“The economy depends on the environment, not the other way around. Conserving ecosystems and biodiversity creates options for society with multiple values associated with a diverse forest.”
— Ray Travers R.P.F Eco Forester .”
25 Years after the War in the Woods: Why B.C.’s forests are still in Crisis
With increasingly privatized forests and a dangerous reliance on industry paid professionals, B.C. is facing a crash in harvest volumes, the closure of mills and the loss of old growth forests. War in the Woods
For over 100 years, the timber industry has been a central part of the provincial economy, exporting large quantities of lumber, pulp and other wood products to world markets, providing jobs in communities throughout British Columbia, and generating government revenue through stumpage fees and taxes. The industry curently depends heavily on cutting trees in old primary forests.
In 2004, the Forest Practices Code was replaced with a watered down Forest and Range Practices Act. The Forest Practices Board, was outsourced from the public service to professionals paid by industry, a system known as “Professional Reliance”. Herb Hammond, a forest ecologist and veteran eco-forester from the Slocan Valley, sees it this way: “Professional Reliance, coupled with getting rid of the forest service and legislated standards for forestry, simply privatized the forest.”
One of the most significant changes to forest legislation under the Liberals was the removal of appurtenancy — the longstanding requirement that to log public timber, companies had to operate local mills. According to Arnie Bercov of the Public and Private Workers Union (formerly the Pulp and Paper Workers Union), which represents mill-workers and value-added producers, the elimination of appurtenancy, “was a complete betrayal of our social contract.”
Deregulation was compounded by the vast majority of timber licences being consolidated into the hands of very few companies, which freely traded tenures to create regional monopolies. The result is that the majority of public timber goes to large, centralized mega-mills cranking out cheap commodity lumber, while independent wood producers struggle to access the right logs for their mills.
Lack of Monitoring and Data
The coastal subalpine forest has been used as a timber resource but there are no special policies, strategies, or goals once the free-to-grow requirement has been achieved. Low-elevation operational practices have been extended to the mountain hemlock zone with little modification, showing that not enough thought has been given to its special characteristics and inherent values, its slow recovery after disturbance and the high and prolonged visibility of cutovers.
Uncertainty for the Future
The low elevation, high productivity forests in qathet RD have been harvested or affected by fires over the last 100 years. Most of our remaining old forests exist at higher elevations. There are concerns about disturbing sensitive ecosystems, the feasibility of managing the forest for timber production, appropriate cutting methods, and patterns for regenerating the forest. Many aspects of the ecology and dynamics of the Mountain Hemlock Zone forest remain poorly understood.
Watersheds
Though not measured economically, fresh water is a precious commodity. Perhaps the greatest value of the Mountain Hemlock zone is as a watershed. The relatively open forest canopy is ideal for capturing and retaining snow. This prevents spring flooding and provides clean water even during dry summers. April 1st snowpack losses are -25% on average at BC sites and as much as -50% at a few sites over the past 50 years. Climate Change and B.C.’s Forest and Range Ecosystems: A Vulnerability Assessment
Are Current Forestry Practices Sustainable?
The BC Council of Forest Industries claims that “BC leads the world in sustainable forestry.” COFI’s claim could be true if its current members and their predecessors, for example, hadn’t logged 97 percent of biologically-productive old forest in BC, with 1800-plus species of plants and animals facing extinction in BC. It could be true if clearcut logging didn’t have a detrimental impact on the temperature, flow and sediment load of salmon bearing streams and rivers and clearcut logging didn’t cause an increase in the frequency, duration and magnitude of peak flows of rivers causing major flooding.
It could be true if clearcutting an average of nearly 170,000 hectares per year for the last 20 years hadn’t created the conditions that have led to annual carbon emissions from forest management in BC that are nearly three times higher than all the Canadian oil sands projects combined.
When stuck in the plantation paradigm we invest millions of dollars to plant, thin, and short circuit biodiversity across large landscapes within a tree farm and forest licence. Monoculture production - combined with short rotation forests, threatens biodiversity and the environmental and human consequences of its erosion of the soil.
Over the past 10 years, it cost British Columbians $365 million per year, on average, to allow forest companies to log publicly-owned forests. Most of BC's “working forest” is now a giant patchwork of logging roads, clearcuts and young, fire-vulnerable plantations.
“Sound, science-based management requires monitoring and evaluation of results. It also establishes the basis for adapting to what is learned, and to changing circumstances, which is especially important in view of the current pace of environmental change.”
This photo of a big stump amongst a young forest is an example what the best BC coastal forest land now looks like, or will look like in a few years.
Especially in a time of climate change re-logging this forest will result in much less carbon capture and storage that society now wants to increase in a race to meet global emission targets. Regional forest studies have observed that our forests are in an a downward trajectory of impoverishment as a result of increasing areas of (1) younger forests, (2) structurally simplified stands (3) fragmented forests, (4) more isolated patches (5) very effective fire control (6) more roads and (7) more endangered species. (III) Ecological foresters start their policy making by knowing the natural disturbance history of their forest (as dictated by local climate, soil and topography).
Forests occur over a range of four stages of development from preforest, young, mature and old. (IV) to reverse this current process of forest impoverishment, ecological foresters will plan for (1) older forests (2) structurally complex stands (3) patch size consistent with natural disturbance history (4) connected patches (5) use of prescribed fires (6) reduced road density and (7) habitat for recovering species. Then the standard of our forests stewardship can be increased. This forest photo from the Eldred can now be put into it's full ecological context.
Better ways can be developed to practice the four tenets of ecological forestry. These tenets include (1) restore the forest (2) create options for society (c) welcome new research and scientific knowledge, and (d) reduce the risks from fires, insects and disease. (VI) These practices, combined, will reverse the direction of impoverishment in our forests, incrementally improve their condition, and incrementally improve the well-being of society.
The Mother Tree Project
Started in 2015 and funded by NSERC and FESBC, the Mother Tree Project is a large, scientific, field-based experiment that builds on prior research with the central objective of identifying sustainable harvesting and regeneration treatments that will maintain forest resilience as climate changes in British Columbia.