Protected Areas and Land Use Planning
One subject area ironically excluded from the “sustainability plan” is “protected areas”. Protected areas must be included in any “plan” that entails land management considerations, such as that being developed for Blue Mountain.
Despite the fact that Blue Mountain is a well known protected area candidate, a protected area option for Blue Mountain has never been considered by any planning body, nor has a more broad overall management plan for Blue Mountain ever been completed. Despite this fact, logging plans have been continually advanced.
Although the Wilderness Committee welcomes the unique partnership between the District of Maple Ridge, and the Katzie and Kwantlen First Nations to discuss management options for Blue Mountain, we also call attention to the fact that logging is not being considered an “option”. Rather, logging is treated as an end into itself, without consideration of whether logging is a suitable activity to occur on Blue Mountain. We fear there is a built in timber bias in the “sustainability plan”. We feel that all other forest stewardship strategies should be given at least equal weight, if not more weight, to logging. We feel that a broad public debate should be held, as part of the ‘sustainability plan”, as to whether logging is a suitable activity and if it is deemed suitable, then exactly what kind of logging (single tree removal, variable retention, clearcut, and most importantly where this activity should and should not occur).
We strongly feel that a process similar to a “land use management planning process” (there is no definition of and no defined process for a sustainability plan) must be undertaken prior to any land use decisions and that such a management plan include a detailed analysis of the present viability of all extractive resource activities. Sustainability plans are typically conducted for environmental initiatives in urban areas whereas more extensive management plans or land use plans are conducted when the principal purpose is land use management. Further we could find no examples of a “sustainability plan” template that could be applied to this situation. It seems as if the idea of a sustainability plan was specifically invented for the Blue Mountain process. Unfortunately there are no benchmarks or frameworks by which “sustainability” can be evaluated in this situation. We feel it would be much more appropriate to adopt a traditional “land use planning” framework. Such a framework naturally would have included consideration of “protected areas”, especially in such a well known location with such a long history of protected area concerns. We fear that this “sustainability” plan is really a “logging plan.” We do not doubt that logging may find a place on Blue Mountain, but such a conclusion should only be reached after a thorough, and unbiased public analysis of all land management options. We also feel this should be a community driven process free of paid experts, lobbyists and industry propagandists.
