Decision on

Carmanah

Valley put on hold

PORT ALBERNI, B.C. — A decision
on the harvesting of ‘timber in the
Carmanah Valley remains on hold as
this issue goes to press. Workers and
townspeople here are anxious to find
out whether or not the provincial
government will allow MacMillan
Bloedel to pursue its logging plans in
Tree Farm Licence #44.

Stan Coleman, a MB forester in the
Port Alberni region, says that the
company is obliged by law to do what-
ever the Ministry of Forest says in the
Carmanah.

Anestimated $12.8 million per year
benefit to the Port Alberni commu-
nity is at stake. Currently MB esti-
mates that 100 direct jobs, 32 of them
in the logging sector and the rest in
milling, rely on the harvesting of the
Carmanah.

Indirect employment in the com-
munity multiplies the total number of
jobs to more than 400.

According to Paul Pashnik, Man-
ager of the Port Alberni Forest Dis-
trict, the MB plan has been put to
public review. Mr. Pashnik’s depart-
ment has gone into the Carmanah to
validate the engineering and soil stud-
ies made by MB.

A report from the Port Alberni
forest district, based on the public
input and technical forestry studies
was then combined with a report from
Regional Forest Manager, Ken Ing-
ram’s office in Vancouver. A combined
report was then sent to the Provincial
Chief Forester, John Cuthbert in
April.

“A lot of work has been done on the
Carmanah by the company and the
Forest Service has done some darn

good work on it,” says Mr. Pashnik.
“We feel we have given it adequate
public review.”

In June, Cuthbert made a recom-
mendation on MB’s logging plan to
Dave Parker, Provincial Forests
Minister.

In a lettered response in late June
to Earl Foxcroft, President of IWA
Local 1-85 in Port Alberni, Parker
said the decision on the Carmanah
had been referred to Cabinet.

Brother Foxcroft believes that B.C.
Premier Bill Vander Zalm has inter-
vened in the Carmanah.

“It appears that Premier Vander
Zalm has stepped in to take these
matters out of the hands of the Forest
Service and the Minister,” says the
Local President.

NDP forests critic Dan Miller says
that the provincial government has
major credibility problems on forestry
issues.

“The process that the government
has for deciding land use questions
does not work,” says Miller. He also
says that the Socreds have been insen-
sitive to the public on the whole
Carmanah issue.

MacMillan Bloedel, in its manage-
ment plan for the Carmanah, submit-
ted in January of this year, recom-
mended that a community-based
team be formed to help develop log-
ging plans.

Brother Foxcroft says that Local
1-85 would appoint a union represen-
tative to the planning team, which
would be similar in structure to a
13-member “sustainable development
committee” which was formed in early
August to deal with harvesting tim-

e “The Triplets”, three giant sitka Spruce are situated in a special reserve area of the
Carmanah Valley. The 538 hectare reserve area is surrounded by a huge 1912 hectare
“special management area’ to assure preservation of large spruce groves. MacMillan
Bloedel, preservationists and IWA officials are unanimous in their belief that the

ancient trees be preserved.

ber in Clayquot Sound on the west
coast of Vancouver Island.

Government, industry, natives, lab-
our, and environmentalists are repre-

sented in the Clayquot Sound Com-
mittee which is headed by dispute
resolution expert Alan Hope.

As with all controversial issues,
the media has systematically
neglected an important aspect;
the extent to which all parties are
agreed. In this case, there is no
disagreement that the magnificent
grove of Sitka Spruce that grows
along the Carmanah Valley floor
must not be logged.

I emphasize that at the outset,
because in all the land-use
disputes that have troubled Brit-

ish Columbians lately; Moresby,
the Stein, etcetera, there has been
an important area of agreement,
ignored by the media, but impor-
tant all the same.

There are disagreements about
how far beyond the immediate
grove of Sitkas logging has to be
disallowed, or strictly curtailed, in
order to assure the old trees the
remainder of their natural lives.
MacMillan Bloedel proposes, in
its revised plan, a narrow strip
containing the grove in which
there would be no logging at all,
surrounded by a much larger zone
(about 5,000 acres) in which log-
ging would proceed much more
carefully, and with much smaller
“openings”, than usual.

