The “Great Bear Rainforest” agreement announced by the provincial government in April between environmental organizations, First Nations communities, and forestry companies working on the north-central coast heralded an environmental coup, the reverberations of which will challenge the B.C. forest industry.
by Michael Maser
Originally published in the Georgia Straight, August 29, 2001
Ecoforestry Takes Root in B.C.
"A tree is a plant, and to secure an economic return from the soil producing its growth, the tree must be harvested. At the same time, it must be kept in mind that a tree may be of more real value in place in the forest than when converted into lumber. The difficulty lies in striking a balance between these two values."
Hon. Gordon Sloan, chief justice of B.C.,
The Forest Resources of British Columbia:
Report of the Commissioner, 1945
The “Great Bear Rainforest” agreement announced by the provincial government in April between environmental organizations, First Nations communities, and forestry companies working on the north-central coast heralded an environmental coup, the reverberations of which will challenge the B.C. forest industry.
The agreement signalled the success of an international boycott campaign aimed at forestry companies singled out for environmentally degrading operations. As well, the agreement protects huge tracts of land from logging, including 96,458 hectares to preserve essential habitat of a rare white subspecies of black bear popularly known as the “spirit bear”.
But the real environmental victory forged in the agreement lies in the announcement that all development activity in the plan area, which covers about 4.8 million hectares (equivalent to approximately 12,000 Stanley Parks) of marine, foreshore, and upland area on the north-central coast, will be based on the principles of Ecosystem Based Management, or EBM.
A working definition of EBM will be finalized by the groups coming together later this year to work out details on land-management plans for the region, but an April 4 B.C. government news release stresses that “ecosystem-based logging in operating areas seeks to encourage a viable future for forestry on the coast while ensuring the coexistence of healthy, fully functioning ecosystems and human communities.”
For many years, critics within the forest industry have grumbled that ecosystem-based forestry, or “ecoforestry”, implies a greatly reduced annual allowable cut, threatens logging and milling jobs, and diminishes the flow of logging royalties to government coffers. That criticism was set aside, however, with the Great Bear Rainforest agreement and the willingness of forestry companies to cooperate in the largest ecoforestry project in Canada, and one of the largest in the world.
To its credit, British Columbia has recently established an international reputation for its knowledge base and practice of ecoforestry. In the past 10 years, several textbooks on the subject have been written in this province and ecoforestry advocates have formed the Victoria-based Ecoforestry Institute of Canada, which publishes a quarterly journal on the subject and has organized several related conferences.
“Ecoforestry is forestry in nature’s image, where nature is a model for the design of practices which maintain the health, diversity, and productivity of the forest,” says Ray Travers, chair of the Ecoforestry Institute.
Travers, a B.C. registered professional forester of 35 years who lives in Victoria, says that ecoforestry integrates the well-established sciences of conservation biology, forest ecology, and landscape architecture.
Managing a forest from an ecoforestry perspective begins with “the big picture”, Travers says, an inventory of all ecological characteristics and human activities in a particular region, including historical or traditional uses of the forest by First Nations.
An ecoforester, in consultation with community members, then decides what should remain in the region to sustain the health of all the component forests, rivers, wetlands, et cetera, and preserve those characteristics that community members most cherish, like pristine watersheds.
Any plans for logging evolve from such a “big-picture” inventory, but logging does not take precedence, Travers says, adding that ecoforestry logging mimics “frequent light disturbances”—such as fires and severe storms—that naturally occur across regions. Big clearcuts are forbidden, he says, asserting that nothing short of a volcanic eruption produces the same impact on the land, naturally, as a typical industrial clearcut.
Such approaches to forestry may induce apoplexy in some logging-company executives, but in addition to the EBM approach planned for the north-central coast, B.C. can now boast several smaller ecoforestry programs in the early stages of development, and one that has proven viable for more than six decades.
