Forest Summit & Convergence

The final report from the Forest Summit & Convergence is available here: https://boundaryforest.org/forest-summit-final-report-dec-31-2019/

It has never been more critical to build a broad united movement in British Columbia to take action to restore and protect our ecosystems.

Watch the recording of the speakers from October 26: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6OZCdhyzmk&t=2415s

Forest Summit speakers. To see the timestamps for each talk, click on the word Youtube and watch it in Youtube.

This Convergence is a grassroots call to action to:

To identify the basic principles and values that should underpin forestry activity, to identify and summarize solutions, and to outline next steps.
Motivate fellow citizens and communities to mitigate the climate crisis, protect forests and water, and preserve species biodiversity.
Influence and steer government legislation, policy, and action.

We know what the problems are: climate crisis, deforestation, species extinction, imminent ecological collapse, threats to water and food supply, and governments that compliantly support corporate destruction of the environment. We know the situation is urgent.

At this point, there is nothing to be gained from more discussion about the problems. Now is the time to generate and implement solutions from the ground up. It is time for broad-based, citizen action.

This Forest Summit and Convergence is aimed at bringing together the diverse interests whose common goal is to restore and protect the ecosystems of BC: environmental groups, citizen groups, hunters, fishers, farmers, foresters, water protectors, community groups, Indigenous groups, recreation groups, etc, plus scientists and other concerned individuals.

This is for those who wish to organize for change, unify our voices, explore solutions, take action and implement solutions. We will explore which actions will be most effective and how we unify our actions to achieve the best outcomes.

In essence, how do we build power?

We will bring together our diverse experiences and backgrounds to build a powerful movement that can drive our economic, social, and political systems to support ecosystem restoration and protection in BC.

Anyone may attend but the focus for this session is the geographic region of south eastern BC (Okanagan to Alberta border, Kamloops/Revelstoke to USA border).

Outcomes for Strategy Sessions: What is our message? How do we build power? How do we inspire action? Information gathered at the Strategy Sessions will be correlated and shared widely with community groups, on social media, and with media to spread the message and inspire action. It will also be sent to government.

Topics will include:

Regional representation – possible models, how to make this happen?
Forest Tenures – alternatives
Bridging the gap between the science and land use and democratic processes
Education and transition for workers
The economics of forestry – alternatives to the current model
Alternative methods of forestry – on the ground
Leveraging changes to FRPA and other policy – how can communities and scientists build on this momentum?

Schedule of Events (see details below)

Saturday, October 26, 10-5, includes Speakers and Conversation Cafe
Sunday, October 27, 9:30-3:30, includes Synthesis & Strategy Sessions
Download Detailed Speakers Topics and Schedule

Speakers include (see bios below):

Herb Hammond
Erik Piikkila
Douglas Gook
Jeff Brown
Dr. Brian Horejsi

LOCATION:

Hart Hall, 501 Carbonate Street, NELSON, BC

We would like to acknowledge that the Summit is taking place on land that is traditional unceded territory of the Ktunaxa, Sylix, and Sinixt Peoples. We also acknowledge that the southern BC lands which we are discussing are traditional unceded territory of the Ktunaxa, Kinbasket, Secwepemc (Shuswap), Syilx (Okanagan), and Sinixt Peoples. We invite and welcome the Peoples belonging to these groups to participate in the Summit.

REGISTER:

PREPAY ONLINE before Oct 25 (scroll down to use Paypal options)

AFTER OCT 25AND AT THE DOOR

$60 for both days
$40 for October 26 only
$30 for October 27 only

$75 for both days
$50 for October 26 only
$40 for October 27 only

$60 for both days. To prepay for both days of the Summit, click the Buy Now Button to the right. You will receive a receipt via Paypal and confirmation via email from Boundary Forest.

$40 for Saturday, Oct 26. To prepay for Saturday, October 26 only, click the Buy Now Button to the right. You will receive a receipt via Paypal and confirmation via email from Boundary Forest.

