Anti-logging
fight initiated
by Cleveland

First defender of watershed forests

As a preliminary it may be said for
sheer downright devastation of a
timbered area, the present meth-
ods of logging leave little to the
imagination ... The pre-eminent
object to be attained is the mainte-
nance of an adequate supply of
Pure, i.e. unpolluted, water — all
other considerations are subordi-
nate and to that end the watershed
should be preserved inviolate.

Ernest A. Cleveland, submis-
sion to Forest Minister T.D.
Pattullo, 1922.

“TN IS not too much of a
Stretch to say that
.Ernest A. Cleveland, the
Greater Vancouver Water
District’s (GVWD) first
water commissioner, is the
Spiritual leader of those
opposed to watershed log-

ging.

By Grog Felton ©
‘ Contributing Writer

During his 26-year tenure as
commissioner no systematic log-
ging was permitted.

“They will log that (Capilano)
watershed over my dead body.”

And so they did.

Within two years of
Cleveland’s death in 1952,
‘Theodore Berry, dean of forestry
at the University of British
Columbia and GVWD water com-
missioner commissioned C.D.
Schultz forestry consultants to
. conduct a survey of the water-
sheds.

; The Schultz report of December
’ 1956 would provide the foundation
for the 1967 Amending Indenture.
It would also provide ammunition
for its critics. .

In 1958, the C.D. Schultz com-
pany and then-provincial Minister
of Lands and Forests Robert
Sommers faced criminal charges
of bribery and conspiracy relating
to the obtaining of logging rights
in B.C. ,

Thus, environmientalists con-
demn the entire rationale for sus-
tained-yield harvesting as intellec-
tually and politically corrupt.

One of the more prominent crit-
ics is Will Koop, known as the
unofficial biographer of the water-
shed.

In his 1992 book Wake up
Vancouver!, Koop provides a
minute, thorough critique of the
GVWD’s forest management prac-
tices as well as an historical out-
line of debates and controversies
in this century.

Citing personal correspondence
to Berry from Nov. 10, 1953,
Koop said that the Schultz compa-
ny convinced the managing editor
of the Daily Province to killa
three-story report on proposed
changes to watershed policy that
might have jeopardized its inter-
ests.

One of those first interviewed
by Pravince reporter Doug
Leiterman was George S. Allen,
dean of forestry at UBC: “If you

CALL US:

983-2208

don’t cut timber when it's mature,
nature will drop the trees for you
by wind, bugs, or fire. Too many
people look on a 500-year-old
stand of timber as a gold mine —
try to make it last. That’s waste,
not conservation.

“It is ignorant to think of a for-
est as a timber storehouse. It's
really like a slow-growing farm.

“In 100 years it can produce a
whole new crop, if properly man-
aged, and the new one will be
healthier and lustier than the last.”

In the other two stories Berry
condemned the loggers’ arguments
outright.

According to Leiterman’s
unpublished report:

“*That’s the forester for you,’
the commissioner (said) ... If there
are experts who claim modern tim-
ber cropping can be carried on
without cutting off the water, Mr.
Berry says he can get just as many
experts to argue the other way.

“Access roads, he maintains,
concentrate the run-off — upset
the balance of nature — stir up
sediment in colloidal suspension
so the water is so dirty it can’t
even be filtered clean.”

Current GVWD manager John
Morse remembers the scandal, but
said it was a personal matter for
Charles Schultz, not his company:

“We were relying on the C.D.
Schultz company as a well-recog-
nized forestry consultant.

“What (Schultz) was involved
in with the provincial government
should not tarnish al] the work
done by that particular firm.”

Morse defends the need to har-
vest the watersheds and cites
Cleveland, himself, to make his
point.

Morse said Cleveland recog-
nized that insect infestations were
spreading throughout the water-
shed.

In a report to the GVWD board
in December 1934, Cleveland
wrote: “The unfortunate results of
the invasion of the (Seymour)
watershed by the Hemlock looper
in 1930 are now rapidly becoming
apparent.”

