Illegal logging hits B.C. forests
Copyright © 2000 National Post Online
September 4, 2000
VANCOUVER - Organized gangs of forestry thieves are hacking down ancient trees in British Columbia's old-growth forests to steal tens of millions of dollars' worth of valuable timber.
From the pristine northern tip of Vancouver Island to remote protected areas of the Fraser Valley, the gangs -- using lookouts, police scanners, forged permits, helicopters and even portable mills -- are causing irreparable damage to the environment, say RCMP and Forest Service investigators.
Some enter provincial parks at night, using propane lanterns to guide them to giant trees they cut down with chainsaws fitted with mufflers to avoid alerting campers.
They work with unscrupulous mills in a thriving black market that trades in about $100-million worth of illegal wood a year. The provincial government estimates it is losing $20-million a year in taxes to the tree rustlers.
"They are getting more sophisticated and the problem is growing," says Corporal Peter Jadis of the RCMP's five-member forest crimes investigation unit -- the only one of its kind in Canada.
Cpl. Jadis's investigations show four to five organized groups are active in the Chilliwack-Hope area, while several others have been tracked on Vancouver Island.
Yet another, recently detected in Cape Scott Provincial Park on northern Vancouver Island, was operating with a portable mill to process the large blocks of wood for transportation.
"Old-growth red cedar trees are what these guys are mainly looking for," says Cpl. Jadis, who has been tracking illegal logging operations in British Columbia for the past four years.
"Before, a lot of our work involved log-boom thefts and logging outside boundaries by landowners ... but now we are increasingly working on cases involving theft from forests."
In addition to red cedar, some tree rustlers hunt for groves of hemlock or the highly prized curly maple, which is used to make violins and guitars.
A pallet of maple -- about 10 cubic metres of cut wood -- can fetch between $60,000 and $80,000 at the mill.
"An afternoon's work for two guys with a chainsaw and a pickup will get them between $1,500 and $2,000 worth of red cedar ... Some mills will pay cash and the wood is processed into shingles by the next morning," says Cpl. Jadis.
"We had one guy who got $56,000 in cash payments in three months for stolen red cedar. Others, the more organized ones, won't hesitate to hire helicopters at $600 an hour to pick up large bundles from deep in the forest to a nearby road to be loaded on to trucks."
Typically, an illegal logging operation employs between two and six people, says Ian Hartley of the Forest Service office in Chilliwack.
The environmental damage caused by illegal logging is "heartbreaking" and in many cases irreparable, he says.
"They leave a trail of destruction," he says, noting habitats of such endangered species as the spotted owl have been hit.
In Victoria, RCMP Sergeant Hal Zech, who has organized surveillance operations on illegal loggers, notes the culprits usually have some forestry background and are in some cases real loggers who are out of work.
He says a big part of the problem are mills that knowingly buy illicit timber.