$30 for Sunday, Oct 27. To prepay for Sunday, October 27 only, click the Buy Now Button to the right. You will receive a receipt via Paypal and confirmation via email from Boundary Forest.

AGENDA

Day One: Saturday, October 26, 9:30-5

Speakers & Conversation Cafe (including a few minutes with each speaker for Q & A if time allows)

10:00-10:15 – Jennifer Houghton – Building People Power & the Big Picture

We are here to ensure our values become part of the system. Deep changes are required. Right now, the ecosystem policy, economic policy, forestry policy, and actions of the BC government are cemented in the pursuit of money for corporate shareholders. Safety and welfare of the workers, integrity of ecosystems, and the welfare of the community aren’t taken into account. Now is the time for citizens to demand that the system be grounded in a moral and ethical framework that protects ecosystems. The solution to the climate crisis, the solution to our dying ecosystems, and the solution to loss of community representation all lie in demanding that the government operates on the basis of values, morals, and ethics.

10:15-10:45 – Jeff Brown – Opportunity: Leveraging Changes to Provincial Legislation – What Regulations and Policy Would Allow ____________to Happen?

The BC interior timber supply has radically changed. For the last decade and a half forestry has been focused on extracting financial value out of a natural disaster – the pine beetle. The Allowable Annual Cut in pine-dominate areas was intentionally increased to unprecedented and unsustainable levels for over 15 years, and is only now being reduced. But the disaster response phase is winding down and the extra forestry workers employed to respond to the increased harvesting are being laid off. No one is surprised. Now comes the phase when interior forestry must adapt to a new normal: radically less trees, record breaking fires, and massive climate uncertainty. Anything less than equally radical changes to how forestry is managed would be irresponsible, indeed irrational. We’ve never had our interior forests in this situation. Old ways and old thinking simply won’t work. What regulations and regulatory changes will be necessary to guard non-timber values and give them real standing in legislation and regulation?

11-11:45 Herb Hammond – Public Forests—Private Control: Changes to Provide for Protection of Ecosystem Integrity

The forest tenure system in British Columbia gives the illusion that public forests are managed for the public good by the BC government. Unfortunately, public forests have been virtually given to private timber companies through “forest” tenures. Private interests are profiting from public timber and by selling tenure rights to “public” lands. Herb will explain the contradiction between private control and the public interest, and share examples of systems that illustrate that where public control has been maintained, ecosystem services are protected. The climate emergency provides a clear ecological, social, and economic rationale for re-establishing public control of public forests throughout BC. Public forests need to be reclaimed as important sources of carbon sequestration and storage, water conservation, and biological diversity to enable ecosystems to adapt to and mitigate the effects of global heating. This may be done in a short transition, i.e. 2 – 3 years.

12-12:45 Lunch

Snacks and Coffee will be provided (in an environmentally sensitive way).
Lunch is brown-bag-it.
Kitchen is available for heating food and washing up.

1:00-1:45 Erik Piikkila – Alternatives to the Current Forestry Model: Learning from the past to understand the present and to plan for the future.

Erik will include lessons from BC, the US Pacific Northwest, and California; past BC Forest Practices Code 1994-2003; and BC forest research. He will talk about what we can learn from rediscovering our European forestry roots, why forestry extension in BC & Canada went extinct, plus other forgotten, useful, and unique records of BC forest management, fisheries, and science.

2-2:45 Douglas Gook – Natural Selection Forestry (NSF) – Stewardship Systems where Wild Forests set the Standard

Douglas will highlight over forty years of experience working to bring about NSF, a silvicultural system that promotes small scale, non-industrial forest stewardship. It will compare NSF with the BAU corporate industrial fibre mining which leaves depleted forest plantations in its wake. A forest managed with NSF principles encourages employment intensive harvesting systems where its ‘value added silvicultural system’ can supply quality timber for community-based value-added manufacturing in perpetuity.

3-3:45 Dr. Brian Horejsi – Bridging the gap between the science, land use, and democratic processes to reform of public land management

Brian has observed and participated with activist citizens and scientists in efforts to strengthen public ownership and protect and recover ecological viability of public landscapes in western North America for half a century. The absence of a common legal and social democratic foundation limiting the actions of government, including the civil service, have led to fragmented and ineffective resistance to today’s commercialized forest exploitation. If we can largely agree to a half dozen fundamental principles and practices, citizens might yet reclaim forest management that is socially, scientifically, and economically accountable to the people of BC.

4-4:15 Candace Batycki – The State of Old Growth Forests in the Kootenays

Current situation and recommendations.

4:20-5 Conversation Cafe Attendees will have an opportunity to sit in group conversations with Herb, Douglas, Erik, Brian, and others.

Day Two: Sunday, October 27, 9:00-3:45

Synthesis & Strategy Sessions

Lead Facilitator: Barbarah Nicoll

9:30-10:30 Group Synthesis from Day One
10:30-10:45 Break
10:45- 12 Facilitated Open Space Sessions
12-12:45 Lunch
1:00-2:00 Sharing and Strategy Sessions
2:00-2:15 Break
2:15-2:45 Strategy Sessions
2:45-3:45 – Sharing the Solutions & Closure

WHO?

This event is being organized by volunteers from a number of groups in southern BC, including people from the Boundary Forest Watershed Stewardship Society, Peachland Watershed Protection Alliance, BC Coalition for Forestry Reform, Kootenay Water is Life, Ymir Community Watershed Society, Glade Watershed Protection, West Kootenay Ecosociety, Public and Private Workers of Canada, as well as other concerned and dedicated individuals. The event will be funded by attendance revenues and sponsors.

Our sponsors:

Theresa Hart has donated the venue, Hart Hall. Her support is very much appreciated!

Theresa Hart,
Hart Hall

Tom Newell, Regional Director, Electoral Area F, Regional District of Central Kootenay

http://www.bwbakerstreetinn.com/images/bwplus.png

Ramona Faust, Regional Director, Electoral Area E, Regional District Central Kootenay

Andy Davidoff, Regional Director, Electoral Area I, Regional District of Central Kootenay

JOIN THE CAUSE THROUGH SPONSORSHIP

Sponsorships are available for companies or individuals who believe in the cause and want to get involved with the community. You can sponsor one of the speakers, sponsor the general event, or provide sponsorship for students to attend. Please contact Lead Organizer, Jennifer Houghton, to get involved in sponsorship! Download sponsorship package.

Lead Organizer: Jennifer Houghton, boundaryforest(at)gmail.com, 250-584-4091

ACCOMMODATION

The Hume Hotel and BW Plus Baker Street Inn in Nelson are offering a 10% discount to Summit attendees.

The direct booking discount is 10% off. You can receive the discount by calling the hotel directly to make your booking.

Hume Hotel – 1-877-568-0888 www.humehotel.com

BW Plus Baker Street Inn – 1-888-255-3525 www.bwbakerstreetinn.com

Billeting locations are also being sought out. If you can host an out of town attendee, please contact boundaryforest (at) gmail (dot) com

SPEAKER BIOS

Herb Hammond

Herb Hammond is a Registered Professional Forester and forest ecologist with 35 years experience in research, industry, teaching and consulting. He is best known for his concept and application of ecosystem-based conservation planning, which he defines as the protection and ecologically responsible use of ecosystems through all scales of time and space. Working primarily with Indigenous people and other rural communities, Hammond has developed ecosystem-based conservation plans across Canada and in other parts of the world.

He heads Silva Ecosystem Consultants Ltd., and is a founding director of the Silva Forest Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to research and education in ecosystem-based conservation planning. Hammond holds a Bachelor of Science in forest management from Oregon State University and a Masters of Forestry from the University of Washington.

He is the author of Seeing the Forest Among the Trees: The Case for Wholistic Forest Use (Polestar Press), which won the Roderick-Haig Brown B.C. Book Prize in 1992, and Maintaining Whole Systems on Earth’s Crown: Ecosystem-based Conservation Planning for the Boreal Forest (Silva Forest Foundation).

