Tolko gets OK to forge ahead with road in provincial park
Winnipeg Free Press
An environmental group has lost a court challenge to stop a logging road from being built in Grass River Provincial Park.
Eric Reder, campaign director for the Wilderness Committee, said the decision means Tolko Industries can build a 17-kilometre logging road through the park to a nearby timber-cutting area.
The Wilderness Committee had asked Court of Queen's Bench to rule on whether the construction of the road through a provincial park constituted logging in light of Manitoba's ban on logging in provincial parks. They were also concerned the road would affect woodland caribou.
Reder said Justice Perry Schulman ruled construction of the road doesn't constitute logging.
"The bulldozers are rolling back into the park today," Reder said Thursday. "Today is the day their permit starts.
"The licence authorizes them to build a road across an area that's been closed to logging since the 1980s."
Grass River Provincial Park is located 75 kilometres north of The Pas, along PTH 39.
The Wilderness Committee was fighting the province's 2009 decision to issue a licence to Tolko for the logging road, two months after the province banned logging in all but one of its 81 parks.
Reder said the 2009 ban on logging was the result of a Clean Environment Commission recommendation in 1992 to prohibit all commercial forestry activity in provincial parks.
The province has said the application to build the road went through a public review process.
It has said its construction is consistent with all regulations and legislation prohibiting commercial logging activity in the park.
Reder said the group is considering whether to appeal the ruling.
Gail Whelan Enns of Manitoba Wildlands said the province needs a more uniform approach on how it protects forests and licenses mills.
Tolko has said the road would provide a shorter route to a 20-year supply of timber, shaving off four hours of travel time around the park.
The new route also means big trucks hauling wood won't go through any community.
During the winter cutting season, trucks have had to go through Snow Lake to the northeast, but that is no longer feasible because of higher fuel costs.
