With no new minister of forests yet appointed after the October 24 provincial election, Wildsight is urging the incoming government to make Foster its first old-growth decision, and honour their election promise to protect “original old growth” and the rarest ecosystems.
Background
In 2021, the Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel mapped British Columbia’s most at-risk old-growth forests and recommended that the Province defer logging in them while longer-term protections were developed. The Foster blocks were among them. The Howard-Foster to Encampment area is likely one of the largest intact low-elevation old-growth forests left in the Columbia North caribou herd’s range. Wildsight staff visited the site in July and documented BCTS cruise plots and flagged road centrelines through the proposed blocks.
