PRESIDENTS MESSAGE

More recycled money
in B.C. forest plan

by Jack Munro

RITISH Columbia’s Forest Minister
Claude Richmond announced on Feb-
ruary 5th a new “five year” silvicul-
ture program for B.C. There is a lot of
hoopla, and a little good news.

As is usual with such announcements, this
one requires a lot of careful scrutiny, and
several grains of salt, to separate the news
from the hoopla.

Premier Vander Zalm originally described
the program as being worth “1.4 billion dol-
lars,” but the February 5th release conceded
that only “500 million dollars” of that was
“new money.”

And it isn’t hard to quarrel with the phrase
“new money” even as it applies to the $500
million. Whether it is “new’ or not depends if
you agree that when old N.S.R. treatment
programs are completed, the programs that
replace them, spending basically the same
amount, are financed by “new” money.

More important, anyone who takes at face
value any government's boasts about what is
going to do five years from now is either very
new to the game, or learns very slowly.

More important still, even if the full pro-
gram is implemented, we will still be far
behind our competitors in doing “intensive”
(post-planting) silviculture. For the whole
five year program, we will be doing, on aver-

age, 1/5 as much site
preparation (compar-
ed to harvest) as Swe-
den; 1/20 as much fer-
tilization, 1/6 as much
brushing (probably
the greatest post-
planting shortcoming
of the program), and
1/5 as much spacing.

The good news? Well,
at last, a senior Cana-
dian Government is
talking not only about
the need for post-
planting silvicultural
treatments, but about
the need to high-qual-
ity Timber.

The Forest Minis-

with certain kinds of
timber when it grows
too quickly.

But a study done of

second-growth Doug-
las Fir grown on Van-
couver Island indi-
cates that, especially
if we are hoping for
short rotations, we
may have quality pro-
blems of our own,
though not so severe
as in the U.S. South-
east.

In any event, every
serious look at the
situation shows that
we have to grow more

try’s brochure makes
the point well:

“Unmanaged second-growth forests gener-
ally contain maller trees than our inherited
forests, which means a change - in most cases
a reduction -in the amount of wood available
for harvest. The wood is also of a different
quality than in our inherited forests. This
presents a challenge in obtaining sufficient
wood to meet projected increases in demand
for wood products, and particularly the
demand for high quality wood suitable for
value-added products.”

IWA-CANADA economist Doug Smyth has
almost completed a major (600 page) study of
the competitive position of our industry that
emphasizes a number of closely-related
points. A crucial one is that, so long as we are
sawing “inherited” timber, we have a major
advantage over U.S. producers using planta-
tion wood from the South Eastern states. The
study documents quality problems associated

and better wood. Les
Reed and two colleag-
ues at UBC conclude that we have far more
manufacturing capacity than long-run AAC,
given present silvicultural practices.

We believe - especially now that the need for
quality wood has been acknowledged - that
where we plant we have to plant much more
thickly, so we can get wood with small, tight
knots. The Swedes are planting up to 600
million seedlings per year, on a much smaller
harvested area, and they do not have a huge
back-log to catch up on. And any dedication
at all to growing “quality timber’ will require
an end to the “lowest-cost”, “lowest-bidder
takes all” structure and policies of Canadian
silviculture.

So we are sceptical, and gravely concerned,
and absolutely determined to go on fighting
for more and better silviculture, to grow more
and better timber, to provide more and better
jobs.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPME

Communities ignored in
government initiatives

by Claire Dansereau

HE British Columbia government is once
again showing us how its head and its body
can comfortably walk in different directions.
Over a year ago the Ministry of Forests
embarked on a so-called public process to
determine what to do with the remainder of its old
growth forests. You would think, in a province
whose primary means of earning a living is an
old-growth dependent forest industry, that the
working people of the province would be well
represented in such a process. Think again. Only
one labour representative has been part of the
process.
The work has been slow going. The constant
need to remind people that the immediate and
long-term social impacts of setting areas aside
need to be considered at all times has been
surprising. You would think that at least one-half
of the process would be devoted to the people-side
of the equation. Not so, the sub-committee whose
role it was to select areas for two-year deferrals
chose only biological criteria. This has created
numerous problems for the government and for
rocess.

