Snaw-naw-as First Nation urgently needs sources of revenue, but local forest lovers want them to go elsewhere for economic development opportunities.

A forest license agreement to cut 15,000 cubic metres of timber was issued by the province to Snaw-naw-as which could earn it up to $750,000. But the license was issued despite BC’s commitment to hold off on licenses for logging in coastal Douglas fir (CDF) forests until a strategy for protect of the unique and endangered areas is in place.

A number of Snaw-was-as neighbours – some of them living near the 64-hectare District Lot 33 – are up in arms over any logging.

BC’s own Forest Practices Board entered the fray in June with the publication of a report entitled Conservation of Imperiled Coastal Douglas-fir Ecosystem. The report, acting on a resident’s complaint, noted that:

“The CDF has the greatest density of species in BC of provincial and global concern, has experienced the highest level of ecosystem conversion to human development (49 per cent), and almost all of its forests have been logged since European contact.”

It concluded that: “Government did not abide by its commitment not to issue new forest tenure in the CDF pending establishment of a land use objective… There is insufficient provincial Crown land in the CDF to satisfy conservation and other needs.”

That is why Snaw-naw-as finds itself between a rock and a hard place.

Administrator and councillor Brent Edwards has said that people who want such ecosystems protected should look at private land instead of the few remaining areas of Crown land available that are ‘on the table’ for treaty settlement or other agreements.

The problem for most Island First Nations is that the majority of land claimed as traditional territory is in the E&N Railway land grant and that the remaining private land is not on the table.

Snaw-naw-as has indicated the logging will proceed as soon as all the paperwork is in place.