Pro-logging coalition pushing for Stein access
In September of 1987, within two weeks of the Stein festival, a coalition of pro-logging interests presented a brief to the B.C. Minister of Environment and Parks. They also presented the brief to the highest level of civil service advisors, the Environment and Land Use Technical Committee. Smarting from a "defeat" in South Moresby, the pro-logging interests mobilized in unprecedented fashion. They wanted a quick no-compromise decision from the government to log the Stein.
The list of 17 constituency groups that endorsed the brief was impressive. Support not only came from the Council of Forest Industries, Association of B.C. Professional Foresters, British Columbia Forest Products Limited, the IWA of Canada and the Truck Loggers Association, all strong opponents of saving South Moresby, but also from the towns of Hope, Lillooet, the village of Lytton and other local groups.
The short brief urges the government to opt for balanced development of the Stein - to "Share the Stein." The brief asserts that because those who attended the Voices for the Wilderness Festival in the Stein alpine at Brimful Lake could not see the proposed logging area of the mid-valley from that particular vantage point, the Stein Valley could be logged and still be enjoyed by wilderness enthusiasts.
The brief fails to mention native interests in the Stein Valley and ignores the lack of studies concerning the impact of proposed logging on wildlife. It also makes the preposterous claim that $3/4 billion worth of wealth will be generated from the Stein logging and that 237 direct and indirect jobs will be generated. This is just playing with the numbers, and the profitability has been questionable all along. All the projections require a guess of what the international market will be doing for the next 30 years.
One Lytton resident summed it up this way, "The forest companies have already greedily devoured almost the whole cake and now they claim that even with grizzly bear, wolves, cougar, Stein Rediscovery and wilderness hikers the valley is not being shared already... ridiculous."
Pro-logging arguments fail truth test
Forest Minister Dave Parker's announcement Sept. 30, 1987 that the Stein Valley will be logged, rekindled the 14 year conflict over the fate of southwest B.C.'s last major wilderness watershed.
Here are some responses to the common arguments presented by those who believe that it is in the best interests of British Columbians to log this valley.
Both Premier Vander Zalm and Forest Minister Dave Parker assert that they are following the 1986 Wilderness Advisory Committee in deciding to get on with logging the Stein this fall. Both say that attempts to negotiate with the Lytton Indian Bands over logging road access failed and so there was no choice but to go ahead without their approval.
Response:
Current government action is clearly breaking two basic recommendations
of the Wilderness Advisory Committee that "...a road should not be
constructed through the Stein River Canyon without a formal agreement
between the Lytton Indian Band and the provincial government" and, in
case no agreement could be reached with the Lytton Band, that "...the
timber volume (of the Stein should be) removed from the annual
allowable cut calculations of the Lillooet Timber Supply Area, and
should be zoned and managed as wilderness by the Ministry of Forests."
According to Ruby Dunstan, chief of the Lytton Band, the government did not make any effort to contact the band about building the logging road up the Stein Valley. The band has not received a letter nor a phone call from the provincial government concerning Stein road building negotiations. The provincial government has been unable to provide any proof that it did try to negotiate.
In order to keep operating, local sawmills in Lytton and Boston Bar are relying on immeditate access to the Stein for their wood supply. There is no alternative timber supply to replace this wood.
Response:
This is true, but the Stein wood can only provide a short extension to an industry that is
exhausting its supply of raw material faster than it is being replenished. Presently, local
lumber mills are using up surrounding forests in the Lillooet Timber Supply at the rate of 800,000
cubic metres per year. The B.C. Forest Service estimates a cut level of only 444,000 cubic metres
per year.
There are only two to three million cubic metres of economic timber in the Stein Valley. Every year, old growth forests equivalent to nearly 40 Stein Valleys are logged in B.C. The amount of wood found in the Stein is almost exactly equivalent to the amount found in the Windy Bay watershed on the Queen Charlotte Islands, or less than one tenth that found in all of South Moresby National Park Reserve.
There is simply not enough wood in the Stein to extend the life of the local mills for any more than three or four years at most if they depended solely on this supply. The Stein wood will not solve, at root, the forest industry's problems.
The decision by provincial cabinet to harvest timber in the Stein valley recognizes the need to maintain the existing forest industry.
Response:
If the province were really concerned about the existing forest industry and about jobs for people
working in that industry, it would not allow the export, last year alone, of unmilled logs the
equivalent of an entire Stein Valley.
No one in either industry or the government is willing to say how many years the mills have left before the timber runs out, but one thing is certain, time is running out for the mill workers of the Fraser Canyon. There is hope, but it does not lie in the Stein Valley logging plans. Community objectives should be to bring down the rate of forest harvest to a sustainable level, while diversifying the local economy.
According to a recent Forest Service report, making use of slightly smaller diameter trees, 12.5cm diameter instead of 17.5cm diameter, and reducing logging waste by taking lower quality wood to the mill, would increase timber supply in the TSA by 2.5 million cubic meters. This is equal to the amount of wood "lost" if the Stein is left as a wilderness.
Forest Service figures also show that present reforestation funding in the Lilloet Timber Supply Area needs to be raised from $500,000 per year to $5 million per year if the backlog of not sufficiently restocked land in this area is to be brought back into production. This will provide jobs and small business opportunities in the reforestation end of the industry and bring a logged area twice the size of the Stein back into production. The idea of spending money constructing a road up the Stein Canyon instead of restocking what we have already cut is equivalent of directing traffic at full speed down a dead end alley instead of onto a newly constructed freeway.
