Editor's Note -- weekly column by Quesnel Mayor Bob Simpson. He can be reached via email here
Last week at the Natural Resource Forum in Prince George, I participated in a panel discussion on the topic of sustainable forest management. The question the panelists were asked to address was whether British Columbia remains a world leader in sustainable forestry.
In my opening comments at the Forum I noted that there is a consistent mantra used by BC’s government, industry, and professional forestry association to answer this question: ‘BC is a world leader in sustainable forest management because we only harvest less than one percent of the timber harvesting land base each year, plant three trees for every one cut down, and have more forest land under third-party certification than any other jurisdiction.’
This is a rather simplistic response to a very complex question; a question that has dominated an ongoing debate about forest management in British Columbia since before the first Royal Commission on Forestry tabled its report in 1910.
More to the point, if we are sustainably managing our public forests, why are communities experiencing mill closures and dramatic job losses, why is the annual allowable cut declining so rapidly, why are companies saying that BC is not economic to operate in, and why are our forests experiencing such massive and unprecedented disturbances (pests, diseases, wildfires, etc.)?
Yes, a rapidly changing climate is partly responsible for the extent of the latest Mountain Pine Beetle epidemic and the back-to-back unprecedented wildfire seasons we experienced in 2017 and 2018. But, a major reason these events are unprecedented is absolutely a result of forest management choices we’ve made. For example, decades of forest fire suppression, the accumulation of massive waste piles during salvage logging operations, and the use of static reserves to protect non-timber values are all forest management practices that have, without question, contributed to the current sorry state of our forest ecosystems.
Forests are one of the most complex ecosystems on the planet and one of the slowest to adapt to a changing climate. Planting three trees for every one cut down in harvested blocks does not guarantee forest health at the large landscape level. Having a lot of harvested areas certified to a set of rules based on timber management doesn’t mean that BC’s forest ecosystems, overall, are being managed sustainably.
We also know, based on solid data and good science, that if we apply our current forest management practices to the forest land base west of the Fraser in the Quesnel Timber Supply Area (QTSA) (and other heavily disturbed forest ecosystems elsewhere in the Province) we’re setting it up for another massive Mountain Pine Beetle infestation and even more massive wildfires in the coming decades. So, how can our current practices be called “world leading”?
We’re fortunate here in Quesnel that industry, First Nations, local government, and provincial government staff are willing to embrace the deep complexity embedded in the question about whether or not we’re managing our forests sustainably. This week, all these partners came together to begin the technical work needed to create a plan to restore the deeply damaged forests in the QTSA to ecological resiliency and adaptability at the large landscape level.
This very important process is now underway as a result of an alignment between the City’s Future of Forests Think Tank process, new landscape level planning pilots established by the Provincial government, and a deep desire by our industry, First Nations, and government leaders to develop a new approach to forest management in our region.
This week we took our first steps toward developing a new, landscape-level management regime that we hope will enable all ecosystems in the QTSA to be more adaptable and resilient to a changing climate. Only by focusing on ecological resiliency can we hope to ensure that Quesnel’s forest economy will be resilient too.
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