B.C.’s most famous ecoforestry project is a 32-hectare forest patch near Nanaimo known as Wildwood and managed by veteran forester Merve Wilkinson. Awarded the Order of British Columbia recently for his contribution to forestry, Wilkinson, 87, has logged off and on at Wildwood since 1938. Long before the tenets of ecoforestry were drawn up, Wilkinson resisted the urge to clearcut his forest, preferring to log a little every few years, all the while maintaining the health of his forest and leaving his biggest trees standing to provide shelter and seed.
“I’ve completed 13 major cuts here,” Wilkinson told the Georgia Straight, “taking two-and-a-half times the original volume of forest I found when I came here. The reason I’ve had such a wonderful return from my trees and developed a healthy forest is because I’ve maintained a mix of young and old trees and a mix of species. And I only cut the annual growth rate of my trees.”
This year Wilkinson is retiring, and the Ecoforestry Institute is raising $1 million to purchase Wildwood and continue to maintain it as a permanent ecoforestry teaching site. Wildwood presently receives about 1,000 visitors each year, and numerous Ministry of Forests officials have toured the property.
On the other side of Vancouver Island, Iisaak Forest Resources, owned 51 percent by the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation and 49 percent by Weyerhaeuser, began a much larger ecoforestry program last summer in the region contested in 1993 by thousands of people protesting plans by MacMillan Bloedel for clearcut logging adjacent to Clayoquot Sound.
Following the arrests of more than 800 people in 1993, then-premier Mike Harcourt convened the Clayoquot Scientific Panel to study the problem and forge a solution. In 1995, the panel submitted a series of reports and recommended, among other things, an ecological approach to logging and much more involvement by local Native communities in decision-making and operations management. Iisaak was formed in 1998, and its forest-development plan states that the company will be guided by the Clayoquot Sound Scientific Panel recommendations as the basis for forest management of approximately 19,000 hectares of land available for logging. Last summer, Iisaak removed approximately 10,000 cubic metres of timber using forestry methods that retained intact approximately three-quarters of the forest that it was logging.
On its Web site, Iisaak says the company “represents a turning point in resource management on Clayoquot Sound” and that the company “respects all forest values”. In addition to logging, the management plan lists botanical forest products, biodiversity, ecotourism, fisheries, investments in undervalued species, and even the retention of carbon as economic opportunities to be pursued.
Another B.C. ecoforestry program, which began in July, is in the Harrop-Procter Community Forest, spanning approximately 10,860 hectares off the West Arm of Kootenay Lake.
A survey of local residents in 1996 by the Harrop-Procter Watershed Protection Society identified protection of domestic watersheds as a high priority. As a result, the HPWPS contracted the Silva Forest Foundation, founded by ecological forester Herb Hammond, to develop an ecosystem-based plan that would help protect the local watershed and plan for other activities that including logging. Last year, the Forests Ministry approved the plan and designated Harrop-Procter an official community forest pilot project.
Rami Rothkop, director of the HPWPS and a 20-year veteran silviculturalist, says the timber harvest rate calculated as part of the Harrop-Procter management plan is slightly less than half the rate previously calculated by the Ministry of Forests. Rothkop expects, however, that employment and revenue differences will be mitigated through more intensive forestry planning, labour-intensive partial-cutting methods, and value-added wood products. Sales from herbal and medicinal plants gathered from the forest, as well as ecotourism opportunities, will also be developed within this community-forest agreement.
“The difference between our forestry plans and those of the Ministry of Forests,” Rothkop says, “is that we plan on only taking the ‘interest’ out of our forest, while leaving the ‘capital’ intact, like a good investment. Our plan is to cut our forest in perpetuity, which is what our members really wanted.”
South of the border, the U.S. Forest Service also finalized a proposal late last year to manage approximately 25 million hectares (about 62,000 Stanley Parks) of rural lands in Idaho, Oregon, Montana, and Washington with an EBM approach. The goals of the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project are to restore habitats damaged by overcutting and overgrazing and reverse invasions of non-native plants. The project also hopes to provide greater employment opportunities for communities and Native tribes that are suffering low employment in many rural areas in the regions bounded by the undertaking.
