(Municipal clearcut atop Mount Prevost/Swuq'us.)
Proposal to resume logging of Municipal Forest Reserve flies in face of public consultation, risks insult to First Nations
Becky Hogg’s byelection victory tilts North Cowichan council to the political right
Just 2.5 years after the public voted overwhelmingly to support conservation of the 5,000-hectare Municipal Forest Reserve — BC’s most at-risk forest type —North Cowichan’s right-of-centre councillors are seeking a resumption of logging.
The move comes barely one year before the next municipal election and flies in the face of a lengthy and detailed $300,000 public consultation and forest-review process that ended in early 2023 with 76-per-cent public support for a conservation vision for the forest reserve.
Just 17 per cent supported status-quo harvesting.
The prospect of a return to clearcutting also risks disrespecting members of the Quw’utsun Nation — Cowichan Tribes, and Stz’uminus, Penelakut, Halalt, and Lyackson First Nations — who are in the final stages of their own closed consultation process with North Cowichan on the future of the forest reserve.
The forest reserve — known popularly as the Six Mountains — falls within the coastal Douglas-fir biogeoclimatic zone, the smallest and rarest forest type in BC, with the highest number of species and ecosystems at risk.
More than 40 organizations and levels of government — including the BC Forests Ministry, but not North Cowichan — are dedicated to “promoting conservation and stewardship of coastal Douglas-fir ecosystems.” (https://www.cdfcp.ca/ )
A staff report in advance of Wednesday’s council meeting offers several warnings, noting the consultation process “had over two years of public engagement, resulting in support for environmental prioritization of Municipal Forest Reserve use and ongoing engagement with First Nations to explore co-management.”
The report adds: “If Council direction is to reactivate harvesting, it will have implications for resource allocation within the organization and will require time to consult with the public and First Nations.”
Council met behind closed doors on July 15 for a “strategic planning workshop” to set new priorities until the next municipal election in October 2026.
That led to a motion that the Strategic Plan be amended to include “forest harvesting” as a top priority, along with servicing industrial lands, procurement policy review, funded asset management plan, and servicing upgrades.
As is often the case, residents are learning of this critical development at the 11th hour, allowing little time to respond. Many are also on summer holidays.
Only last Friday at 5:40 p.m. were details of the logging plans released in a council agenda item labelled, Strategic Planning Session Outcomes.
Staff have estimated the following net-revenue options, not including staff wages:
— Conventional harvest: $320,000 over 20 hectares, $640,000 over 40 hectares.
— Reduced harvest: $150,000 over 20 hectares, $300,000 over 40 hectares.
— Active conservation: no direct financial return.
Even in areas of forest that underwent preliminary planning prior to the suspension of harvesting, logging could not begin for at least six months pending “field layout and mapping” and public tendering.
There are also several cautionary notes, including: "Road building and safety upgrades are excluded and may significantly affect costs. Profitability is highly dependent on market access. Restrictions on where timber can be sold (e.g., local-only sales) significantly reduce revenue potential."
(Municipal clearcut atop Mount Prevost/Swuq'us.)
The staff report says: “Major shifts in corporate priorities within the short period remaining in the term will take time to implement, especially if public or other engagement is required, and there will also be financial implications to consider.”
The report continues: “We are very lean in terms of our capabilities to take on new work without additional resources.” It adds: “We shouldn’t underestimate the collateral damage, such as staff engagement, that can result from attempting to make significant changes in priorities within one year.”
The resumption of logging while talks with First Nations are still underway is problematic. “To ignore reconciliation is at the expense of advancing strategic priorities and creates a highly adversarial environment, making it difficult to secure federal and provincial funding and limiting the ability to address major economic development issues.”
The report adds: “Without a long-term plan, it is difficult to estimate infrastructure costs or align harvesting with ecological and community objectives.”
Following an outpouring of public concern, council in 2019 approved a suspension of logging in the forest reserve pending a consultation process. The final, round-two report on that consultation process was released in February 2023.
(https://pub-northcowichan.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=11905 )
Councillors Bruce Findlay and Tek Manhas have often questioned the validity of the process based on the number of participants, seemingly unfamiliar with the concept of representative sampling.
