Save What's Left Conservation Society

06/17/2026

Our Minister of Forests just posted about BC Timber Sales and tree planting. We have some news for him - the economics are an embarrassment. No wonder BC is broke.

This year, BC Timber Sales will clear-cut the equivalent of 100,000 logging truck loads of public forest - and net just $50,000 doing it. Yet they'll spend over $46,000,000 planting seedlings that won't be harvestable until around 2105.

And ecologically and hydrologically, a tree plantation at any age is no substitution for natural forest. These already ludicrous BCTS financials of course don't account for those immeasurable losses.

Source: BCTS Growth Plan - Fiscal Year 2026/27 (PDF, 1.9MB) (pg 30-32)
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/forestry/bc-timber-sales/economic-prosperity/business-plans-performance-reports

06/13/2026

🌲 From our friends at 4 the Love of BC

What's happening right now in BC is not just an environmental catastrophe. It is a wholesale betrayal of taxpayers and workers in favour of big industry. Lobbyist groups are steering the ship. Forestry DOESN'T WORK for BC. It's time for a revolution.

PLEASE LIKE, COMMENT ON AND SHARE THIS VIDEO TO HELP SPREAD THIS CRITICAL MESSAGE!

Links to the math and the petition are in the comments 👇



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06/11/2026

Caribou “not the smartest of animals?” 😢 🙄💚🦌

Journalist Evert Lindquist from the Black Press interviewed BC Forest Minister Ravi Parmar in Revelstoke on Wednesday. Here are two priceless quotes from the article:

1. “The minister also claimed that B.C. forestry today is creating far fewer cutblocks than a “1950s-style” clear-cut logging he described.

In reality, between 79,000 and 252,000 ha of Crown land forest (199,000 on average) were harvested annually between 1987 and 2023, the vast majority of which was done by clear-cutting. Less partial cutting has also been happening than in the 1980s and ’90s, according to data from the province”

(SWLCS: A key forestry expert says 93% of the logging on Crown land in BC is clearcutting. To our knowledge, that figure is not refuted.)

2. “Parmar was critical of caribou for how they grow “spooked” when disturbed and exhaust substantial energy running away over long distances.

“That’s usually one of the reasons that leads to their demise, and that’s one of the reasons why we’ve had to defer harvesting in different parts of the province, because they need a vast area of land,” he said. “Not the smartest animal, that’s for sure.””

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Here is a link to the article: https://archive.is/QZBRw

06/09/2026

Robin Hood - or robbin' the hood?

Our Forest Minister Ravi Parmar tells us that NACFOR (Nakusp's Community Forest Corporation) just won a Robin Hood Award honouring their "commitment to sustainable forestry." Hmm... Lot's to unpack there! Sustainable? We don't think so. But anyhow, let's talk about what they're up to now. https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2026FOR0030-000665

Our understanding is NACFOR is proposing (and will almost certainly get the permit for) a giant 154-hectare cutting area (roughly 290 football fields!) at Box Lake, with 50% retention. No doubt they'll have to take a second pass in a few years once the thinning causes inevitable blow-down - so realistically we're looking at a lot less than 50% before long.

This steep terrain, well loved by local residents, has been contentious for at least three decades. It started out as Slocan Forest Products tenure, then Interfor, then recently transferred to NACFOR under circumstances that raise plenty of questions.

The logging is being done in the name of wildfire mitigation. But true wildfire mitigation leaves the big, fire-resistant trees - the ones that hold the most canopy and keep the forest floor cool - and targets the medium and small stuff. So will NACFOR leave most of the big old trees? Or is this veritable gold mine going to be sold as power poles - which, if history repeats itself, will mostly be exported? Removing the big old trees can often actually increase wildfire concerns, depending on conditions.

Unlike the overwhelming majority of the West Kootenays, this area is classified NDT2 - meaning old growth is considered 250+ years old, versus 140+ across most of the region. 23% of NACFOR's newly acquired tenure is 140–250 years old, and 3% is 250+. So to put that in perspective, 26% of their new tenure would classify as old growth in most places in the Interior. With climate change, we will never see forest like this again.

As well, it is almost certain that this work will be subsidized by taxpayers. Nakusp and Area Community Forest just received a combined total of $686,100 in wildfire risk reduction grants.

Community forests have a great deal of potential. But in the absence of provincial rules around ecosystem management, community forests boards of directors too often get stacked with status-quo forestry people who choose $ over 🦋 🦅 🦉 🐸 🐶 🐻 🐟 and healthy natural 🌲🌲🌲.

06/06/2026

A federal task force co-chaired by BC's own Ken Kalesnikoff and stacked with forest industry heavyweights including the CEOs of Domtar (the Paper Excellence/Jackson Wijaya behemoth) and J.D. Irving is calling for a $10 billion "Forest Sector Transformation Investment Fund."