GVWD Management

Allowable
Annual Cut
(m3 per year)
41,766
190,700

00,0
180,000

Management and
Working Plans
{date submitted)

_ 2nd — 1975*
x
4th — 1989

HAZARD RATING

Unmanaged
Forest

Unmanaged Forest
20% Non-praductive
80% Mature

0% Immature

1970 GVWD Forest
18% Non-productive
60% Mature

22% Immature

Rate of Spread

1970 GYWD
Forest Forest

58% Mature

1989 GVWD

1989 GVWD Forest
20% Norn-productive

22% Immature

Lowest Possible
Rating in

GVWOD Forest

LC

Lowest Poss. Rating
in GVWD Forest
20% Non-productive
28% Mature

52% Immature

From: Fahnestock, GR “Two Keys for Appraising Forest Fire Fuels” 1970 USDA Forest Service

; NEWS ‘graphic Linda Douglas

A COMPARISON of forest fire hazards in the Greater Vancouver Regional District watersheds.

Watershed logging
initiated to counter
50s aphid infestation

He also noted that the defoliat-
ed hemlock and balsam trees were
“creating a nuisance and a fire haz-
ard.”

Morse said that Cleveland’s
early condemnation of logging,
and the subsequeat banning of all
logging from the late 1920s to
1935, teflected his justified out-
rage at the unrestricted, destructive
logging practices from the 1870s
to the 1920s.

Even though Cleveland died in
1952, Morse said by 1956-57 the
infestations could no longer be
ignored, and forest management
was necessary.

This is the fourth instalment in
a special North Shore News series
by contributing writer Greg Felton
examining some of the key issues
involved in the debate over Lower
Mainland water quality.

Previous instalments in the
series have looked at water turbid-
ity, the link between logging and
watershed landslides and the poli-
tics of logging.

and Working Plans

Harvestable
Land Base
(ina)

“94,878.
18,451

26,986
24,442

Average Actually
Harvested
(m3 per year)

“Note: The second plan was extended to 1984 by the MoF, when the third plan

was approved

NEWS graphic Robyn Brown

ANNUAL. TIMBER harvested in Lower Mainland watersheds as
per GVWD Management and Working Plans.

F THE 57,971 hec-

tares in the Lower

Mainland watersheds,
the Greater Vancou-ver
Regional District (GVRD)
owns 13% outright and leases
the remaining 87% from the
provincial government,
according to a 999-year lease
signed in 1939, 13 years after
the GVRD was founded.

By Greg Felton
Contributing Writer

The government granted the
GVRD control over these lands
under the condition it preserve the
water supply and protect the stands
of timber from fire.

The 1939 lease did not recognize
active management of the forests, yet
from 1967 to 1991 the GVRD has
legally conducted active harvesting
on these lands under a tree-farm
licence issued by the Ministry of
Forests.

The legislation that granted the
GVRD this right is the Amending
Indenture of March 7, 1967.

For environmentalists —- who
advocate a hands-off management
policy — the Indenture and three
decades of logging operations repre-
sent a betrayal of the GVRD's origi-
nal 1924 charter “to throw or deposit
any injurious or offensive matter into
the water supply.”

From the GVRD'‘s point of view,
however, the Indenture was neces-
sary. principally because of the bal-
sam wooly aphid infestation of the

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION:
How do you rate ICBC’s performance in relation to claim settlements?

early 1950s which destroyed 2,300
hectares of timber.

GVRD wate: manager John
Morse said the district at the time
started out by logging the infested
balsam on its own lands but found
the disease was too widespread.

Thus, in 1963 GVRD water com-
missioner T.V. Berry formally peti-
tioned the Minister of Forests, Ray
Williston, to change the terms of the
original lease.

From 1961 to 1967, the GVRD
harvested the infested trees as a
long-term salvage operation, but,
said Morse, by the late "60s and
early ’70s, the policy had changed to
one of a policy to cull out areas that
would be subject to fire or insects.
This took the form of a controlled
harvesting program to promote the
growth of younger trees.

“(The Indenture) was done with a
view to providing a long-term
turnover of the vegetation in the
watershed to eliminate those areas
that had a propensity for the natural
decline process,” said Morse.

Because the GVRD is a lessee of
Crown land, Morse said it must
abide by the same rules as every
other tree-farm licence-holder —
whether it wants to or not. These
rules included slash (broadcast)
burning and adherence to an annual
allowable cut (AAC) as set out by
the ministry. For example:

Sec. 14 of the Indenture gives the
Ministry of Lands, Forests and
Water the power to say how much
timber should be cut and by what
method if no mutual agreement can

See Timber page 5