“You can make a pot of soup, but you don’t need to eat the whole pot to know what it tastes like,” said the principal of Vancouver-based market-research firm, Mustel Group. “Just a teaspoon, a small bowl, a sampling of it, and you get a sense.”
(https://www.sixmountains.ca/article/922ada72-e6ec-4dfc-bf07-2a02c13bb8fa )
Quw’utsun Nation signed a memorandum of understanding with North Cowichan in 2021 to consult on the future of the forest reserve.
After numerous meetings, North Cowichan in May this year announced the hiring of a consultant to guide final development of a co-management agreement with First Nations over the next year.
The move to resume logging in the forest reserve is the result of Becky Hogg’s byelection victory last April, which shifted council to the political right.
Hogg made zero mention of the forest reserve in her published campaign platform, and was the only candidate who declined to answer written questions from sixmountains.ca related to the forest reserve.
Pro-logging hawks Manhas and Findlay supported Hogg, and so far the three have effectively formed a voting bloc for all things development.
Caljouw — chair of the environmental advisory committee, no less — often votes with the bloc and has expressed support for logging the forest reserve.
“To me, I see it as a crop and it can be harvested….” he told council in 2024, adding: “I enjoy going through the clearcuts that are growing up….”
All four have repeatedly rejected the professional advice of staff and pushed through developments, including amending the Official Community Plan (OCP) to allow a major development north of Herd Road in the Bell McKinnon area. The same thing happened during an OCP amendment to support a development in Chemainus at Henry Road that the public overwhelming opposed. (Read more: https://www.cowichanvalleycitizen.com/local-news/chemainus-drive-through-development-approved-despite-ocp-concerns-8029209 )
(Bruce Findlay, accompanied by Tek Manhas, Mike Caljouw and Becky Hogg, drives a vintage car in the 2025 Duncan Days parade. The car belongs to trophy hunter Jim Shockey, who has posted support for US President Donald Trump and his family on social media.)
Note that the forest reserve is typically presented to council in economic terms, with no corresponding figures attached to other values, such as recreation and ecology.
Councillor Chris Istace, who has also voted to amend the OCP, has accurately noted that the millions of dollars pumped into, say, an aquatic centre are not considered a “loss" on the municipal books.
“Local government makes taxpayer investment for the common good and using private market nomenclature isn’t appropriate,” Istace says.
“This is without even factoring the net ecological, environmental, conservation and overall natural asset management net benefits of not doing industrial harvesting.”
Note also that other communities in the region have raised millions of dollars to buy relatively small parcels of coastal Douglas-fir forest. North Cowichan is in the fortunate position of already owning 5,000 hectares — but is now debating logging it.
(Read the staff report: https://pub-northcowichan.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=20308 )
Virtually lost in the logging debate is the concept of carbon credits as an alternative revenue source to clearcutting.
A report by the UBC Partnership Group, including carbon-credit specialists 3GreenTree, in 2022 found that over a 30-year period, revenues from carbon credits for letting the forest stand would exceed those of logging scenarios.
(https://www.sixmountains.ca/article/7a549c5f-6df7-4da4-bb4a-dffbb2ea8436 )
Council hired another consultant, KPMG, in 2023, which confirmed 3GreenTree’s conclusions.
Yet council has failed to advance the notion of carbon credits and failed to publicly release the KPMG report until sixmountains.ca filed a freedom-of-information request. (https://www.sixmountains.ca/article/cbfb5cea-d2e4-4ff0-9e8d-30dd9c74d543 )
Resuming harvesting may affect eligibility for future carbon-credit sales, staff warn.
Logging and development are leading threats to the coastal Douglas-fir forest.
According to the Coastal Douglas-Fir Conservation Partnership, this forest type “contains more species at risk than any other ecological zone in BC (25 globally imperilled species and >225 species that are provincially imperilled or threatened).”
Sixmountains.ca released the following nine-minute video in 2022 to showcase Mount Prevost/Swuq'us, Mount Sicker, Mount Richards, Maple Mountain, Mount Tzouhalem and Stoney Hill: https://www.sixmountains.ca/article/bd2b2380-ac3c-40df-a828-8ec51254d2a4 .
If you have comments on the proposal to renew logging, write council@northcowichan.ca — or appear in person at the council meeting 5 pm on Wednesday, August 20, at municipal hall.
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— Larry Pynn, August 17, 2025