The preservationist movement
has responded to this plan in two
distinctly different ways, which
have, however, not generally been
sorted out in the public dialogue.

Clay Perry

Forestry and Environment

Some have said that neither the
M.B. proposal, nor any like it, pro-
vides sufficient protection for the
very old Spruce.

But others, including Vicki
Husband of the Sierra Club of
Western Canada, have made it
clear that even if such a Plan
could protect the unique grove the
entire valley has to be set aside
— “We don’t want just a tree
museum”, declared Husband.

The distinction between these
two reactions is crucial for us,
because we in IWA-CANADA have
said that the grove must be
allowed to live out its natural life
— so if it can be shown that more
of the old growth Hemlock on the
surrounding slopes has to be set
aside to accomplish that, we
would agree that that should be
done.

Here are some reasons why we
oppose the “set aside the entire
valley, even if it is not necessary
for the conservation of the Sitka
Spruce” position.

First, some very general
principles:

e Every society should produce,
if it can, at least the equivalent .°
of the physical goods it
consumes. To do less is simply
to export the environmental
stress of supporting our own
lives, and in B.C.’s case, that
would generally be exporting
the stress to areas of the world

that are more environmentally
fragile: The Amazon Basin, for
example.

¢ In most parts of B.C. that obli-
gation can best be met (from an
environmental point of view) by
the production of successive
crops of conifers. That process
is less invasive to the natural
ecology in most parts of B.C.
than, for example, the produc-
tion of wheat that we consume
is on the Prairie ecologies.

© So the conclusion is that we
should grow and export some
pretty considerable quantities
of coniferous timber — though
not as much, from [WA-
CANADA’s point of view, as we
have been cutting lately.

Many are tempted here to rid

themselves of the dilemma by

saying “Well, O.K., but no more

old growth.” But there is a fatal

flaw in that position: only a tiny

fraction of second growth is now

ready to harvest.

Beyond that, there are other
agonizing trade-offs. Timber-
growing sites on the west coast of
Vancouver Island, because of the
long growing season and heavy

infall, are much more productive
than other coast sites, and three
or four times as productive as
most interior areas. That means
that if such a site is lost to timber
production, it will take a great
deal more land somewhere else to
compensate for that loss, there
will be more ecological stress, and,
generally, more species substitu-
tion. The area surrounding the
flat on which the Spruce grow is,
like a lot of coast forests,
generally even-aged, old-growth
Hemlock. It is unlikely that the
timber growing potential could be
replaced anywhere in B.C. without
interrupting more complex and

diverse ecologies.

Media ignore areas of consensus on Carmanah

Which brings us to the conser-
vation case. Given that in the end,
there will be some limit to what
can be “conserved”, is the entire
Carmanah Valley a prudent expen-
diture of that limited fund? We
think not.

Given the proximity of the
Pacific Rim and Strathcona Parks,
with their extensive endowments
of similar ecologies, “the entire
valley” seems an extravagant con-
serving of certain types, which
will have to be paid for in the end
by not conserving other types.

And there are some considera-
tions that go beyond these
particulars.

The central environmental chal-
lenge is to find means of support-
ing human life that are, in the _
sense of the Brundtland Commis-
sion, fully sustainable.

There is a lot to do in the B.C.
forest industry on that score, and
IWA-CANADA members are will-
ing and anxious to set about
doing that. The Fletcher-Challenge
workers who wild-catted on
Vancouver Island over timber
waste are a recent example.

Simply saying, “We will do
nothing on this or that tract of
land that provides for the physical
needs of humans” may serve a
conservation function, but it does
nothing at all to meet the other
central challenge.

In that urgent sense, it is sad
to see yet another opportunity go
by for the labour and environmen-
tal movements to work together
— to find some way of harvesting
timber for human needs that will
assure the safety of the valued
Spruce grove be fully sustainable,
yet make some contribution to
that central challenge.

Clay Perry is Director of IWA-

CANADA'’s Environment and

Land Use Department.

gr

8/LUMBERWORKER/SEPTEMBER, 1989