Cut inside the deferral lines
In November 2021 the province's Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel mapped British Columbia's most at-risk old growth and recommended deferring it from logging. Around Port Renfrew, recorded harvest overlaps those recommended-deferral areas by about 138 hectares. Most of that harvest began before the recommendation existed. Nine openings did not.
The nine below have a recorded harvest start date after November 2, 2021, inside areas the panel had already flagged, totalling about 30.2 hectares, roughly 40 soccer fields. Several sit in forest the province's own mapping classes as ancient, older than 400 years, concentrated around Walbran Creek, the Caycuse River, and the Loss landscape unit.
| Opening ID | Area | Harvest start | Overlap (ha) | Deferral category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1797384 | Walbran Creek | 2023-07-04 | 6.3 | big-treed old growth |
| 1771446 | Loss landscape unit | 2022-05-02 | 5.2 | ancient (>400 yr) |
| 1797420 | Walbran Creek | 2023-07-19 | 5.0 | ancient (>400 yr); big-treed old growth |
| 1775273 | Loss landscape unit | 2022-04-04 | 4.3 | ancient (>400 yr) |
| 1793213 | Loss landscape unit | 2023-07-06 | 3.6 | ancient (>400 yr); big-treed old growth |
| 1775275 | Loss landscape unit | 2022-04-04 | 2.3 | big-treed old growth |
| 1770535 | Caycuse River | 2021-12-02 | 2.1 | ancient (>400 yr); big-treed old growth |
| 1803020 | Walbran Creek | 2025-01-13 | 0.7 | ancient (>400 yr); big-treed old growth |
| 1793210 | Loss landscape unit | 2024-05-12 | 0.6 | ancient (>400 yr); big-treed old growth |
A deferral recommendation is not a law, and these areas were not all formally deferred, so harvest here is not proof any rule was broken. What does not exist is a public record of why these blocks went ahead: the site plans, the old-growth retention rationale, and the sale economics are not published. That is the finding. Each opening ID is checkable in the province's own RESULTS system, and what you can do covers how to ask for the records behind any of them.
Method and limitations, including how the overlap is computed and where it could be wrong, are in the full report and sources. The other 19 overlapping openings, about 102 hectares recorded before the recommendation, are in the full downloadable table. For what is proposed inside recommended-deferral areas right now, see the deferral watch.