Saskatchewan Native get say over logging

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Saskatchewan

An agreement between Saskatchewan and a forestry company establishing a partnership for co-managing timber harvests is giving Natives greater say over logging in the province's north.

Environment and Resources Management Minister Berny Wiens and NorSask Products Inc. chairman Ray Cariou signed a memorandum of understand Dec. 20 to work as partners with forestry co-management board in five northern communities.

The agreement will allow Natives from the communities of Waterhen, Canoe Lake, Dillon, Buffalo Narrows and Beauval to establish limits to NorSask's logging operations in the region.

"We started the co-management with the Natives," Cariou said. "We brought in leaders, both Metis and First Nations Elders, and they all said 'we want some say in what goes on in our backyards'."

The goal of the agreement is to strike a balance between the province. NorSask and the northern communities over protecting the environment through wise use of forest resources and forest renewal," Wiens said.

"This agreement ensures northern residents will have a direct say in integrated resource planning and how the forest resources are managed in their areas."

The co-management will also involve Mistik Management Inc., which is in part owned by the Meadow Lake Tribal Council. Mistik and the regional co-management boards will determine such things as where harvesting is done, where roads are built, the method of harvesting and reforestation requirements.

Response to community guidelines has been good so far, Canoe Lake Chief Guy Lariviere said. When a group of Elders on the Canoe Lake co-management board voiced their concerns last month over the size and types of harvesting, NorSask agreed to follow their guidelines.

"People are saying, 'hey, wait a minute, this is actually working'."

The Canoe Lake co-management board has outlawed large clear-cuts and the use of automated harvesters. All trees are cut by men with chain-saws, and grapple skidders, which are used to haul the logs out, are the only heavy machinery that is allowed.

The Canoe Lake Indian Band signed an interim co-management agreement with NorSask last October to limit the size of clear-cuts. The signing marked the end to a year - and-a-half long protest by some Canoe Lake residents who formed a protest group Protectors of Mother Earth Society. They blockaded a logging road in the Wiggins Bay area, 65 kilometres north of Meadow Lake on Highway 903, where they built cabins and lived year-round.

The protesters wanted to end NorSask's clear-cutting and see compensation given to traditional land users in lieu of damage done by forestry companies.

The blockade was originally removed by the province in June 1992, but many protesters returned to the site shortly thereafter. A provincial judge ordered their eviction last summer.

The December agreement will be the start for further negotiations, Cariou said. The province has co-management boards in five of the 10 cutting regions at the moment.

NorSask has a Forest Management Licence Agreement for 1.7 million hectares of commercial forests in northwest Saskatchewan. It is the first company to develop a network of local co-management boards within its FMLA.