B.C. catches flak over rise in old-growth logging approvals

Bring on the trolls, I guess, but...can we really be surprised when license applications shoot up along with the price of lumber? The increase over the last year is around 300%. If demand and prices of cars or Levi's jumped 300%, wouldn't you expect production to skyrocket?
I get that the special nature of old growth is just that...special. But the operative word is "old". Give it a few decades and it will be rotting on the ground.
I don't support logging ALL old growth, no. But how much is ever accessed by anyone other than forestry companies? Where is the data or demonstrated evidence that logging (mostly in much smaller cut blocks than days of yore) is significantly harmful to the environment or fauna?
Ok, trolls: open season. Bring it on.

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The OG cut fluctuates considerably year to year. It might go up 43% this year, but down as much in another.

The complainants rather seem to be bent on “protecting” all OG, and use all sorts of stats to press their cause. Let us mark the twain where statistics run aground. Here they’re used to criticize the government, to suggest it is breaking promises when, in fact, it is not. It never said it was going to protect all OG, just more of it—which, indeed, it has.

Yet it never seems enough to absolutist ideology. I been around a while, worked in the woods half my life (retired now) and seen huge changes in harvest policy—all toward protection of the environment and, in many cases, protection of OG for its own sake. The battles are legend: the NitNat Triangle, Meares Island, Lyell Island, The Stein, Carmanah, Clayoquot Sound, the Flathead, &c. But more than just preserving OG, these battles changed policy, notably the Forest Practices Code which Mike Harcourt’s NDP government brought in in the early 90s. It reduced cut across the board by 25% (although some Timber Supply Areas —there are about 35 of them in BC—were reduced by up to 75%); it implemented logging waste surveys, across the board, for the first time; it beefed up water protection (more and bigger buffer zones around waterways and de-building of logging roads); it also beefed up wildlife and rare ecosystem protection. It was a huge change in how logging is done.

Harcourt also initiated a new approach to Aboriginal sovereign claims (the Haisla/West Fraser Mills Agreement, the Treaty Commission, for examples) to deal with these forest resource matters interim to treaties. (The NDP government also signed the first modern-day treaty with the Nisga’a.) Despite erosion of some of these provisions by the 16-year BC Liberal regime, this approach has been significantly bolstered by subsequent SCoC decisions which effectively armour it against further encroachments on unceded indigenous territory without consultation. The current NDP government, when a minority supported by the Greens, adopted the UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and, now as a majority government, is working to fit it in with Canadian Common Law by way of resource development in unceded indigenous territories— which includes not only preservation of OG for traditional uses (spiritual and hunting/gathering) but also allocation of timber for indigenous nations to harvest. Although still nascent, with bumps and glitches along the way (the Wet’suwet’en standoff, for example, taught the Crown how not to do things, forcing it to more closely observe protocols for resource disposition on unceded lands outlined in the 2014 SCoC William —“Tsihlqot’in”—decision), the government is moving in the right direction—if not as fast or as totally as some would like.

Harcourt also doubled the area of parks and ecological preserves to comply with the UN Brundtland Report (which recommended 12% of the jurisdiction should be preserved in natural state). Then there’s the Great Bear Rainforest policy which preserves and/or places special restrictions on harvesting in a huge area of West Coast forest. Recently the Current NDP government has added millions of hectares more. Yet absolutists still want all OG logging stopped.

The more reasonable position is one of working compromises between sovereign claimants (the Crown and most First Nations effectively share sovereignty on lands with no treaties) and particular preservation efforts to protect special areas of OG—like, Fairy Creek, for example, which is of special, significant, local concern and does not include stopping OG logging anywhere else.

Or does it?

I sometimes wonder how strong the convenient partnership of Fairy Creek preservationists and protect-all-OG-now totalitarians really is. Does the demand to stop all OG logging in the province make the local Fairy Creek action more likely to succeed or less? After all, not all places are as special as Fairy Creek (it is one of the last pristine drainages in the region); indeed, the vast majority of forested places in BC will not be visited by anyone but hunters, trappers and loggers (maybe a few prospectors, too) and are not particularly special; most British Columbians—that is, who live in the urban/exurban southwest—would wish they were home if they were ever dropped into the vastness of this province. And yet all of these places are covered by the protective provisions of the FPC, UNDRIP and SCoC-ordered protocols for developing resources of unceded indigenous territory. Remember: parks and ecological preserves (where no harvest is permitted) are not located where there’s human traffic from which to profit. Harcourt intentionally tasked real forest ecologists (instead of industry reps) to identify proposed preservation areas by ecological criteria alone. That is, the distribution of protected areas is considered and fair, not weighted toward profit. The remainder is also heavily encumbered with regulations to protect various, non-timber values, not least of which is with respect future treaties (which the Crown is constitutionally obliged to settle) and dispositions interim with respect Aboriginal Title.

