The position being taken by Whistlerites who oppose the logging of old-growth forest as part of the Cheakamus Community Forest (CCF) initiative is “absolutely reasonable,” but is beyond the scope of what municipal officials and their First Nations partners can accomplish on their own, a Whistler councillor said last week.

A group of perhaps 15 or 20 demonstrators, some of them in costumes that one described as “forest fairies,” danced, pounded on drums and voiced their opposition to the logging of old-growth forest in the 30,000-hectare CCF management area last Thursday (Sept. 9) in Mountain Square.

The group, carrying placards with slogans such as “Whistler: world’s No. 1 logging resort,” and shouting “zero cut, old growth,” then marched down the Village Stroll, eventually winding up at the Whistler Public Library, where CCF officials were conducting a public open house dealing with the initiative.

Standing behind a large cut-out of a 500-year-old tree that was said to have been cut in the Callaghan Valley, event co-organizer Sonya McCarthy said that while the group of demonstrators was small, it attracted lots of attention from passers-by.

“People have been coming up and saying, ‘I can’t believe they’re doing that to Whistler,” McCarthy said, describing the response to the group’s two-hour rally. “We had some American tourists who came up and said they didn’t think it was right to mix tourism with logging.”

The logging — including the cutting of some old-growth forest in the Callaghan and other areas — is set to begin this fall, but is on hold pending the B.C. Ministry of Forests’ approval of the CCF’s Forest Stewardship Plan and issuance of cutting permits to the CCF board, which is comprised of two members each from Whistler and the Lil’wat and Squamish First Nations, said board chair Peter Ackhurst.

Ackhurst and other CCF officials have long maintained that their primary objective is to carry out sound environmental management of Whistler’s watersheds and to keep decision-making under local control while cutting down far fewer trees than would be logged by private firms.

On Thursday, Ackhurst aid that CCF officials had hoped to begin logging their planned 18,000 cubic metres of timber — about 40 hectares of forest — in mid-September. But now, they don’t expect to receive permission to begin logging until at least October.

“That’s a concern, because under the licence, we have to log our allowable cut before the snow flies,” most likely in mid-November, he said.

Councillor Eckhard Zeidler, an unabashed environmentalist, said after reading a petition being passed around by the demonstrators that he agrees with its objectives.

“We the undersigned,” the petition states, “are calling on the B.C. government, Whistler’s mayor and the CCF board to: Undertake a provincial old-growth strategy that will inventory and protect the remaining old-growth forests in regions like Whistler and the Southern Mainland Coast; ensure the sustainable logging of second-growth forests… (and) undertake new land-use planning processes to protect endangered old-growth forests for future generations.”

Said Zeidler, “I think what the people are signing the petition for is absolutely reasonable and should have been done years ago.”

“I’m surprised,” he added, “that the petition doesn’t ask for the CCF board to stop old-growth logging immediately. I thought that was what this was about.

“The only way that can be done is if the provincial government puts the area off-limits to old growth, because the CCF doesn’t have the authority to do that.”

Pina Belperio, another of the demonstration’s organizers, said she wasn’t 100 per cent sure that organizers would hand in the petition being passed around last week.

“What we’d like to see is, ‘Don't cut the old growth; leave the forest alone until the second growth is ready to be cut,” she said.

“I don’t know if we can trust the municipality to do a good job, given the history with the asphalt plant, the B.C. Transit facility being built on a wetland, and Lot 1/9.”

Despite all the commitments to environmental sustainability made in the Whistler 2020 document and elsewhere, Belperio said, “If we look at the track record over the last four or five years, nothing has been progressive in my mind. It’s all words and no action.”

Lucinda Phillips, Lil’wat Nation director of land and resources and a member of the CCF board, welcomed the public’s involvement. Standing in a corner of the crowded library Community Room, she said, “I’m of a mind that if we don’t hear anything from the public, then we must be doing something wrong.”

She added that the CCF partnership adheres to the Lil’wat land-use plan for the region and gives the nation a measure of control over the landscape.

Ackhurst said that based on the size and age of most second-growth trees in the region, it’s estimated that it’ll be about 15 years before those trees will be mature enough that the CCF could cut only second-growth and still achieve the current annual allowable cut.

Because the initiative is still in its first full year, CCF officials are still in the process of assembling an inventory of the forests within the CCF boundaries, he said.

“If anything I would ask for patience. In another year or two we’ll have enough information to know the whole scope of what we’re dealing with,” he said.

Zeidler, acknowledging the protesters’ call for the Whistler area to lead the way on provincial forestry policy, said it’s important to note that in many ways, it’s already doing that. The Sea to Sky Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP), adopted in 2008 after years of multi-stakeholder discussions, resulted in “huge progress” that now includes the protection of some 51 per cent of the landscape from old-growth logging.

More, however, remains to be done, Zeidler said.

“I hope in my lifetime to see a forest industry in B.C. that relies exclusively on second growth,” he said.