One of the key attributes of ecoforestry operations worldwide—and ecoforestry is also growing in other countries, such as Sweden—is the production of “ecocertified” timber. Logs and wood products certified as arising from ecofriendly forestry have led to premium prices, specialty markets, and, in some cases, mass markets, where large-volume retailers, like Home Depot, have been lobbied assiduously to provide ecofriendly wood products.
Worldwide, several organizations are in contention to provide the standards by which wood products will be designated as ecocertified. The preferred guidelines among environmental organizations and Native communities are those drafted by the Forest Stewardship Council, a nonprofit international organization that maintains a provincial office in Nelson.
In Europe, FSC-certified wood from British Columbia has been snapped up at premium prices, but, generally, ecocertification in British Columbia faces several significant challenges. At the core of the FSC are 10 principles of forest management, including guidelines for protecting environmental values, respecting workers’ rights, and achieving First Nations’ consent for logging in their traditional territories. A forest company voluntarily agrees to have an independent auditor evaluate its operations against these principles, and if it meets them, it earns the right to label its products with an FSC logo. That logo can then be passed along to sawmills and value-added manufacturers who handle the wood so the consumer sees the label on the final product.
Most B.C. forest companies face a series of challenges on the voluntary road to certification. Chief among them is the fact that B.C. forest policy still revolves around the mandatory conversion of B.C.’s old-growth forests to even-aged tree farms, an approach that does not meet FSC principles. Many forestry companies actually prefer logging guidelines set out by the Industrial Standards Organization, known as ISO 14001, which require external auditing but are not as stringent as those of the FSC.
(In July, Iisaak Forest Resources became the first tree-farm licence holder in B.C. certified to FSC standards, allowing Iisaak products to carry a “SmartWood” and FSC certification label. Iisaak sells its products—logs, lumber, and finished goods—to customers that include ecotourism resorts, furniture manufacturers, carvers, home builders, and others.)
At a conference in Vancouver in May, representatives from B.C. environmental organizations and various ecoforestry operations met to discuss certification issues. The market for ecocertified wood in B.C., producers said, is as yet nonexistent. Consumers and retailers have little or no information about certification or product availability, so efforts to reach the market are largely in vain. Conference participants, especially environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, the David Suzuki Foundation, and the Sierra Club, agreed to do more to help create markets for certified wood in B.C. in order for ecoforestry ventures to be economically viable.
This summer, environmental groups are working along with the forest-industry companies logging the north-central coast to compile an EBM database, and they are working out details for several EBM pilot projects being planned for the region. These traditional adversaries, as well as 11 First Nations groups, are also planning to resume talks in September on the exact details of land resource-management plans for the north and central coasts.
Patrick Armstrong, a Victoria consultant for the Coastal Forest Conservation Initiative, an organization representing forestry companies working on the north-central coast, says companies are supportive about the agreement and about implementing the EBM plan as long as it is based on sound science. This summer, senior bureaucrats within the newly minted Ministry for Sustainable Resource Management are also reviewing the Great Bear Rainforest agreement, and a representative of the provincial Land Use Coordination Office, John Bones, says government staff are continuing to work with First Nations and other stakeholders on key aspects of the agreement, such as compensation for displaced workers.
Ray Travers of the Ecoforestry Institute says introducing ecoforestry in British Columbia faces many challenges, like those posed by certification. Encouraged by the EBM system planned for the coast, Travers says he remains nonetheless skeptical about government’s willingness to introduce widespread changes supporting ecologically sustainable forestry practices.
“After almost 150 years of logging in B.C., the government still has not adequately defined forest health,” Travers says. “Until that happens and we accept forest health as a priority, management practices won’t change and we will continue to fragment the forests and diminish the health of the ecosystems on which human prosperity and all life depends. Ecoforestry offers a solution to those problems.”
Michael Maser completed his master's thesis on the ecology of learning in 1997 after many years working as a geologist, journalist, and researcher. He lives on the Sunshine Coast of BC.
Originally published in the Georgia Straight, August 29, 2001