Erik Piikkila

Erik is a BC Forester in Training with Ecoforestry experience in BC, Finland, the US Pacific Northwest, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Redwoods of California. He was trained by the world renowned ecoforester Jerry Franklin. At the BC Ministry of Forests, his work involved assisting 10 Major Forest Companies with 30 different operations, BC Timber Sales and Woodlot Licenses implement the BC Forest Practices Code. Most recently he has been offering a 4Seasons Eco School to K – 12 students, providing eco tours of Wildwood to University students, and is involved with several watershed groups in the Cowichan Valley.

Douglas Gook

Douglas Gook is a third generation settler from Dragon Lake, BC (near Quesnel). In 1980 he was one of the founders of the Cariboo Horse Loggers Association and has been active ever since working for BC forest management reform. As well he started Silvequus Selection Systems and has been involved with all aspects of forest assessment, NSF planning and selective harvesting operations. He coordinated numerous NSF/horse logging training programs and provincial conferences. He later founded the Forest Protection Allies (FORPA) and has participated in many land use initiatives – Old Growth Strategy Task Force, CORE, Forest Stewardship Council, Boreal Forest Initiative, etc.

Combining his passion for forests, from 1978 to 1999 he operated a large mixed organic farm on his family forest/farm. Since then he has ran an intensive deep bed market garden at Dragon Lake and with a cooperative farm project called Spirit Dance Cooperative Community. You can find him at his booth at the Farmers Markets in Williams Lake and Quesnel; marketing farm produce, honey, wildcrafted non-timber forest products, and hula hoops. One of his feature products is the medicinal polypore chaga mushroom, which he winter/spring harvests while snowshoe/skiing through the forests of the Cariboo.

Another longtime passion has been bringing about democratic reform within our communities and forests. He has been a director of the BC Environmental Network, WCWC, and has been on the provincial council of the Green Party of BC. He has ran numerous times for the Green Party, at both the federal and provincial level.

Douglas speaks on Natural Selection Forestry (NSF) – Stewardship Systems where Wild Forests set the Standard. Douglas brings over forty years of experience working to bring about NSF, a silvicultural system that promotes small scale, non industrial forest stewardship. It will compare NSF with the BAU corporate industrial fibre mining which leaves depleted forest plantations in its wake. A forest managed with NSF principles, encourages employment intensive harvesting systems where its ‘value added silvicultural system’ can supply quality timber for community based value-added manufacturing in perpetuity.

Dr. Brian Horejsi

Dr. Brian L. Horejsi is a wildlife scientist and forester. He earned a bachelor of science in forestry from the Montana State University and then a PhD in the behavioral ecology of large mammals from the University of Calgary with his study of bighorn sheep.

He began his professional career as a land use forester with the Alberta Forest Service, then moved on to research biologist with what was then the Yukon Game Branch, working with the Porcupine caribou herd. Since then his research activities include an extended field study of the impact of the oil and gas industry on grizzly bears, black bears and moose in the boreal forest, separate analyses of the status of the grizzly bear population and its habitat in southwest Alberta, the endangered international Granby grizzly bear population and the Purcell population endangered by the Jumbo ski resort proposal. He has also conducted research on the impact of industrialization, motorized access, and recreational and agricultural activities on bighorn and Dall Sheep, moose, caribou and black bears.

Graduating from field research to conservation planning and activism, he continues to work with the public and non government organizations and government as an advisor and analyst regarding the impact of government decisions and industry land use practices on large mammal populations and their habitat. For example, he wrote, for the government of the Yukon, the initial Land Use Guidelines for the protection of bear populations and habitat in the Yukon and then years later completed a revision of those guidelines.

He is particularly active as an advocate for the protection of all public land and the reform of public land management, and for full and open public involvement and use of the best-available-science in legislated regulatory decision making processes.

