What Can The Public Actually See Before Forest Is Logged?

Date prepared: 2026-06-02 Area: Port Renfrew, San Juan, Gordon, Fairy, Walbran, and Harris, on southwest Vancouver Island.

The short version

Before old forest or high-risk forest is logged near water, fish, recreation, and remaining old growth, the public should be able to see what the decision will cost, not just what the timber is worth. Right now they cannot. This explainer shows what official public data already reveals, what records are still missing, and why that gap matters.

What was analyzed

This project pulled official government datasets for the area and lined them up on one map and a set of tables. Nothing here is private or leaked. It includes:

• 2,312 recorded cutblock polygons (about 32,800 ha of recorded harvest).
• Forest-age inventory (VRI) showing young/regrowth and 250+ high-age stands.
• Government old-growth mapping (TAP old forests, big trees, ancient forest, priority deferrals) and legal Old Growth Management Areas.
• Official named watersheds, forest roads, streams, and fish-passage assessment points.
• BCTS timber sale schedules, including rows labelled Old Growth.

What the public data shows

• A large and recent logging footprint. The 2010s were the biggest recorded decade (about 10,905 ha). The 2020s already show about 5,958 ha and the decade is not over.
• Old forest and harvest sitting side by side. In San Juan River alone, screening shows about 5,697 ha of old forest and 3,320 ha of legal OGMA, next to about 11,422 ha of recorded cutblocks.
• Heavy road-stream crossing pressure. GIS estimates suggest about 622 road-stream crossings in San Juan River and 459 in Gordon River. Each crossing is a place a culvert, bridge, or fish-passage record should exist.
• Logging inside the province's own deferral areas. About 30 ha was cut across nine sites after the government's expert panel recommended those areas for deferral in November 2021, several flagged as ancient old growth more than 400 years old. Deferral was a recommendation, not a law, so this is not a breach. What is missing is any public record of why each was approved.

This is enough to ask serious questions. It is not proof of harm.

What records are missing

For a specific block, the public still cannot see:

• The site plan.
• Stream classification and riparian (streamside) prescriptions.
• Road and culvert maintenance or deactivation records.
• Fuel hazard assessments and slash cleanup records.
• The sale economics and appraisal assumptions.
• The reason a given old stand was kept or cut.

One telling detail: the government's public bridges and major-culverts layer returned zero records for this whole area. That does not mean no culverts exist. It means the public cannot see them. So where are those records held?

Why missing records matter

A logging decision is a trade. The public gets timber revenue. The public can also inherit costs: failing culverts, sediment in salmon streams, wildfire fuel left on the ground, lost recreation, and long-term restoration bills. Timber revenue is easy to see. Those costs are not.

Without the site-level records, no one outside government can tell whether a given harvest near water, fish, recreation, and old forest actually creates net public value. The public is asked to accept a decision it cannot check.

This is not just a hunch. A 2021 economic study of the Port Renfrew area found that protecting its old growth was worth about $40 million more to the public than logging it, once carbon and tourism were counted, and that study left out wildfire, water, and most fish values. When public costs are counted, the public case for keeping old growth standing is strong. The full ledger is exactly what is missing before a block is approved.

What should be disclosed before harvest

Before old-growth or high-risk forest is approved, sold, or cut near water, fish, recreation, and high-age forest, the Province should disclose, in plain public view:

• Full-cost accounting: timber revenue shown beside roads, culverts, sediment, fish habitat, fuel treatment, wildfire exposure, recreation loss, carbon, restoration, monitoring, and enforcement.
• The site-level risk records listed above.

What this is and is not

This is a public-data audit. It raises record questions. It does not claim anyone broke the law, and it does not claim logging caused any specific fish decline or wildfire. The honest finding is narrow and still strong:

The public can already see enough to ask. The public still cannot see enough to judge. That gap is the accountability problem.

If you want the homeowner's stake (wildfire risk and water security), see why-this-matters-to-you.md. For who profits and what the government has known since the 1990s, see forestry-economics-and-corporate-accountability.md and what-the-government-has-known.md.

For detail, see public-data-audit-report.md, the map at maps/port-renfrew-public-data-audit-map.html, and the data tables in data/public-data-audit/.