Fragile old-growth ecosystems at risk
Clearcut logging has ravaged limestone topography that makes for more productive rainforests
THE HANKIN RANGE — The impact of clearcut logging on biodiversity is well-documented. But this is quite something else, a desperate razed landscape of charred stumps, barren limestone rocks and lost soils.
Clear cool streams once flowed through humid old-growth forests rich in lifeforms on northern Vancouver Island. Today, the site is a virtual dead zone, fireweed poking through the rubble the only sign of life.
In 2014, a wildfire swept through the Western Forest Products clearcut, high above Nimpkish Lake, and the thin layer of soil disappeared through fissures and openings in the limestone karst.
Ironically, the only thing that stopped the fire was a patch of oldgrowth trees that Western had not cut down. The standing rainforest lacked the dry wood debris left behind after logging that fuelled the fire.
“It’s a different microclimate under the canopy of an old-growth forest,” explains B.C. karst expert Paul Griffiths. “You get a few downed trees, but generally they are moss covered.”
The fire burned 165 hectares, an estimated 89 hectares of that over karst.
Karst is a fragile type of topography that develops when water dissolves soluble bedrock — predominantly limestone on Vancouver Island, a Canadian hot spot for karst.
The gradual process can form caves or caverns, passageways, creeks and springs, sinkholes, and fantastic but easily damaged speleothems such as columns, curtains, flowstone, soda straws, stalactites and stalagmites.
Karst also makes for more productive rainforests, draining away extensive rainfall while the dissolved cracks in the bedrock give tree roots a good foothold against powerful winter winds. Karst also reduces the acidity of rainfall, providing improved habitat for aquatic life, including resident and migratory fish.
Researchers Griffiths and Carol Ramsey have been fighting for years for better protection of karst landscapes on Vancouver Island, especially those associated with oldgrowth forests.
Griffiths describes this particular karst area as “very significant,” arguing it should not have been extensively clearcut. The fact that it was with no apparent attempt to protect karst features highlights the need for the province to improve the level of protection and ensure in-the-field inspections.
“You can see there are features here that have no protection whatsoever,” Griffiths says.
Postmedia requested an interview with Paul Nuttall, manager of forest practices and planning for Western Forest Products, but instead received a short email response from communications director Babita Khunkhun.
“A karst field assessment was done for the area at the time and we followed the recommendations of the assessment,” Khunkhun said. “We have replanted the area twice since the fire and will continue to carry out silviculture treatments as needed to meet our commitment to reforesting the area.”
She did not provide a copy of that assessment.
Government Actions Regulation (GAR) orders currently represent the major forestry legislation in B.C. aimed at protecting certain categories of karst features, but not the greater karst ecosystem. GAR orders apply to six forest districts on the B.C. coast, but not the northern part of the Great Bear Rainforest.
Haida Gwaii has an extra level of protection, including a land-use objective order. Caving expeditions there have uncovered evidence of ancient human use, as well as bear bones dating back 17,000 years.
In theory, GAR orders require that “forestry activities not damage or render ineffective karst caves, significant surface karst features, and important features and elements within high or very high vulnerability karst terrain.” In practice, the timber industry too often fails to protect karst features, including through forest buffers of one to two tree lengths to guard against the impact of falling trees, Griffiths says.
“What we see in the field is a failure to protect.” The government leaves it to forest professionals working for the companies to decide what protection is needed, but they can lack in-depth knowledge of karst.
The provincial government has published karst inventory standards, and a Karst Management Handbook with recommended best practices for the use of forest companies, Ramsey said, “but in practise” these standards and guidelines are not closely or consistently followed.
Griffiths has been studying karst since the 1960s on Vancouver Island and around the world, and served as president of the B.C. Speleological Federation for 25 years. He is currently working on his PhD in karstology.
Ramsey already has her PhD in karstology from cave-riddled Slovenia, where the Karst Research Institute is the United Nations chair for karst education.
In 2016, two scientists from Slovenia toured B.C. and confirmed that old-growth forests on karst is an ecosystem of international significance.
“The association with coastal rainforests is globally rare and significant and deserving of protection,” Griffiths says. “On Vancouver Island, we have very little of this left.”
Karst terrain occurs on about four per cent of the land mass of Vancouver Island, he estimated.
During the election campaign, the NDP promised to modernize landuse planning to sustainably manage BC’s old-growth forests, adopting an ecosystem-based management model.
And Scott Fraser, NDP MLA for Alberni-Pacific Rim, introduced private member’s bills seeking cave-protection legislation in 2000 and 2016 during the Liberal administration. Cave legislation could be used to protect not just against forestry but vandalism and other activities. The oil and gas sector has its own legislation.
Griffiths noted that while caves capture the public’s attention, they represent only a small fraction of the greater karst landscape. “There is more to protecting a karst ecosystem than protecting caves.”
Today, Fraser is Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation and chair of the environment and land-use committee, which puts him in a position to finally make a difference.
He said in an email statement that protecting B.C.’s karst landscapes “is an issue that is near and dear to my heart” but that he hasn’t had an opportunity yet to “pursue putting further protections in place.”
He insisted it remains a “personal priority of mine” and he committed to working with Doug Donaldson, Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resources Operations and Rural Development, to “ensure B.C. strengthens our protections for these fragile landscapes.”
Griffiths and Ramsey remain hopeful that’s the case, and that B.C. follows the lead set by at least 22 U.S. states, including neighbouring Alaska, and the U.S. federal government on this issue.