Editor's Column

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Woods Wisdom

Notes From All Over

By: Jim Peterson

Falls Near Blue River, British Columbia Photo by Government of Canada

To glimpse the enormity of Canada's forest, and thus the enormity of this task, which has taken almosta year to complete, simply turn to the map on Pages 2 and 3. You are looking at ten percent of the world's forest: 991.7 million acres spanning ten distinct forest types or regions, each defined by wide-ranging geographic, physical and climatic factors. By contrast, the eight forest regions of the United States cover 747
million acres.

Canada's vast forests hold about 198,000 wildlife species, a rarity for one country, even one as large as Canada. Small wonder then that its exceptionally diverse forests have become the subject of increasing scrutiny around the world.

Canada's population-about 31.7 million is less than one-ninth the 281 million counted by our U.S. Census Bureau in 2000. Most of its population is concentrated in urban centers within 100 miles of our shared border. Despite two centuries of growth, the rest of the country remains very remote, so much so that only eight percent of its forestland base has ever been converted to other uses-farms, roads, utility corridors and towns for example-compared to about 29% in the U.S. In fact, Canada's forests are so vast that very little is known about their northernmost reaches, at least in a statistical sense.

The fact that Canada remains very rural makes its economic dependence on natural resource-based industries, particularly timber and energy, far more apparent than rural resource dependence is in the U.S. As a result, social and political support for active development of these resources is much stronger in Canada than it is in the U.S.

Canadians seem to intuitively sense that their future on the global stage is closely tied to further expansion of export markets for their wood products, wheat, cattle, gas and minerals. The country's massive forest products industry already accounts for 50% of global lumber exports, and nearly 60% of newsprint exports, yet another reason why its forests are fast becoming a target of global environmental interests, particularly the boreal forest, which accounts for 76% of Canada's forest land base.

From its northern reaches, along the Canada-Alaska border, the boreal sweeps, southeast from the Mackenzie River delta across the Yukon, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, touching Lake Superior in Ontario before turning northeast for its journey across Quebec before fading into other more intermingled land forms in Newfoundland and Labrador. Apart from the boreal's enormous timber resource, its countless thousands of lakes, streams and wetlands form one of the world'slargest fresh water reservoirs-a fact that was much in evidence when I flew from Ottawa, Canada's capitol city, east to Quebec City, then back west to Montreal, Edmonton and Vancouver in May.

The history of forest development in Canada bears striking similarities to the history of development in the U.S., though the fur trade played a far more prominent role in Canada than it did in the U.S. In fact, fur was Canada's first forest product. It began as an offshoot of Newfoundland's fishing industry in the 1500s.

But apart from the more prominent roles fur trappers and traders played, the history of development of forests in our two countries is virtually the same. The earliest white settlers encountered advanced agrarian Indian cultures, just as they did in Florida, the Carolinas, Virginia, Arizona and New Mexico. But meaningful westward expansion did not begin in Canada until nearly a century after it began in the U.S. Even so, both countries quickly exploited their forests.

Wood heated homes and fired industries,including the railroads, which opened Canada from east to west in the same way they opened the American frontier.Forests were also cleared away, or burned, to make way for crops and livestock grazing, creating a need for countlessmillions of wooden fence posts and rails. Artists of the day mourned the loss of forests in landscape paintings depicting devastation along the St. Lawrence River, just as they had along New York's Hudson River. And wildfires seemed to claim all that man did not. In 1825, the Miramichi fire destroyed more than a quarter of New Brunswick. More than 200 lost their lives in settlements along the river from which the conflagration took its name.

Canada also had an early day conservation movement, which butted heads with European-trained foresters of the day. But imagine how surprised we wereto discover that the earliest foresters to champion forest management in Canadawere disciples of the same man who championed it in the United States: Bernard Fernow, who was the first chief of the Forestry Bureau of the United States, forerunner to the modern-day U.S. Forest Service and widely considered to be the father of forestry in the U.S.

