Lorne Fitch: Time to Offset West Fraser Clear-Cutting with Mark Carney's new Nature Plan

Ottawa's commitment to give priority to sources of fresh water could start with rejection of logger's ludicrous promises to erect signage in place of forests and fish

West Fraser offers to offset clear-cut devastation with grave markers

Lorne Fitch, P. Biol

Say, for the sake of argument that someone, a neighbour, trashes your front yard. In the aftermath are vehicle ruts, exposed soil, torn up shrubs, and a tree so severely damaged it will probably die. Reluctantly the cause of this destruction offers to compensate you through a strange convention called “off-setting.”

They will, they say, plant a new, bigger lawn on a patch of ground in another neighbourhood. The shrubs, well, they will be replaced, in full, on a lot in an adjacent town. And as for the dying tree, two, heck, three, will be planted in a city park, just not in your city. This should be viewed as appropriate compensation for your ruined front yard, and it will be advertised in a sign, to be erected on what remains of your yard to show the good will and progress of off-setting by the neighbour. This sign will be included as compensation.

Sound plausible? Well, this is essentially what West Fraser, a logging company, has proposed, to allow them a get-out-of-jail-free-card from Department of Fisheries and Oceans over the destruction of critical habitat for species at risk trout in proposed logging plans in the Highwood watershed.

To compensate for loss of critical habitat (if this is even possible) in the Highwood watershed, West Fraser proposes to fix off-highway vehicle crossings, as “off-sets,” in the Livingstone (Oldman watershed) and Waiparous (Ghost watershed) drainages. This work isn’t even in the same ball park, let alone within the bases. It‘s also evident their math of equitable compensation doesn’t add up. In addition, if this wasn’t goofy enough, they propose to claim compensatory benefits for erecting signs. It is highly doubtful that native trout use signs for critical spawning habitat, but that is what is bound to go missing with this sleight of hand to avoid the provisions of the Species At Risk Act.

The forests, the streams, and the trout of the Eastern Slopes may not be our front yards but they are front and centre in the thoughts of the majority of Albertans. To permit the destruction of habitats critical to the survival and recovery of native trout and assume a wand called off-setting can fully compensate defies logic and is, like the scenario above, ludicrous.

Lorne Fitch is a Professional Biologist, a retired Fish and Wildlife Biologist and a past Adjunct Professor with the University of Calgary. He is the author of Streams of Consequence, Travels Up the Creek, and Conservation Confidential.

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