British Columbia: Beetle outbreaks are healthy, necessary agents of bio-diversity!

Beetles outbreaks function to restore forests from excessive high risk
uniformity to low risk resilient mosaics compromised of many species
and age classes. It would be better for the environment and ultimately
better for the forest industry to let the beetles rather than the MoF
manage our public forests. We need a royal commission with subpoena
powers to investigate the combination of arrogance, ignorance and
greed that is undermining our government and academic institutions and
legitimizing the resource rip-off resulting in forest devastation.

Does anyone care at all about the vast invested public silviculture
expenditures ($30 billion in sunk public debt) for disappeared
forests? Why is the government returning licensee silviculture
gaurantee deposits when their efforts have resulted in no long run
viable and surviving forests? Why are enviros providing climate change
cover to the licensees’ abysmal capacity to understand and predict
forest ecology? Why are the universities and professional foresters
not incorporating lessons from the beetle kill into their
understanding of forests?

It seems the only lesson learned from the
beetle kill is to maintain the uniformity and simply harvest planted
forests at more juvenile tree ages to avoid the “natural” decrepitude
of “normal” forests. Why is privatization the only contemplated
solution for industrial devastated public forests? We currently have
an interior forest industry that is in the same situation as the
coastal whaling industry in 1950. BC coastal whaling operated at an
accelerated scale of depletion right up to its complete collapse.
Between 1900 and 1950 including foreign whalers the industry e

stimated
it “harvested” 3,000 blue whales, 8,000 sperm whales, 9,000 humpbacks
and 10,000 finn whales. The industry was banned by the International
Whaling Commission in 1966 when there were absolutely no great whales
to be found here. Did the loss of the whales provide more krill for
salmon? It would seem the whale depletion industry simply moved to
the forests. Is it time yet to arrest and convict the perpetrators of
this sustainability? bcenvirowatch@lists.onenw.org

— Posted to http://forestpolicyresearch.com via gmail to posterous and
also to forestpolicyresearch@yahoogroups.com

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