BC Timber Sales is the scheduled speaker at ECA’s next General Meeting, March 19. If you will attend and wish to prepare questions, ECA’s previous correspondence with BCTS is provided below. Please also note that ECA and BCTS are jointly committed to maintaining civility and mutual respect during this meeting. It’s important to keep in mind that these employees are not the decision makers who can add and remove cutblocks from BCTS operating plans. They are technicians joining us only to answer questions about the claims made in the recent BCTS letter to ECA regarding their activity in the Mt. Elphinstone South Watershed.
In November 2024 ECA sent a letter to BC Timber Sales regarding observed activity in their proposed cutback TA0519 in the Chaster Creek watershed directly upslope from Area E. We received a response to that letter from BCTS in February.
Background: In March and July of 2023 BCTS released a two phase hydrology study, conducted by Polar Geoscience, of the Elphinstone South watershed. ECA, the Reed Road Forest Working Group, and the Sunshine Coast Conservation Association responded, identifying “serious flaws in the BCTS report’s assessment of damage to Elphinstone’s downstream communities from planned logging, and call[ed] for a moratorium on further logging in Mt. Elphinstone watersheds.” The hydrology study and our responses are linked in the following articles:
11 March 2023: Chaster Creek Watershed and BCTS Logging
26 March 2023: Mt Elphinstone logging recommendation not a good news story
30 April 2023: Response to BC Timber Sales Mt. Elphinstone South Watershed Assessment
20 September 2023: Response to flawed BCTS Watershed Assessment report
15 November 2024: Planned logging of cut block TA0519 on Mt. Elphinstone South
This latest response from BCTS states that they intend to move forward with harvest regardless of the community’s concerns and serious methodological issues with the Polar report:
“TA0519 will not be removed from the sales schedule. We have full confidence in our professional harvest plans, road design and stewardship measures, in successfully managing the identified values. This development is currently planned for auction in the second quarter of the 2026 fiscal year (i.e., it is planned to be posted for sale sometime between July 1 – September 30, 2025).”
View a map of TA0519 relative to Highway 101 and Area E.