Hmm... Let's unpack that. What are they really asking for? Things like unsecured debt. They want taxpayers to lend them money with no collateral to claim back if their projects fail - exactly the risk the banks aren't willing to take - while the very same article tells us BC's first-quarter forestry exports dropped a whopping 40% year-over-year 2025 vs 2026! These export numbers aren't expected to get any better, with Trump basically declaring war on the countries National Forests.

Most telling is where the task force looks for a model: New Brunswick. Kalesnikoff holds up New Brunswick as a "balanced example" of managing timber well. This is the province where J.D. Irving, the largest Crown forest licensee, successfully lobbied for a 21% increase in the allowable cut, and where just this year Irving floated swapping protected conservation land to gain access for its operations, to the consternation of conservationists. New Brunswick is neck and neck with BC for regressive forestry policies.

05/21/2026

I thought this was a joke. The BC NDP just named the Site C dam, the John Horgan Dam! Let the irony of that sink in…

And it is sinking - quite literally. The geotechnical failures on Site C’s foundation are well documented and still concerning. So is the $16 billion price tag that sank BC taxpayers along with it.

Forest Minister Ravi Parmar’s post calls it “the Site C damn” - which is very accurate, but perhaps not the height of his Freudian slips he’s made this year! …He couldn’t beat his Earth Day FB post “Forestry includes wildfire prevention and destroying our land…”

This is the same dam (damn?) that Horgan himself was photographed holding a “Site C sucks” sign and the NDP campaigned so strongly against.

This is the same Site C that his own Energy Minister Michelle Mungall, the Nelson/Creston Kootenay MLA, called “a 1953 solution to a 2016 problem,” where we witnessed her literally parading through the streets of Nelson in opposition, before flipping once her government took power - no doubt strong-armed by a pro-big-industry, damn-the-worker-and-the-environment Horgan.

This is what BC NDP legacy-building looks like. Wouldn’t Horgan prefer to have his name on a new provincial park? Oh yeah, not possible as the BC NDP haven’t created a single new standalone park in 9 years of government. Oh yeah, not possible because Horgan wanted to lock up and throw away the key on Fairy Creek protesters who just wanted what the overwhelming majority of British Columbians wanted - protection for the last fragments of high ecological value old growth.

Wake the heck up, NDP.

05/19/2026

Who's running the logging show in BC? Lobbyists. Here's a good read about this critical issue.

At every level of government around the world, elected leaders are inundated with industry-funded messaging singularly focused on shareholder returns - usually for multinational corporations - while climate, ecological, hydrological, and long-term economic science get sidelined.

INTERNATIONAL: Indonesian billionaire Jackson Wijaya now beneficially owns both Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) and Domtar, controlling roughly 22 million hectares of Canadian forest tenure - nearly 10% of all Canada's managed forest, and four times the size of Nova Scotia. APP has a terrible track record all over the globe.

International certification schemes like the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) use the word "sustainable" without ever defining it - nor do they even look at sustainability beyond the stand level. Don't underestimate how important these certification schemes are for helping BC export 85% of our forests.

And the big international conservation NGOs that should be pushing back? WWF-Canada has now password-protected its board of directors page - public access blocked. Until at least April 2025, that board included Anne Giardini, former President of Weyerhaeuser Canada, who has also sat on the boards of SFI Inc., FPAC, COFI, and the Alberta Forest Products Association. And believe us, it's not just WWF that's the problem when it comes to the very large NGOs.

NATIONAL: FPAC - the Forest Products Association of Canada, Canada's federal forestry lobby - is stacked with CEOs of the world's largest forest companies, including its board president: yup, the CEO of Domtar. FPAC has logged 37 communications with federal officials in just the past 6 months in Canada's federal lobbyists registry. Its mandate is its members' interest, not Canada's. FPAC are the darlings that bring you those stupid surveys and the "Forestry for the Future" campaign.

PROVINCIAL (BC): The BC Council of Forest Industries (COFI) has logged 106 communications with BC officials in the past year. Despite COFI being a registered lobby group, Premier David Eby has spoken at their annual convention in both 2025 and 2026. COFI are the folks that run the banal "Forestry is a Solution" campaign.

Even the BC Parks Foundation (and its sub-organization the BC Conservation Fund, the arm's-length charity now sitting at the centre of BC's "30 by 30" conservation strategy) is loaded with industry. That includes director Gillian Winckler (also a director of West Fraser); Linda Coady, appointed in 2025 straight from her role as President & CEO of COFI; not to mention past and founding director Dana Hayden, who concurrently sat on Mosaic's board.

And to round out the provincial picture, of course there's the Truck Loggers Association - who seem to get more air time with BC's Minister of Forests than any other lobby group.

