B.C.’s forest ministry is investigating a West Kootenay logging company following a complaint that part of its timber harvest near Argenta in 2022 was clearcut when it should have been selectively logged.
The forest ministry’s visual quality objectives system sets out the permitted level of visual alteration in specific scenic areas. The ministry of forests is investigating Cooper Creek Cedar’s alleged failure to meet the VQO guidelines in its logging operation at Salisbury Creek in 2022. “The Board found that Cooper Creek Cedar did not comply with legal requirements because its logging failed to meet the partial retention Visual Quality Objectives from two significant public viewpoints,” the board states in its report.
The Forest and Range Practices Act contains several categories of visual quality objectives, ranging in five stages from “preservation” to “maximum modification” . The report states that the province in 2014 established a VQO of “partial retention” for the Salisbury Creek area. The province defines partial retention as an alteration to the landscape that, when viewed from a significant public viewpoint, is “easy to see, small to medium in scale, and natural and not rectilinear or geometric in shape.”
Argenta resident Karen Newmoon was part of one of those groups. She told the Nelson Star that they and Cooper Creek Cedar’s woodlands manager Bill Kestell met several times and went on field trips, negotiating in detail how the cut would look when the work was done, so that it met both the provincial requirement and the community’s wishes.