(The following article is from the June 16-30, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By Kimball Cariou

The west coast forest industry remains mired in deep crisis, with layoffs totalling over 10,000 during the past six months. Jobs keep getting shipped offshore in the form of raw log exports, and now the timber corporations are pushing to turn forests into suburban sprawl.

     In response, Western Canada's largest forestry union and its largest environmental group are calling for a Forest Land Reserve (FLR) to protect British Columbia forests. The United Steelworkers Union (USW) and the Western Canada Wilderness Committee want the Campbell Liberal government to re-establish the protective zoning designation to prohibit residential building developments on private lands. The province's Agricultural Land Reserve already prohibits residential developments on agricultural lands, although developers have frequently found loopholes to bypass ALR rules.

     The call for a FLR coincides with the government's removal of almost 120,000 hectares of coastal forestlands since 2004 from Tree Farm Licenses 6, 19, 25, and 44, an area ten times larger than the City of Vancouver. The change removes prohibitions against residential building developments, restrictions on raw log exports, protections for ungulate wintering ranges and old-growth management areas, controls on the rate of cut, and forest practices regulations.

     "There are intense pressures right now on Vancouver Island and in many parts of BC to convert tens of thousands of hectares currently in forestry use to residential use. Considering the impacts of forestry deregulation by this government in allowing the loss of thousands of BC forestry jobs, a Forest Land Reserve would help to provide greater security for the jobs of forest workers now and into the future," states Scott Lunny, USW staff representative.

     "The Wilderness Committee would like to see a mandatory Forest Land Reserve," says Ken Wu, campaign director of the Wilderness Committee's Victoria office. Similar to the Agriculture Land Reserve enacted in 1973 or the Forest Land Reserve introduced by the NDP government in the 1990s, Wu says an FLR "would keep huge tracts of forest lands available for forestry use, recreation, conservation, drinking watershed protection, and for First Nations uses."

     The Forest Land Reserve of the 1990s reduced property taxes for private forest landowners if they agreed to keep their lands within the FLR. It was replaced in 2004 by the BC Liberals, who passed the Private Managed Forest Land Act, which allows landowners unprecedented freedom.

     BC's major forest companies agreed in the 1940s and '50s to include their private forest lands within Tree Farm Licenses and to set up sawmills to create jobs for local people in exchange for receiving free logging rights on huge areas of public lands. Tearing up that practice, the Campbell government has allowed forest companies to remove lands from TFLs without compensation to the Crown, in violation of the public interest. The trend has been driven by the downturn in the industry, leading forest companies to sell land holdings in pursuit of higher revenues.

     Western Forest Products and TimberWest Forest are converting some of their "higher and better use" private lands from forests to real estate developments.

     The Vancouver Sun reports that Western, which owns 26,000 hectares, has provisionally sold 2,500 hectares near Jordan River on Vancouver Island to a developer, prompting community protests.

     TimberWest, the province's largest private landowner with 330,000 hectares of forestlands, has put 56,000 hectares in its real estate portfolio, brought a developer on board as a corporate vice-president and is lobbying municipalities for the zoning changes required to convert forests to other land uses. TimberWest wants to develop 16,000 hectares of its lands over the next 10 to 15 years.

     In the Kootenays, bankrupt Pope & Talbot is selling 6,480 hectares of private lands for $50 million, well beyond their forest land value of $20 million. And in the Okanagan, Tolko Industries wants to remove 56 hectares of view property on the west side of Okanagan Lake from a tree farm licence, the first step in converting forest land to real estate.