INTERFOR’S 2001 Forest Development Plan

For North Coast Forest Licence A16841

Proposed cut areas 1 Princess Royal 2 Farrant Island SE 3 Mitchell Cove 4 Moore Lake 5 Grenville (Belowe) 6 Grenville (Lowe) 7 Kumealon (+Mt Elwin) 8 Moore Cove 9 Madeline Creek 10 Kennedy Island 11 Porcher (information) 12 Brown Mills 13 Knolkmoks 14 Big Falls 15 Scotia 16 Ayton 17 Kwinitsa

M^3 549,600 75,800 ???? 193,700 40,000 ???? 142,300 69,300 48,500 73,700 ???? 31,000 62,000 ???? ???? ???? 65,100

On the Upside--- Interfor has more “partial cuts” than I have ever seen on the North Coast. Plus many of these are helicopter logging. And Interfor is not pushing too aggressively up the Ecstall – the Knolkmoks is arguably not pristine as there is some old logging (NSR not sufficiently restocked) from the ‘50s along the Ecstall shore at its estuary.

DownSide—How ‘partial logging’ will differ from ‘high grading’ not clear from material I have.

• Interfor is aggressively attacking the ‘Inside Passage’ viewscape. I believe this should be left for LRMP process to decide, and one must wonder about the motives for these logging proposals for which there was a moratorium until last year.

• Some good salmon streams used for food fishery are being jeopardized in the Moore Lakes area. From material at hand this looks to be relatively poor cedar that is not now in operable land base. Again one must question the motives behind this in a year when the ‘operable forests’ will be re-mapped.
  Wild runs of sockeye in small coastal lakes should perhaps be on endangered listing as they are (probably) a unique population line. Both the Tsimtak and Belowe Lakes appear to have sockeye runs. The former may be valuable.

• A further worry is there appears to be large areas of NSR in close proximity to Interfor chart areas. This may be acting as an early warning that these areas have silviculture problems. The upside is that an opportunity to “fix” areas along the Ecstall where the problem is perhaps sites too rich and became overgrown with “weedy” vegetation.

See any mistakes?