BC & Canada:

Index:

–British Columbia: 31) Beetle’s are not climate caused but mono-crop forestry caused, 32) Rebutal to ignorant industry op-ed,
–Canada: 32) Canada not doing enough to fulfill Biodiversity commitments, 33) Nova Scotia’s Voluntary Planning is holding consultations, 35) Abiti claims they won’t log Grassy Narrows anymore.

Summary:

—-In British Columbia even the most reputable environmentalist in David Suzuki doesn’t give enough blame to the timber industry who over-planted a beetle vulnerable mono-crop (31). Logging industry always blames everyone but themselves for lack of a profitable industry (32). —-In Canada the Global Forest Coalition report makes it clear that the government is not keeping up with its biodiversity obligations (33). Nova Scotia is asking for comments about long term planning for resource extraction (34). Forester is so concerned about bad logging practices that he’s planning a weekend long tour through Algoma Forest’s devastation (35). Abiti is no longer going to log Grassy Narrows, but too often Abiti finds a more sneaky way to log the land they claim to not want to log (36).

Articles:

British Columbia:

31) Recently David Suzuki’s syndicated newspaper column, his DSF foundation and his globally syndicated TV program (The Nature of Things) dominated the Canadian mainstream media on the Mountain Pine Beetle issue stating categorically (perhaps on behalf of the forest industry) that the cause of the current MPB outbreak is climate change. I suppose Suzuki also believes the Irish Famine in the mid nineteenth century in which several million people died from starvation and related disease was the result of unseasonable moist weather rather than the predictable consequence of conveying all of the best agricultural land in occupied Ireland to the colonial british meat export industry and thereby compelling the impoverished, disentitled and ethnic cleansed inhabitants into concentrated monocultural dependence on an irresilient single species of potato unreliably suitable for maximizing carbohydrate production in the very poor soil that remained accessible to them. Our society has a serious achilles heel type problem understanding cause and effect. Such is the case with the current MPB outbreaks in BC that have achieved phenomenal proportions not because of climate warming but because industrial forest practices have created conditions for the beetles that encourage linking and cascading MPB epidemics. Endemic populations of Mountain Pine Beetle have acheived epidemic MPB outbreaks since time immemorial without needing the trigger of climate change. MPB epidemic mode outbreaks are influenced in their timing by climate conditions but they will occur sooner or later depending on other factors the most important of which are proximal food and brood supply capable of supporting a rapid increase in local MPB population adequate to achieve mass attack effectiveness in otherwise healthy target trees. Normally once an outbreak occurs it is a very local phenomena because erupting beetles do not fly very far and the further they fly the less likely they are to be able to maintain the population necessary for the mass attack strategy in which case their survival is then based on falling back to the endemic mode of finding usually scarce distressed and dying trees. But, industrial forest practices have assured that new beetles flying from a successful local mass attack will have increased liklihood of finding sufficient numbers of distressed and dying trees at the margins of their flight in which they can successfully bore and brood and thereby survive to rebuild or maintain the population necessary for continuing their massing attack strategy. Letter to: American Institute of Biological Sciences from Michael Major

32) In a recent op-ed piece Private Managed Forest Landowners Association executive director Rod Bealing offers his views on the economics of the forest industry and log exports. Bealing suggests that today Coastal BC has the highest costs of any forest sector on Planet Earth. He blames wages and government regulation. But Bealing doesn’t remind his readers that BC has some of the most rugged terrain of any place on Planet Earth. He also doesn’t point out that on Crown lands, companies must go farther and farther into the woods to get less and less timber, while on private lands companies are knocking down less-than-40-year-old Douglas firs for export. Currently as Bealing says “private forest owners invest decades growing trees” – actually, three or four decades at most. Bealing’s biggest sin of omission, however, is his failure to acknowledge that BC’s problem with “mill-cost competitiveness” flows from companies’ continued failure to invest in new plant and equipment. As long ago as 2001 Dr. Peter Pearse warned Coastal companies they weren’t even meeting their depreciation costs. Indeed, this is increasingly a problem across BC. Steelworkers’ recently showed, for instance, that five big BC companies invested 1.65 times as much in solid-wood mills in the US than the entire industry invested here in BC between 2004 and 2007. In other words, BC mills are inefficient and uncompetitive because firms like Interfor and Brookfield Asset Management prefer to buy sawmills in the US rather than upgrade their BC mills. They say “we won’t invest because we aren’t making profits;” the real truth is that “they won’t make any profits until they invest.” That leaves workers trying to compete globally in old, run-down, dangerous mills. British Columbians should ignore the log exporters’ weird science. It’s obviously just self-interested gobbledygook from companies that don’t want any change because for them, the status quo is just fine.http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/9558/1/fractured+economics+from+the+log+exporters

Canada:

