Here is my latest update on forestry in B.C. for the January/February Watershed Sentinel, www.watershedsentinel.ca
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B.C. forest update
by Jim Cooperman
Many forest activists gave up and moved on to other issues when the B.C. Liberals formed government in 2001 and handed forest management over to the industry. Now over a decade later, the status of B.C.’s forests is grim: research is gone, the beetles have devastated 20 percent of the province, there could be well over 2-million hectares of NSR (not satisfactorily restocked) land, overcutting and highgrading along with the beetles have led to severe timber shortages and mill closures, land use plans may soon be gutted to allow logging in protected zones, forest inventories are woefully out of date, and the number of workers is at a record low due to mechanization, the economic downturn and the drop in planting and stand tending.
Since the B.C. Liberals are on their way to getting turfed in the upcoming election, what should we expect of the NDP to address the litany of problems in the forests? For the last few years, a group of concerned foresters and academics under the leadership of Bill Bourgeois have been working on this very issue. Their “Healthy Forests – Healthy Communities” initiative has been leading a “Conversation on B.C.’s Forests” to produce a series of recommendations for the upcoming new government. A draft of their strategic plan is now being reviewed in workshops across the province.
At their heart of their plan is the goal to build a sustainable forest management infrastructure that will restore forest health, improve community and public involvement, diversify the forest economy, revive the research sector and improve knowledge of all forest values through proper inventory, monitoring and assessments. The plan calls upon the government to establish the necessary mechanisms, such as consultations and review panels to create the much needed paradigm shift from a focus based on ensuring corporate profits to a focus based on sustainability.
However, the group’s strategic plan is far from comprehensive, as it avoids topics such as the unsustainable level of cut, the question of whether the ministry should be re-organized, and the most controversial, tenure reform. Clearly, the AAC needs to go down, as for years it has been far higher than the actually cut level because the timber is just not there.
The Ministry of Forests has been combined with all the other resource ministries and a review is needed to determine if a re-alignment is needed. Certainly, centralization has been detrimental, as it is now rare for government staff to even make it out into the forests. As well, the current results-based management system also needs a review to determine if the forest service should bring back government oversight. And there has long been a need to reform the tenure system, to wrestle the control of our forests back from the corporations, especially since the current government is now considering the opposite, increasing the number and size of Tree Farm Licenses.
Perhaps the most significant change occurring in our forests is due to in part to climate change and the impact of the pine beetles, as well as mis-management. B.C.’s forests switched from being a carbon sink to source of carbon in 2002 and produce more carbon (82 million tons/year) than all emissions in the province from the burning of fossil fuels (62 million tons/year). The sources of this carbon include logging, slash burning, forest fires and decay. Essentially, B.C.s forests are now part of a feedback loop that will further intensify climate change.
Learn more about the Healthy Forests – Healthy Communities initiative at: