Ehattesaht owns Aa’tuu Forestry, “We quadrupled out annual profits since embarking on our own. We have 100 percent control and managers work directly for us.” Aa’tuu Forestry owns no equipment, “We hire contractors and avoid the huge payments and high overhead costs.” Smith notes that Aa’tuu Forestry economic development has 100 percent support of the voting membership of Ehattesaht, approximately 350 members, many of whom “live all over the place, from Vancouver to Victoria to Nanaimo.”
Smith says, “We started in on this profit-oriented forestry strategy about six years ago.” As more Annual Allowable Cut was negotiated to add to the 7,700 Cubic Metre FRA, Aa’tuu Forestry was established three years ago as AAC rose to over 200,000. “We generally cut about 110,000 CM in a year’s operation, so we’ve come a long way and maintain full control over everything.”
Smith says, “Capacity Management works with us to manage the AAC with their RPF,” Registered Professional Forester, “and when you’re logging every detail counts. We do a lot of heli-logging and selective logging. It is a highly strategic planning to log in our traditional territory and ship out the logs out by barge.” They work with companies like Pallan Timber to get the wood to market.
Aa’tuu’s logs are sold at Vancouver Log Market prices, Most of the wood is sold before it hits the ground, be it cedar, Douglas Fir, hemlock, or spruce. “We use Storey Creek Trading to broker our wood.” Smith says Ehattesaht is committed to logging sustainably with complete transparency to members, “Our books are open to members, and we hold regular community meetings to discuss forestry specifics.”
Ehattesaht has about 15 loggers in the community and a couple of trained fallers and a couple of silviculture engineers. “We have a training strategy for our membership that began with the formation of Aa’tuu Forestry.” As of this writing the Ehattesaht members are receiving silviculture training in the summer of 2010
In another recent initiative Ehattesaht spent $800,000, in 2009, to build a road to the west coast of the island linking Zeballos to Queens Cove. “The reserve there was almost deserted,” says Smith, “and the site was practically abandoned for a while. “We are in the process of re-developing it.”
Ehattesaht folk are Nuu Chah Nulth with a whaling and fishery history. “We were given small reserves the size of postage stamsps becasue the federal government said we lived off the ocean. Well, our people had spiritual places and shrines all over the territory. We hunted throughout our traditional territory. We were 3,000 people at first contact and that was reduced to a mere 58 by the 1960s.”
The pathway to progress for Ehattesaht is now re-established in the mainstream of society, and they are making it happen in forestry. Today the elementary school in Zeballos is a majority Ehattesaht students. “We faced a large debt of $3.5 million to buy-back our renewable license, and that is a debt we are close to retiring.” Aa’tuu is run by a board of directors, three from Ehattesaht and one non-Ehattesaht member. 
