Sunday, July 17, 1994 - North Shore News - 3 and water —logging debated Watershed forest management strategy targets fire hazards, diseased trees, GVRD says rom the Greater Vancouver Regional District’s (GVRD) per- spective, active management of the watersheds is neces- sary to ensure the quality of the Lower Mainland’s drink- ing water. By Greg Feiton Contributing Writer Put another way: forest manage- ment measures are specific tactics in a strategy of fire prevention designed to meet the overall cbjec- tive of clean drinking water. 43 GVRD silviculturalist Brian De Gusseme explains: “The (GVRD) board’s current resolu- tions, in effect for about two years, say the only harvesting in the watershed that can be done is if it is associated with a fire hazard, or has a high concentration of snags, which are dead trees, or there’s 2 lot of wind throw (blown-down trees), or areas that are insect and disease infested or for erosion con- tro}." The greatest risk of fire, he said, is in the watersheds’ second-growth forest. Here, failen and dead trees could provide fuel for lightning strikes — the most common cause -of fire -~f which he said there are " 10 to 2G each year. De Gusseme said the Lower Mainland has an extensive fire his- ‘tory, but the GVRD doesn’t “have a - good handle on it.” To improve its -understanding of the three water- sheds, the GVRD has initiated a $2 ‘million ecological inventory largely - to assess the risk of “catastrophic fire.” . Project manager Tom Griffing said the inventory will use sophisti- cated computer modeling lo pre- dict the risk of a“ atastrophic” fire at any place and time over the next 200 years. “Catastrophic fire would denude a huge area that would result in huge erosion and a huge input of materials into the water courses, the reservoirs and into our drinking water.” Reacting to such a disaster, he said, would be extreinely costly and difficult — something the public would not tolerate. But so far as environmentalists are concerned, it is logging in the watershed that should be declared intolerable. Turning Griffing’s manage- ment rationale around, profession- al forester Herb Hammond said it is clearcutting that leads to soil erosion and turbid drinking water. “(in a clearcut,) nutrients are no longer stored by vegetation. They get flushed into the reser- voirs and create favorable situa- tions for unwanted biological activity.” Clearcuts promote floods, he said, because there is nothing left to to disperse heavy rains or wet snow packs. For Elaine Golds, member of the regional water advisory committee and the Burke Mountain Naturalists Society, GVRD watershed manage- ment represents a cure worse than the disease: “Between 1960 and 1990 only 5.5 hectares (0.2 ha/year) has been lost to naturally occurring forest fires. In contrast, between 1961 and 1990, 3,797 ha (127 ha/year) have been clearcut. The major catastro- phe that awaits our forests is clearcut logging, not naturally eccurring fires.” Moreover, during this period, 85.9 hectares were burned as a _ NUMBER OF FIRES Lightaing Recreation Harvesting Oihier Broadcast Burning”. CAUSES OF FIRES — _ “Has not been conducted since 1988, result of logging and escaped slash- burns — more than 15 times the amount burned by lightning. Golds and others criticize the GVRD’s management strategy but they do not disagree much about the GVRD’s data. Rather, they challenge the manner in which it is presented and interpreted. {In the case of fire damage, Golds takes no issue with the source of fires over the past 30 years but says the area burned gives a more accurate account of the damage done by clearcut logging. Golds even discounts the serious- ness of lightning fires saying that they are usually accompanied by NEWS graphics Linda Douglas rainstorms. in response, John Morse, man- ager of the GVRD’s water division, said the area figures are correct but do not tell the whole story: “Approximately half the area that has been logged since the early "60s was done because the forest cover was diseased and it was virtually defoliated by an insect infestation.” (The 199] Final Watershed and Management Evaluation and Policy Review reports that from the late 192@s to 1935 the hemlock looper infested 1,620 hectares, and from 1936 to 1967 the balsam wocily aphid infested another 2,300 hectares.) Balance sought in watershed management HE SECOND stop on the Greater Vancouver Regional District’s (GVRD) tour of the Capilano watershed is a place called Windy Branch at the northeast end of Capilano Lake. By Greg Felton - Contributing Writer - The eight-hectare (19.7 acres) clearcut area at the site is used to illustrate a number of the GVRD's new approaches to forest management: selective