LOCAL: "Forestry Works for BC" calls itself a "grassroots, community-led" movement and explicitly states, "We don't lobby." Somehow they're getting away with it, because they aren't tracked in the BC lobbyists registry. Yet they have systematically petitioned regional district boards across BC to write letters to the Forest Minister, and they've been all over social media posting very questionable content. That is the textbook definition of lobbying.

BC NDP - enough already with only listening to lobbyists! We need to listen to the ecologists, climatologists, hydrologists, and economists. Industrial forestry the world over has not kept up with science.

If you haven't done so already, please sign the petition calling for an official public inquiry into the Ministry of Forests, and the replacement of BC Minister of Forests Ravi Parmar. We have almost 2500 signatures already! Our hope is the BC Greens, under the leadership of Emily Lowan, will formally present our legal petition to the legislature: https://savewhatsleft.ca/petition

04/30/2026

3 minute update on what the nearly-universally despised BC NDP forest liquidation branch BC Timber Sales is up to around the province:

What is the BC NDP forest liquidation branch BC Timber Sales up to?

04/30/2026

BC Forestry Minister Ravi Parmar has recently twice shared posts promoting Fraserview Cedar Products Ltd, a lower mainland cedar mill and export company. Here they are advertising old growth Western Red Cedar "cants" for international export.

In BC, cants are classified as a processed product - but what they really are is a widely used workaround to the ban on raw log exports of Western Red Cedar, a species now so rare it commands very high prices on expanding international markets. We know from their advertising that Fraserview rough-sawn cant exports are being turned into panelling in New Zealand for example.

Cants are the massive timbers are pictured. Many of the trees these cants came from were alive for ten generations of humans - some from perhaps fifty generations ago or more. Think about that. Feeding them to insatiable export markets in 2026 to prop up a heavily subsidized and badly broken industry that logged itself into oblivion should bring tears to your eyes.

Minister Parmar calls this a relationship worth promoting. We call it a scandal — and so should you Premier David Eby and the BC NDP. This is just plain wrong.

Please follow this page, like and share. We have so much more quality content to share. We need to get the word out about whats really going on in BC.

04/08/2026

What are the real economics of forestry in BC? Who do you believe? Sadly, forestry in BC is a HUGE drain on the provinces coffers.

The BC Council of Forest Industries (COFI) just released an economic impact study on BC's forest sector. It's a masterclass in cherry-picking.https://cofi.org/wp-content/uploads/COFI-2026-Economic-Impact-Study-Executive-Summary.pdf This report omits the cost to BC taxpayers of a heavily subsidized, broken system.

BC's Ministry of Forests is budgeted to spend $898 million in 2025/26, but forestry revenue is only expected to be around $506 million. Yes, Ministry of Forests is going to lose something like $400 million this year - before wildfire overruns that add hundreds of millions more.

The report also claims the sector contributes $12.8 billion to BC's GDP. What it doesn't mention: COFI's own 2024 version of this same study claimed $17.4 billion. The sector shed $4.6 billion in GDP contributions in moving that 10 year period two years along. It also fails to mention that tourism for example contributes 5.7 TIMES more to BC's GDP versus forestry. These GDP numbers will only get worse as the US has declared war on its own National Forests. And these GDP figures don't account for the real costs of wide-scale clearcut logging: billions in flood damages, irreplaceable harm to ecosystems and biodiversity and forests that won't come back as we know them due to climate change.

Meanwhile, the 45% combined tariffs and duties on BC softwood sold to the US mean hundreds of millions of dollars flowing straight into Trump's pocket instead of British Columbians' - the clearest proof of just how much BC subsidizes its forestry industry.

Compare this superficial COFI report to what ESSA Technologies recently found: that fully protecting old-growth forests in just the Prince George and Okanagan timber supply areas would generate $43 billion in net economic benefits over 100 years. https://lnkd.in/ghc2pgdR

THIS is the intellectual environment in which Minister Ravi Parmar and Deputy Minister Makenzie Leine take the stage tomorrow (April 9 2026) at the annual COFI 2026 - not as regulators holding industry accountable, but as featured speakers sharing a vision in lockstep with a lobbyist group, sponsored by the biggest forestry company in the province, West Fraser.

Premier David Eby: tomorrow, your Forests Minister is co-presenting a shared vision with an industry lobbyist group, while his ministry runs a half-billion-dollar structural deficit and refuses to acknowledge a timber supply crisis predicted for 50 years. This requires your office to intervene.

Sign the petition calling for a public inquiry into the Ministry of Forests, and the replacement for Forestry Minister Ravi Parmar. There is just shy of 2000 checked and verified signatures on the legal petition already! If we get enough signatures, maybe the BC Greens would bring forward this petition in the legislature: Emily Lowan https://savewhatsleft.ca/petition

BC NDP