Cees these problems you would think that the
government would be more careful in its other
initiatives. You would think that they would
include socio-economic criteria and timber impact
analysis in new proposals designed to remove land

from the productive and available forest lands.
Two such initiatives are cura travelling
around the province to receive public input on
setting more areas aside, Parks Plan 90 and the
Wilderness Plan are initiatives by the Ministries
of Parks and Forests, respeenvealy. These two
show us clearly that the government's head
parts (the Ministries)

different directions.

Parks Plan 90 is to complete the

the case, we can assume
that completion of the
Parks Plan will affect
workers in our industry.
You would think, there-
fore, that at least one of
the criteria for selection
between suitable parks
\| would be the impact on
|| the AAC. You would

think so — think again.

Nowhere in the Parks
Plan is the effect on
AAC discussed. Once
again, the only criteria are recreational/biological.
Worse yet, the public process is currently gather-
ing information to determine if enough areas have
been included.

Given that the Ministry has not bothered to
include socio-economic impact information in its
planning process, the job falls onto us. Unfortu-
nately, the Parks Plan includes no boundaries. We
cannot even begin to tell them who will be affected
and which communities will suffer because we
simply don’t know. We

The Brundtland Commission stated that 12%
of representative ecosystems need to be set aside
for future generations. Did this mean that they
should be set aside for recreation? How long will
those areas last if tourists are allowed to pack
down the soil, litter and burn the coarse woody
debris to keep warm? How will wildlife be unbal-
anced by the new influx of motor homes and the
increase in garbage? If we want to leave represen-
tative ecosystems to our grandchildren, should we
not be completing the ecological reserve system?

If the kind of tourism that I have just described
is not what the ministry has in mind then how
does it see the parks as being used? Should they
have reserved for a few wealthy out-of-province
tourists who can afford to fly in for an isolated
wilderness experience? Where does that leave the
rest of us? It leaves us not only without our jobs
but it also leaves us cramped in those parks that
do allow access.

The second initiative that is travelling around
with the Parks Plan is the Ministry of Forests’
Wilderness Plan. Once again, this is a good exam-
ple of the parts of the government’s body not
communicating with each other or with the head.

have been given names
of areas and general
locations on a map. How
can we possible defini-
tively outline what this
will do to us if we don’t
have concrete informa- ,
tion?

This is not to say that

Not enough consideration
is being given to the
immediate and long-term
social impacts of setting
areas aside

The Wilderness Plan
and the Parks Plan are
in the so-called public
input stage. Unfortu-
nately, the two maps are
not overlaid on each
other so that it is impos-
sible for us to see what is
really being discussed. I
suppose it would be dif-

we don’t think B.C. needs
new parks or needs to complete its parks system.
If actually completing the system is what we are
talking about then we think that it’s about time.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to imagine that land-use
disputes will disappear when we have set aside
Brundtland’s magical 12% of representative
ecosystems.

The Minister of Parks is attempting to set aside
12% of the province as parkland. They are plan-
ning to reserve representatives of all the ecosys-
tems found in B.C. This disjointed government
is setting areas aside to protect old-growth values
(currently in short-term deferrals but eventually
for the long-term) and it is completing a wilder-
ness plan. If the Ministry of Parks is aiming for
12% what will the other initiatives add up to?

The distribution of the 12% is also on concern to
us. pome parts of the province, notably Vancouver
Island, already have more than 12%, yet we keep
adding more and more areas to their park system.

ficult to have such amap
since neither plan has boundaries.

The Wilderness Plan, like the Parks Plan and
the Old-Growth strategy, has not included a tim-
ber assessment of the areas in question. It only
shows us what areas are to be included as study
areas. What does this mean? Are study areas to be
deferred from logging? I would imagine so. For
how long? Where does replacement timber come
from in the mean-time? You would think that this
being a Ministry of Forests initiative, these issues
would at least be discussed! Think again!

So, the government’s body and its head are
clearly moving in all kinds of different directions.
Unfortunately, not one of those directions includes
consideration of B.C.’s economy, its working-people
and its forest-dependent communities.

Claire Dansereau is IWA-CANADAs
Forest and Environment Planner.

LUMBERWORKER/FEBRUARY, 1991/5