The imminent logging of an endangered Nanoose Bay ecosystem prompted a rare emergency resolution at the annual general meeting of the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities.

Held in Powell River River over the weekend, the AVICC consists of membership from 51 municipalities and regional districts that stretch from the Central Coast Regional District down to the tip of Vancouver Island. At issue was the recent discovery a logging application has been submitted by the Snaw-Naw-As First Nation to the South Island Forest District to harvest in a rare stand of forest near Morello Road.

The area is, in part, identified as Coastal Douglas-fir Moist Maritime wetland — an ecosystem so endangered the province’s own environment ministry suggests it could face extinction. Only one half of one per cent of low coastal plain is covered by relatively undisturbed old forest — far below what scientists consider to be the minimum required for the ecosystem’s continued survival.

In a bid to protect what’s left, the Ministry of Forests and Range is proposing protection for similar crown parcels in Bowser, Little Qualicum, Nanoose and Linley Valley and the Sunshine Coast.

After last-minute phone calls from mid-Island chair of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee Annette Tanner to Powell River and Scott Fraser, MLA for Alberni-Pacific Rim, work hastily got underway to prepare the emergency resolution. It asks the Ministry of Environment to allow the coastal Douglas fir moist maritime land use order to follow its proper public consultation and ministerial development course and process before any decision are made on the fate of the Nanoose Bay forest known as district lot 33 (DL33).

“This is important to us. Very few late resolutions occur but this one was fully supported by the executive and passed unanimously,” said the mayor of Qualicum Beach and AVICC member Teunis Westbroek.

He added he had a hand in developing the resolution’s wording after discussion with Fraser.

“What I put in the resolution also was that the B.C. government has confirmed that nearly every type of Douglas fir forest is rare or endangered. An ecosystem that once dominated the Georgia Basin is teetering on the brink of extinction,” he said.

“You can’t take out any of that forest without destroying its conservation value,” said Tanner, who noted the presence of fish in Nanoose Creek and a number of red and blue listed species on the land in question.

“This is a last ditch crisis situation in our own back yard.”

Public support for preserving DL33 is widespread, with many questioning the logic of logging in a known endangered ecosystem, including the Regional District of Nanaimo, which has called for a moratorium on all logging in such parcels.

Among groups lambasting the plans to log is the Arrowsmith Parks and Land-use Council.

“This flies in the face of what the government itself has said,” said APLUC member Berni Pearce on Saturday.

“The government agencies involved in the fate of DL33 have overlooked its classification as a sensitive wetland area and an endangered CDF forest, and are, within a week, going to rubber stamp it for logging.

“I’m sure there will be a protest at some stage. We’re all just sort of in a scramble stage at the moment.”