Fraser Canyon towns deserve B.C. government assistance in attracting industries that further process wood products, thereby expanding the number of jobs for every tree cut. In the long run this kind of help would cost less than the amount of money needed to access the Stein timber and would, as well produce longer-lasting jobs.
Timber stands in the Stein are under heavy insect attack. Approving Stein development now will allow some of this timber to be salvaged.
Response:
The Stein Valley has had forests for more than 10,000 years and during that time had no problem
supporting a large and incredibly diverse population of animals. Natural cycles of bug
infestations and fire occurred throughout this time and never created as much damage to the
overall ability of the valley to sustain a wildlife or native population as would clearcut logging.
Actually, because the Stein is an intact biological unit and now remains as the last of its kind in southwest B.C. it provides us with our last opportunity to study an entire transitional zone watershed under these conditions. Every other valley provides the opportunity to study what effects the hand of man has had on nature. The Stein Valley has a great deal to teach us spiritually and scientifically.
The Lytton and Mt. Currie natives should share resources of the Stein with the larger community of non natives.
Response:
Looked at from another perspective these two native bands have shared every other valley in their
traditional lands with logging and mining activities. It is the exploitative industries that must
share the greater Stein region with the region's natives by leaving this one special place. The
original people of the area wish to see it remain wilderness.
Premier Vander Zalm says that no native minority group can be allowed to dictate to the majority how we develop economically.
Response:
Although there are short-term jobs provided by logging activity, the profits really go to a select
minority who control the majority of stock in the big lumber companies. British Columbia Forest
Products, which owns the Boston Bar mill, are in turned owned by the multi-national Fletcher
Challenge of New Zealand. The major shareholders of Fletcher Challenge and BCFP are only concerned
about liquidation of the forest resource for short term profit. They have done everything in
their power to encourage raw log exports.
Really it is the majority of British Columbians who are losing at the expense of a wealthy, and even foreign, minority. Meanwhile, the native people are being pitted against the non-native population of B.C.
The Lytton and Mt. Currie Indian Bands, whose traditional territory includes a vast area outside the Stein Valley, state in their October 1987 Stein Declaration, "For us to exist as a people and a culture we need certain of our lands, the only rightful place we have on this earth, in their natural state. We must continue to exercise our responsibility to protect these lands as we have since time began." They have as much right to the roots of their religion as non-natives have to maintain their cathedrals and special holy places. The destruction of an aboriginal culture for the benefit of others is not right and never will be.
The pictograph sites in the Lower Stein Canyon will not be negatively affected by road construction.
Response:
The fact is that every place that roads give easy access to pictographs they have been defaced and
vandalized. All of the Stein pictographs are, at most, only a few hundred feet from the proposed
road. The lower Stein has the highest concentration of archaelogical sites in the Fraser Canyon.
A road beside the Stein pictographs will take them out of their settings of a remote wilderness
and turn this place of power into just another roaded side valley.
Only 9,500 hectares or 9 percent of the Stein watershed will be affected by logging. The rest, 91 percent, will remain wilderness.
Response:
The 9 percent scheduled to be logged includes all of the rich valley bottoms of the Stein
watershed. Valley bottoms are the lifeblood of natural ecosystem. They provide winter habitat
for the ungulates, and are biologically the richest part of a watershed. Building a road down
the main valley and into almost every side valley of the Stein will destroy 100 percent of the
wilderness character of the watershed.
The Stein is an intact biological unit, a watershed. The idea of only affecting 9 percent of the valley by taking out all the large accessible timber is equivalent to a doctor asking you to stop complaining because he is going to remove 9 percent of your body, your heart and lungs.
The idea of building a logging road up the "Lower Stein Wilderness"- the lower canyon-with its steep rock walls and narrow valley bottom and calling it a "wilderness" is beyond inappropriate terminology; it is blatantly misleading.
The 5.4 percent of B.C.'s land use that is protected under Park and Ecological Reserve status is more than adequate. B.C. neither needs nor can afford any new large parks or protected wilderness areas in places where economic timber or mineral deposits exist.
Response:
B.C.'s record of wilderness preservation is poor when compared to other places around the world.
In New Zealand, the home of the owners of BCFP, 17.1 percent of its wild original forest is
protected. Alberta protects 9.1 percent of its land base. Washington State protects 11.3
percent, Idaho protects 9.7 percent, California protects 10 percent, Alaska protects 37.9 percent.
According to studies done by the provincial parks ministry, less than half of the existing unique
landscapes in B.C. are protected in parks. This province has a ways to go to live up to its world
wilderness responsibilities and its "supernatural" image. Considering that B.C.’s total land area
is 952,000 kilometres and that the total land area in the Stein is 1,100 square kilometres,
preservation of the Stein would add roughly one tenth of one percent to the wilderness we have
already preserved.
"Sharing the Stein" is what needs to take place. Wilderness tourism in the Stein couldn't possibly compensate for the lost logging and milling jobs if the Stein is preserved.
Response:
How can we be sure without doing major economic studies? The government has never undertaken
any tourism study of the Valley. It is absolutely necessary that such a study be made before an
irreparable mistake is made in the development of the lower Fraser Canyon area.
In most cultures money isn't everything. Aesthetics, environmental integrity and human rights have no price tags-they come first.
The conflict over the Stein Valley is not a wilderness versus jobs issue. The Stein is a human rights issue. The BC government is using fear of unemployment to pit forest workers against the native people of Lytton and Mt. Currie in an attempt to wrest the valley from its rightful owners. Logging the Stein will in no way create long lasting jobs in the area. If only Stein timber were run through the Boston Bar sawmill it would take between three and four years to mill the entire valley. That is nothing compared with how long the native people have relied on the Stein.