Simply put: OG logging can’t be as rampant as preservation totalitarians say it is. The Crown is obliged to retain a considerable portion of harvestable timber (not in parks of ecological preserves) for negotiating with indigenous nations which, as co-sovereigns (interim to treaties), are entitled to harvest OG as they see fit. As such, First Nations generally do not want a ban on OG logging: they want to realize wealth from it for much the same reason government, industry, and workers do. FNs might be at one end of a spectrum with respect how, when and why they intend to realize wealth from the OG resource—but it isn’t necessarily the kind of sacred or slow wildcrafting some non-aboriginal ideologues imagine: it might or might not be slower or more careful than the other end where industry wants to maximize profit and workers make their wages.

All stakeholders have had significant influence on timber harvesting policy; no longer is industry the dominant influence—proof that government has taken other interests like environmentalism, as well as jobs, into account, as it should. It is also constrained by policy guides like UNDRIP, which it freely adopted itself, as well as SCoC decisions (Delgamuukw and “Tsilhqot’in,” for examples). It isn’t always perfect (as Wet’suwet’en showed), but government is obliged to do the “art of the possible” to respond to everyone’s concerns as best it can. I can tell you from personal experience, these challenges are exceedingly complex, glitches are inevitable, but government is the appropriate agency to respond to citizens’ concerns and comply with SCoC (and other courts’) decisions. They spend a considerable amount of time doing this and, I think, they’re doing a much better job than the BC Liberals ever did.

But they cannot meet an uncompromising demand at the same time.

There isn’t a soul in government or bureaucracy who doesn’t understand the issues and stakes involved in forest policy—it touches every citizen and square inch of the province whether ordinary citizens know it or not. Government especially knows about perceptions and, if they see what I see here, they are aware that many of these absolutist demands are about winning the hearts—but probably not the minds—of citizens and voters. Most propaganda I see demanding and end to OG logging is typically biased and plays heavily on emotional tropes and stereotypes of forests perceived by city folks. For example, stats have been propagated lately that vastly underestimate the amount of remaining OG (the statistical abuse technique is well-known but often not recognized in sensationalized context: omit the true size of the sample in order to exaggerate the amount of OG left in this smaller sample while disingenuously implying a province wide —or even worldwide—emergency, or sometimes to conflate with other, real crises; it is stock statistical abuse). For anyone who cares or dares question these abused stats, the response is usually revealing: “oh, we didn’t mean ALL OG, just the really big OG”; or “we don’t count OG in parks as OG,” and so forth. I my view, such tactics undermine goodwill towards preservation —and trust in the sources of these claims which should be, in a better ethical world, openly and heavily qualified. Unfortunately, unconsidered distrust tends to be easily deflected onto the wrong party.

We are nowhere near logging the last of the OG in BC, but one day, years and years from now, the last OG tree that’s allowed to be cut will be felled. And we’ll still have lots of OG.

Some preservationists (not necessarily totalitarian absolutists) parry with the fact that we as living beings need shelter and food, and cut down forests to plant filed crops, build houses and civic infrastructure and, yes, provide jobs for citizens to pay for food and housing. They say that we can do all of this without cutting any more OG. While it’s true a lot of second growth is now coming on-stream that could—eventually—obviate the need to cut more OG for, say, framing lumber used for housing, government is responsible to businesses and workers, as well as to the public purse which pays for social services we all enjoy. It is prudent that OG not specifically preserved for its own sake be harvested —always with utmost respect the environment—in order to regenerate faster-growing stands for subsequent, periodic harvesting. These new stands obviate the need that might otherwise be filled by logging old stands: they effectively take the pressure off of OG. (I also chuckle when certain naysayers demand we replace wood fibre with hemp: simply put, hemp does not grow well nor is economically feasible on 95% of the terrain where trees grow, and, on the 5% we use for settlement and farming, hemp cultivation, while more profitable as a filed crop, only displaces our more primary need: food. Trees grow on rocky terrain where nothing else will.)

Government is sensitive to perceptions—that’s why preservation totalitarians are propagating their accusative, hypercritical, demanding screed in order to make government look as if it doesn’t care, is in the pocket of profiteers or other ‘special interests,’ is breaking promises, and not listening to ‘the people.’ It is activism by embarrassment the government does not deserve. It simply cannot cave to the absolutist demand because it has bigger responsibilities. And thus it counters and parries with perception as well.

Finally, I would caution anyone who advocates for better forestry to be mindful of which org one hooks up with. Just being organized and social-media savvy —and full of piss and vinegar—might be impressive, even widely talked about, but the truly concerned citizen must recognize that the government, as well as industry, workers, FNs, citizens and visitors have already, altogether, submitted to many compromises with respect OG.

We might have a ways to go yet, but we’re not going in the wrong direction (as naysayers insist) nor abandoning commitments to do better (again, as propagandists imply). And we are certainly not going to stop OG logging anytime soon. Let’s try to be reasonable.

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