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East Creek — 2003 Quatsino First Nation Land East Creek & Klaskish Valleys Eye Witness Account of Logging by Joe Foy Director of the Wilderness Committee On 19 July 19 and 20 July 2003 a Wilderness Committee Expedition investigated logging and road building operations in the upper East Creek, a pristine watershed and ancient forest just north of Brooks Peninsula. This is what we saw . . . East Creek is being rapidly and brutally roaded by Lemare Lake Logging Company, a local subcontractor of Weyerhaeuser |
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A 2003 Western Canada Wilderness Committee Expedition recorded the clearcut logging of the Klaskish and the new logging road being blasted into the pristine East Creek Valley. The Kaskish was one of a handful of remaining unlogged ancient rainforest valleys on Vancouver Island when in 1997 Interfor (International Forest Products) began its operations here thanks to the timber rights it had been given by the BC government. In only five years, from 1997 to 2003, Interfor and its subcontractor Lemare Lake Logging gutted the rare and precious ancient ecological integrity of the Klaskish Valley. "Though the forestry workers whom we met were very courteous, the logging we saw in the Klaskish shocked us. When we saw how the Klaskish had been butchered it made us even more determined to see logging road construction halted into the East Creek Valley." Expedition members reported that the road building crew is working to extend the East Creek logging road 7 days a week from 7 am until 5 pm. The road is now about 1,000 feet above the East Creek Valley floor. Ancient red cedars litter the side of the road (left). |
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Lemare Lake Logging Company, a local operation based in Port McNeil that contracts out to Interfor |
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Note: Photos and reporting by Joe Foy and Ken Wu © Western Canada Wilderness Committee |
Huge red cedar stumps are left beside the East Creek logging road as casualities of the war on the forest 
The East Creek logging road leaves the Klaskish Valley and snakes up the steep hill into the old growth remnants 
Lemare trucks, bulldozers and front end loaders
are at work seven days a week on the East Creek logging road
Lemare road building crew and two drill rigs working on the logging road into the pristine East Creek forest 
Lemare Lake Logging Company blasting a logging road into the intact wilderness forest to enable its destruction
The very end of the road is about 1000 feet
above the floor of the pristine East Creek Valley
Ken Wu sits on the corpse of a logged ancient yellow cedar tree at the
end of the East Creek logging road
The still pristine forest at the end of the
East Creek logging road that is soon to be sacrificed for industry 
Entrance to the forest destroyers, International Forest Products (Interfor) logging camp at Klaskish
Interfor's Klaskish logging camp: the reviled destroyer of big trees invaded Klaskish Valley in 1997
Interfor blasted a logging road from one end of the Klaskish Valley to the other for no purpose but ravage it 
After building the industrial road, paid for with public funds, Interfor
logged the hell out of the Klaskish
In huge areas only big stumps remain, silent
witnesses to the glorious forest that not long ago was still standing 
Some of the Klaskish clearcuts are so huge that even an enormous Grapple Yarder seems small 
Interfor gutted the Klaskish like a fish, leaving a legacy of destruction from which the forest will never recover
Here and there some of the arboreal giants of
the grand Klaskish Valley remain, but not for long 
A big Sitka spruce is reminder of the pristine forest
that five years ago still existed in the Klaskish Valley