Loggers, Environmentalists vs. British Columbia
4/22/97
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Canada's Pacific Province Caught Between Critics of Forestry Code
By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 22 1997; Page A15
The Washington Post
TORONTO, April 21 -- A forestry law touted by British Columbia as a world-
leading model for simultaneously protecting the environment and
jobs is now under fire from two sides, as industry officials claim it is
regulating them out of business and environmentalists charge it
has done little to protect ancient coastal rainforests.
In recent months, low world prices for wood pulp and international
competition have spelled hard times for British Columbia timber-industry
giants including MacMillan Bloedel. The industry has responded by pressing
the government of British Columbia Premier Glen Clark to help it
cut costs by reducing some of the requirements of the province's Forest
Practices Code.
A spokesman for Clark said: "They are now laying off workers and not
reporting a healthy profit, and they are laying that at the feet of the
government."
Meanwhile, environmental groups charged in a study released today that the
code is not protecting British Columbia's old-growth forests from logging.
They pledged a summer of civil disobedience to focus attention on the
issue.
Protests around the province's Clayquot Sound area several years ago
sparked international interest in British Columbia's coastal rain
forest and left politicians and forest officials there skittish about the
possibility of Canada being branded the "Brazil of the north" for its
continued harvest of ancient trees.
Since then, the new Forest Practices Code came into effect, with the
intent of reducing the size of the blocks of trees cut during harvest,
forcing stricter environmental practices on the industry and increasing
the fees paid by forestry companies. In addition, the province set a goal
of protecting at least 12 percent of its land from any exploitation and
agreed in a separate policy statement to reduce each year the amount of
timber that companies can harvest.
But the report, released by Greenpeace and the Sierra Legal Defense Fund
in Canada and the United States, concluded that harvest rates remain
virtually the same and that it is common to find "cut blocks" two or more
times larger than the standard set in the law. The groups also contend
they found that a disproportionate part of the land being preserved by the
province is rocky alpine tundra and other less economically valuable
terrain.
Greenpeace organizers say the province's lumber companies plan to start
building roads and logging in about half of the 50 remaining rainforest
valleys along the coast over the next five years.
"This is 1 percent of Canada's land mass," said Karen Mahon, a Vancouver-
based protest organizer for the group, contrasting Canada's continued
logging to its support for international efforts to maintain Earth's
biodiversity. "Certainly if we encourage the underdeveloped world to cast
a net around this biodiversity sink, we can make a commitment."
The battle over control of natural resources may be more intense in
British Columbia than anywhere else in Canada. The province is home to
large mining, forestry and fishing industries but it also hosts a
subculture of environmental activists and outdoor enthusiasts who often
have different ideas about the best uses for the area's forests and
streams.
In addition, the province has dozens of Indian tribes who have become more
aggressive in recent years in demanding both a fair share of what is
extracted from the environment and protection for natural features they
regard as culturally or spiritually important.
Clark's government, which maintains that the provincial government struck
a balance among all of these interests, said today that some of the
report's conclusions are misleading. While overall harvest rates have
remained the same in British Columbia over the last five years, one
official said, production has been shifted away from the coast to the less
unusual ecology of the interior.
The Council of Forest Industries also criticized the report for ignoring
the progress that has been made in reducing the size of individual
logging blocks and adopting other practices to make logging easier on the
environment. Unlike, for example, the American South, where the
original forests were cleared long ago and generations of planted trees
support the industry, forestry officials say British Columbia must cut old
growth if there is to be any logging, because those are the only trees
mature enough to harvest.
"Front-line regulators, forest workers and responsible environmental
groups have worked together to make change happen," Brian Zak,
president of the council, said in a press release. "The constant attempts
by Greenpeace and the Sierra Legal Defense Fund to bash the code do a
disservice to the residents of British Columbia."
In preparation for the summer, when Canadians sometimes joke that protest
is in season, Greenpeace sponsored training sessions for a campaign to
focus on the relatively remote and unpopulated forests of British
Columbia's middle coast. As with the Clayquot Sound protests and
efforts made last summer to block mammoth logging barges around the Queen
CharlotteIslands, the group will try to block logging companies' access to
the forest.
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