[R-G] Vancouver Island's Dwindling Ancient Forests

[Anthony Fenton]

The Politics of Big Timber in British Columbia
Vancouver Island's Dwindling Ancient Forests
http://counterpunch.com/genovali04072008.html
By CHRIS GENOVALI

It was heartening to see the strong show of support for Vancouver  
Island's dwindling old growth forests at the rally over the last  
weekend in March as some 1300 citizens showed up at the B.C.  
legislature to protest the ongoing eradication of the Island's  
remaining wilderness.

The Western Canada Wilderness Committee should be commended for some  
incredible grassroots organizing in staging the event. Let's keep our  
fingers crossed that Clayoquot Sound campaign veteran Valerie Langer's  
assessment that "it's a sign of a growing, active movement that we  
haven't seen for a long time" is indeed true.

Standing on the road at the blockades in Clayoquot Sound almost 15  
years ago, I couldn't help but feel an expectation of real change on  
the horizon, and that hope for a different future for the Island's old- 
growth forests was pulsing and alive.

But in 2008, looking back, absolutely nothing has changed with regard  
to the management (or rather mismanagement) of the Island's forests.  
Successive governments, regardless of party affiliation, have  
continued to facilitate the liquidation of the Island's extant old  
growth, as their lack of vision has translated into enormous swaths of  
denuded wilderness, trashed salmon streams and degraded habitat for  
carnivores and their prey.

The Ministry of Environment has acknowledged that the Island's cougar  
and wolf populations have been in decline as a result of a drop in the  
deer population, which is linked to the clearcut logging of old-growth  
forests and accompanying habitat loss and fragmentation. Scientific  
studies published by the United States Forest Service in the temperate  
rainforests of southeast Alaska have shown that "short-rotation  
clearcut logging of old growth forests ... will reduce habitat  
capability for Sitka black-tailed deer. This conclusion is supported  
by an extensive body of research spanning thirty years on forest  
succession following logging, silvicultural practices, deer-habitat  
relations and nutritional ecology of deer."

If you want to get a real perspective on how devastated this island's  
forests are, fly up the spine of Vancouver Island in a small plane.  
The long parade of clearcuts stand as a grim testament to the avarice  
of the corporate logging industry and the venality of the Ministry of  
Forests. But the entity that might be most responsible for this  
devastation is arguably the Association of British Columbia  
Professional Foresters. The association cannot escape complicity;  
their silence has been deafening as the destruction continues to roll  
along. "Professional forester" has to rival "sustainable development"  
as the definitive oxymoron of the last two decades.

The heart of the Island's rainshadow, the Douglas fir and Garry oak  
ecosystems, already logged into museum-piece status, are on the verge  
of becoming "ghost forests" as they are further reduced by commercial  
and residential development to a minute fraction of what they once  
were. Throughout the Island's coastal rainforests western red cedar is  
being targeted, high-graded and mined to meet international market  
demand, primarily in the United States where close to 80 per cent of  
B.C.'s red cedar ends up.

According to WCWC, LandSat satellite photos from 2004 show about 75  
per cent of Vancouver Island's old-growth forests have already been  
logged. And as we all know, the clearcutting hasn't stopped during the  
intervening years. Anyone familiar with the mostly hammered landscapes  
of Oregon and Washington can see that the logging on Vancouver Island  
is as bad or worse as anything to be seen in the American Pacific  
Northwest. The so-called second growth "wall of wood" promised for the  
Island by industry and government spin doctors has never materialized.  
Did anyone ever actually believe in such a far-fetched pipe dream or  
was it simply another cynical platitude deliberately injected into the  
debate in order to pacify and bemuse the public?

As the wasteland of battered ecosystems is being flipped for  
development, tracts of clearcut wilderness have become lucrative real  
estate as they morph into paved-over subdivisions. The Ministry of  
Forests appears keen to enable this conversion as witnessed by their  
push to "delete" 28,000 hectares of land from tree farm licences on  
the Island and opening it up to real-estate speculators. The  
"Californication" of Vancouver Island is well underway. But maybe that  
was the hidden agenda all along.

The scars on the land are proof that the mechanisms for managing the  
Island's forests are broken. The rally at the legislature identified  
steps to halt the systemic dysfunction; ban raw log exports, move to  
an ecologically based second-growth forest economy and most  
importantly, stop logging Vancouver Island's remaining old-growth  
forests. Hopefully, someone in that big grey building was listening.

Chris Genovali is executive director of the Raincoast Conservation  
Society and can be reached at: chris at raincoast.org