reforestation, forest thin- ning and smaller clearcuts. Part of the GVRD’s manage- ment plan is to promote certain species of trees, such as Douglas fir and Western zed cedar, in areas where there are risks of fire and blow-downs, said GVRD silvicul- turist Brian De Gusseme, as he pointed to the uprooted stumps of Western hemlocks on the site. “This area was identified by consultants as a high fire risk, so they built a read and harvested.” De Gusseme said hemlock has shallow roots that extend out only two metres (6.5 ft.), unlike Douglas fir and red cedar which have deep tap rooting systems that make them iess susceptible to being blown down in strong winds. They are also more resistant to insects aid disease. De Gusseme said stands of second-growth forest are being thinned out both to allow winds to blow through with less damage and as a way to open up the canopy to promote ground cover. CALL US: | 983-2208 “If we don't thin out the trees there’s toc much competition,” he said. “If we were to go into this hemlock stand (to the right of the clearcut) now and thin it out, what would happen is most of the trees would probably fall over in the first wind. This is because they haven’t got the root structure; they haven’t been growing.” For the last three or four years sustainable logging in the watersheds has been discontinued and only smal! patches are cut. Consultants assess the risk and make recommendations to the GVRD board. When consultants evaluate an area for cutting they consider not only the fire hazard danger, he SUMMARY OF FIRE History ~ DAMAGE AND CAUSES Source: GVRD Finat Watershed Management Evaluation and Policy Review said, but also the risk of failure. De Gusseme said consultants had concerns about the stability of the steep slope in this area but recommended cutting nevertheless. “It was better to harvest the area and take a lot of care to maintain it (than) risk of leaving the area as a jackpot fire hazard and risk area.” De °:...seme said the eight operations such as Windy Branch do have some effect on water quality but he says it is minor. For a more seri- ous cause of turbidity in our water, he points to the heavy clay soiis that are exposed when trees are blown down and uprooted. “There’s always a trade off with water quali- ty,” he said. Finally, the selective planting of fir, cedar and other species is designed to create a more diverse forest. A ferest of uniform age is said to be more prone io disease. The Society Promoting Environmental Conservation (SPEC) says the new management practices are flawed. In an April report it charged that small-patch clearcuts would lead to more road construction and thus more soil erosion. SPEC also rejected the diversified forest program, saying that an old-growth forest is the best water filter system. Independent environmental researcher Greg Helten, however, is less condemnatory. He agrees that thinning helps second-growth (but not old-growth) forests and says the eight-hectare cutblock plan represents an improvement over past policy. “I think they’re headed on the right track ... (but) they should head toward a man- agement policy of leaving the for- est alone.” But Helten recognized this might take some time. “(The watershed) has te be walked back to that point because of the problems experienced in the past century because of man and his inter- vention.” Next week: Logging and landslides. _ THIS WEEK’S QUESTION: Do you think the provincial school year is too short? 66 The major cata- strophe that awaits our forests is clearcut logging, not naturally occurring fires.99 ~ Environmentalist Elaine Golds The defoliated trees, said Morse, had to be cut because they were “a powder keg” waiting fora lightning strike. As for the man- made fires caused by slash-burn- ing of the fallen trees, Morse said the GVRD had no choice. As a lessee of Crown lands and holder of a tree farm licence, he said the GVRD was under the same provincial obligation as any other holder to conduct the burns. “You need only one or three | escaped slash-burns to get a fairly © extensive acreage involved,” said Morse. He added that slash-burning is no longer practised and, since 1988 “virtually nothing has been burned due to logging or slash.” As for the other half of the trees harvested over the last 30 years, Morse said it was done as a preven- tive measure to cull out trees that could become susceptible to fire or disease, This is the second instalment in a special North Shore News series by News contributing writer Greg Felton examining some of the key issues involved in the debate over Lower Mainland water quality. EERE ST index BB BUsiness........sssessssssessee 22 W Classified... 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