The Sechelt community forest board has promised not to log in Hidden Grove for at least five years.
At a public meeting in Sechelt Sept. 21, Len Pakulak, chair of the Sechelt Community Projects Inc. board, agreed to a Sandy Hook residents' group request for a five-year moratorium on logging in Hidden Grove. Pakulak also agreed to put it in writing. Hidden Grove, near Porpoise Bay Provincial Park, covers approximately 52 hectares of forested area containing trails. The Sandy Hook Residents' Asso-ciation's Hidden Grove plan steering committee has been working since 2002 to have the area protected under provincial park status.
Brian Smart, the lead forest manager, recognized the uniqueness of the area and its recreational opportunities. "We want [trails] to be a part of what gets managed here," Smart said. He noted his consulting work specializes in non-timber forest values.
The Hidden Grove group has a website (http://hiddengrove.info) and Sechelt Community Projects Inc.'s website is www.sccf.ca.
The focus of the meeting, which drew approximately 20 people, was to gather feedback from the public on the forest stewardship plan and operating plan. The District of Sechelt is the shareholder of Sechelt Community Projects Inc. A week earlier, the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) board had responded to the community forest plans.
The SCRD board is requesting the District of Sechelt protect the regional water supply and consult the public in all the communities along the Sunshine Coast, especially Halfmoon Bay (Area B) and Roberts Creek (Area D) where part of the forest licence tenure falls. More specifically, the board is asking Sechelt to work closely with those two communities around "community watershed protection, water quality protection, larger mining/aggregate project proposals, recreational lake protection, public access, visual quality protection, road standards, urban interface forest buffers, pesticide avoidance, water burning/air quality management, wildfire management, debris flow management, industrial noise, species at risk, old growth management, ecologically balanced forest network planning and heritage value/use protection," the motion reads.
As well, the board asks that regional urban interface forest resource management be kept in mind during operations. The SCRD also wants to be a referral agency for community forest decisions.
The SCRD's requests were to be sent to the District of Sechelt for comment.