33) Canada signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Canada also agreed to the 2010 target deadline set by governments to curb biodiversity loss. But the Canadian portion of an assessment done by the Global Forest Coalition in 2007 noted that Canada is not doing enough to fulfill its commitments to the CBD. In New Brunswick, the biodiversity strategy promised in the throne speech has yet to see the light of day. In New Brunswick we have seen the decline of most of our longer-lived tree species including the hemlock, which has a lifespan well in excess of 400 years. Many of the songbirds that journey to our forest to breed are rapidly declining in numbers. In the insect world, populations of important pollinators appear to be dropping. In fact, the World Wildlife Fund classified our entire forest region, the Acadian forest, as one of the most endangered forest ecosystems in North America. The remarkably diverse Acadian forest, more diverse in tree species than the boreal forest, has been simplified by humans. Of the 30 per cent of New Brunswick’s public land designated as forest conservation area, only 4 per cent is actually protected from any logging. The remaining 26 per cent of conservation area does not allow clearcutting but is open to other forms of logging like partial cutting. After one accounts for watercourse buffers and areas that are too steep to log, clearcutting is actually only excluded from 15 per cent of the public forest. Areas important for biodiversity will be decimated if industry-driven recommendations of reducing forest conservation areas from 30 to 20 per cent are implemented. Industry wants more clearcutting in conservation areas because this is where the last big wood is found. The area of old forest would plummet again under such a concession when it only accounts for 5 per cent of the entire Acadian forest land base. http://miramichileader.canadaeast.com/article/312811

34) Nova Scotia Voluntary Planning is holding consultations on a long-term natural resources strategy for the province, looking particularly at forests, minerals, parks and biodiversity. Clearly, something big is afoot. It’s also possible to submit written comments. Details are at vp.gov.ns.ca/projects/resources/getinvolved. These consultations may shape the government’s natural resources strategy for years to come. But alarmed conservationists reported that the early meetings were packed with industry representatives demanding that the province reduce the number of protected areas, support clear-cutting and herbicide spraying, relax its regulations on mining and, specifically, abolish the moratorium on uranium exploration and mining. Ye gods. If nobody else is heard, those voices will control the discussion. So I trotted off to St. Peters with my ten-word recommendation. Go beyond brain-dead accounting, I said. Use the Genuine Progress Index. Every economic activity has costs as well as benefits. Brain-dead accounting overlooks the most important costs, and overstates the benefits. For example, it sees a forest only as potential pulp and lumber. The only costs are the cost of labour and equipment to cut it down. The benefits are employment and profit. http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotian/1059505.html

35) A local forester is taking a walk to highlight what he calls the devastation of Algoma’s forests, June 21 and 22. Michel Blaiz has been a logging contractor for 40 years. He works with Algoma M‚tis Loggers Inc., a group that emphasizes partial logging. He invites the public to take a walk with him, comparing areas that engage in “environmentally sound harvesting” versus clear cutting sites. “With a harvest of perhaps 25 per cent of the trees within a stand, we could return every 20 to 25 years in perpetuity. We were effectively improving the quality and growth rates of the stands, not destroying them,” said Blaiz. But he said today’s harvesting practices emphasize large, heavy equipment. A feller-buncher can destroy 10 acres of trees in one day. “Only one harvest of timber products could be realized during an 80 to 100 year rotation.” Smaller scale partial logging also employs more people than clear cutting practice can, he said. http://www.saultstar.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1052483
36) Rainforest Action Network (RAN) praised the decision of logging company AbitibiBowater—the largest paper company in the world—to stop logging on the traditional territory of Grassy Narrows First Nation. The move follows decades of lawsuits and peaceful protest by the First Nation. Long-time activist and RAN campaigner David Sone issued the following statement: “We are thrilled for the Grassy Narrows community that their forests—which are key to their livelihood and culture—will no longer be clear-cut against their wishes. The U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples clearly establishes that resource extraction on Indigenous lands must have the free, prior and informed consent of the community. “Grassy Narrows has scored a major step forward for Indigenous rights. We’re calling on all companies to follow suit and respect the rights of Indigenous peoples to give or withhold consent to industrial projects on their traditional territories.” Since 2003, RAN has worked collaboratively with the community, pressuring Boise Inc. and Weyerhaeuser Corp. to drop their logging contracts with AbitibiBowater for wood logged in the million-acre Whiskey Jack Forest, which makes up Grassy Narrows traditional territory. A broad coalition of human rights, environmental and faith-based groups has rallied behind the community’s cause.” http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2008/06/03/abitibibowater-ends-clear-cut-logging-on-grassy-narro
ws-traditional-territory/ Beware of Bowater bearing good tidings. Bowater made an agreement a few years ago with the NRDC and Dogwood Alliance to stop clearcutting on the Cumberland Plateau of TN. Before the agreement kicked in, Bowater rushed to clearcut some of it’s more sensitive areas, including one a half mile from me, and then sold all their land holdings, most to developers or forest managlement firms. Bowater did cease clearcutting, but their new providers have carried on their tradition of land abuse and forest decimation. dennyh@bellsouth.net