Jeff Brown

Jeff Brown has been working toward a strong community voice in forestry planning and operations since 2012. Jeff is personally motivated by the relentless clearcut logging that has continued to degrade the visual and recreation values surrounding Apex Ski Resort and Nickel Plate Nordic Centre. This in-spite of the area’s official designation as an Intensive Recreation Area. Jeff is Chair of the Apex Property Owners Association’s Forest Advisory Committee, which is one of the founding organizations of the BC Coalition for Forestry Reform. Jeff has been a member of the BCCFR steering committee since the organization was formed in Oct. 2017.

Jeff says his education in forest advocacy comes from the school of hard knocks: thousands of hours of research and self-study, numerous discussions with experts, and untold numbers of e-mails and public presentations. He has co-authored dozens of FSP reviews and submissions to government. He is in year 7 of what he thought would be a simple goal: find a way to work with government, industry, and First Nations to prevent his local community from being completely surrounded by contiguous clearcuts.

For the few remaining people who think BC’s forestry regulation has been working well, Jeff’s response is simple; name any other industry that has spawned dozens and dozens of impassioned grass-roots community groups spread throughout the province, each with the sole purpose of changing how clearcut logging is degrading their areas’ non-timber values.

Jennifer Houghton

Jennifer is a founding member of Boundary Forest Watershed Stewardship Society which is a non-profit, grassroots, citizen’s society advocating for culturally and ecologically sustainable forestry practices in the forest and watershed of the Boundary Area in the southern interior of BC .

Jennifer has been directly impacted by the combined effects of climate change and deforestation – her home in Grand Forks was flooded in 2017 and 2018. As a result of seeing the devastating impacts of the flood on friends and neighbors, she decided to film a documentary about the experience and discovered the link between the flood and forestry practices.

She discovered that dozens of small BC communities are struggling to mitigate the damaging impacts of industrial forestry on their water, livelihoods, quality of life, and economies. It is her desire to bring BC communities together to create a better future for us all while the forests and wildlife she loves become protected.

Candace Batycki

Candace Batycki will be presenting a short talk prepared by her and Dr. Rachel Holt about the State of Old Growth in the Kootenays.. Dr. Rachel Holt and Candace Batycki are members of the West Kootenay EcoSociety’s Conservation Committee.

Barbarah Nicoll, Lead Facilitator

Working in the not for profit sector with an environmental, entrepreneurial and creative impulse, Barbarah is an educator and mentor, initiator and consultant for innovative businesses and facilitator of community projects. She has started schools, developed curriculum, initiated peace and social justice projects, hosted youth exchanges and led international service learning and exchanges. Barbarah’s formal education includes a Master of Integrated Arts, Waldorf High School Teacher certification, Expressive Arts certification, Liberating Structures Training and The Art of Facilitation Training with Caroline Estes of the Alpha Institute.

REGISTER

Prepay online for the early bird rates (after Oct 25 rates are $75 for 2 days, $50 for day one only, $40 for day two only)

$60 for both days. To prepay for both days of the Summit, click the Buy Now Button to the right. You will receive a receipt via Paypal and confirmation via email from Boundary Forest.

$30 for Sunday, Oct 27. To prepay for Sunday, October 27 only, click the Buy Now Button to the right. You will receive a receipt via Paypal and confirmation via email from Boundary Forest.

PARKING

The parking around Hart Hall is 2-hour parking. You will have to park 2-4 blocks away to be in the all-day parking.

FACILITATION

This event is being facilitated by professional facilitator Barbarah Nicoll. During the presentations, note takers will document the main points on papers on the walls. Barbarah will also be facilitating the Q & A with each speaker (when there is time between talks).

FILMING

The talks are being filmed and links will be sent out later to attendees.

MUTUAL RESPECT, COOPERATION, COLLABORATION

Thanks to all of our volunteers, speakers, and sponsors. This event is a convergence of positive vibes and great people. Please be on time. We ask that everyone be treated with respect, compassion, and empathy. During the strategy sessions, attendees will be given opportunities to present their perspectives.