What the Government Has Known, and When
This is a timeline built from the government's own reviews and its own expert panels. It does not allege corruption or a coverup. It shows something simpler and documented: B.C. has repeatedly commissioned expert advice on old growth, accepted it, and then not delivered the change it promised, while the harvest continued. The pattern is the point.
The record
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1993 to 1995, Clayoquot Sound. After the largest acts of civil disobedience in Canadian history, B.C. created the Scientific Panel for Sustainable Forest Practices in Clayoquot Sound. In 1995 the panel delivered about 170 recommendations for ecosystem-based management, and the government agreed to implement the full suite. The science that clearcutting old coastal rainforest carries serious ecological cost was on the public record three decades ago. [Clayoquot Scientific Panel, 1995.]
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September 2020, Old Growth Strategic Review. The government's own review (Gorley and Merkel) made 14 recommendations and called for a paradigm shift from managing for timber to managing for ecosystem health. The government accepted all 14 and promised to implement them within three years. [B.C. Old Growth Strategic Review, 2020.]
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November 2021, deferral recommendations. A Technical Advisory Panel mapped about 2.6 million hectares of the most at-risk old growth and recommended deferring logging there while longer-term plans were made. In the end, deferrals covered only about 40 percent of the high-risk old growth the panel identified. [Technical Advisory Panel, 2021.]
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2023, the deadline passes. The three-year window for the 14 recommendations closed. Independent reviews report that not one of the 14 has been fully implemented, and that logging of the most endangered old growth continued. [Wilderness Committee; Ancient Forest Alliance; Sierra Club BC; Wildsight, 2023 to 2025.]
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March 2026, the panel writes to the Premier. All five members of the old-growth Technical Advisory Panel wrote to Premier Eby warning that deferral areas are being logged and that BC Timber Sales is becoming the primary harvester in deferral zones. The experts who drew the maps said the deferrals are not achieving their intent. [Victoria News, 2026-03-20.]
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Now, around Port Renfrew. Public data shows recorded harvest inside the province's own priority-deferral areas, including about 30 hectares across nine openings logged after the November 2021 recommendation, several in areas mapped as ancient (older than 400 years). The national pattern has a local footprint. [
data/public-data-audit/harvest-in-deferral-blocks.csv.]
Why this matters here
A government that commissions the science, accepts it, promises to act, and then does not, is not a conspiracy. It is a documented accountability failure, and it is exactly why independent public-data work like this exists. It also raises a fair structural question, not an accusation: the same government earns revenue from selling Crown old growth (through BC Timber Sales) that it was advised to defer. When the body that profits is also the body that regulates and that promised reform, the public has every reason to ask for the full ledger and the site-level records before the next old stand is cut.
What this is not
This timeline does not claim anyone broke the law, took a bribe, or ran a coverup. It is built from public reviews, public panels, and public reporting. The honest reading is that the warnings were known, the promises were made, and the old growth kept falling, and that the records which would explain why are still not open.
Sources
- Clayoquot Sound Scientific Panel (1995): https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/crown-land-water/land-use-planning/regions/west-coast/clayoquot-sound-watershed-plans
- B.C. Old Growth Strategic Review (2020), and reviews of its implementation: Ancient Forest Alliance https://ancientforestalliance.org/five-years-after-old-growth-strategic-review-bc-government-stalls-progress-and-starts-to-backslide/ ; Wilderness Committee https://www.wildernesscommittee.org/news/bc-fails-deliver-OGSR-paradigm-shift
- Technical Advisory Panel letter (March 2026): https://vicnews.com/2026/03/20/b-c-allowing-old-growth-logging-despite-protection-promise-experts-say/
- Local deferral-overlap blocks:
data/public-data-audit/harvest-in-deferral-blocks.csv; full sources insources.html.