"Forests grow to be used," Fernow declared at Canada's first forest congress in 1906. "Beware of the sentimentalists who would try to make you believe differently." A year later, Fernow, who founded the forestry school at Cornell University, became the first dean of Canada's first forestry school at the University of Toronto.

Canada's Prime Minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, hosted the 1906 congress. His government championed Fernow's blend for conservation and science-based forestry, hiring the nation's first cadre of professionally trained foresters. "I desire every man in this audience, as he goes away to his home and his avocation, to become a missionary in the world of forestry," he declared at the closing session.

Skagit Valley Park, Sumullo Grove Photo Government of Canada

Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, also spoke at the 1906 gathering, echoing both Fernow's warning and Laurier's enthusiasm. "We must put every bit of land to its best use, no matter what that may be-put it to the use that will make it contribute most to the general welfare."

Several of Canada's early day landowners and lumbermen were also Fernow disciples. Among them: Ontario-born H.R. MacMillan, a Yale-trained forester friend of Pinchot, who went on to become British Columbia's first chief forester before building one of Canada's greatest lumber fortunes following World War I. Another was lawyer conservationist Sir Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotbiniere, who embraced European forestry on his family's holdings along the St. Lawrence Riverand was founding president of the Canadian Forestry Association and a member of both the Quebec Assembly and the Canadian House of Commons.

But here all similarity between the U.S. and Canadian forestry stories ends abruptly. Vastly different dies were cast at the moments of birth for our two countries. Canada's early colonists chose to unite as a federation, conferring significant powers on what would eventually become modern-day provinces. We became a republic of states first, only to gradually transfer significant power to our federal government. The very different balance of powers that ultimately prevailed in our two countries has had a significant impact on forest development in each country, and on the respective government-industry relationships.

Consider these striking comparisons: Virtually all commercial forestland in Canada is owned and managed by the respective provinces. The provinces absorb all management costs and retain all related harvesting revenues. Much of the actual work is done by forest products companies under the terms of multi-year leases that are awarded by the provinces. Imagine how wealthy any of our western states might be if they held the same powers the provinces hold.

Canada's federal government owns little commercial timberland, so little in fact that Natural Resource Canada's Canadian Forest Service [CFS] is principally a research organization. CFS also represents Canadian interests on the international stage where more global environmental issues, like climate change and biological diversity, are discussed and debated. By contrast, our federal government owns 165 million acres of forestland, 33% of our nation's entire forestland base. Our U.S. Forest Service is responsible for 147 million of these federally owned acres, but layer upon layer of often conflicting and ambiguous environmental law has made science-based management impossible since the northern spotted owl was listed as a threatened  species under the federal Endangered Species Act. However well intended, the Act has in recent years done little more than create a rich feeding ground for lawyers and lobbyists.

Canada does not have an Endangered Species Act, but it recently ratified a Species At Risk Act that, unlike the take-no-prisoners mindset embodied in our ESA, seeks to balance economic and environmental considerations in a way that supports active and sustainable forest management. It is emblematic of Canada's willingness to tolerate ambiguity when it benefits the country's common future.

Environmental litigation leading to job loss is unheard of in Canada, not just because the legal framework necessary to promulgate it doesn't exist, but also because most Canadians would take a very dim view of any action that harmed their country's economy or its citizens. No surprise then that the forestry consensus-building process that has failed so miserably in the United States flourishes in Canada. The credibility of the process rests in the fact that consensus cannot be upended by lawyers and judges. With no way to sabotage public will, environmental groups that operate in judicial isolation in our far too litigious society must sit at the same table with everyone else in Canada.

Canada's provincial governments have never viewed their forest products industry as an enemy of the environment, as our own federal government has from time to time. The enormous economic, social and cultural importance of the lumber and paper industries is widely recognized and appreciated at all levels of Canadian government, just as it once was by all agencies of government in our country.

Beyond doubt, the most far-reaching example of the unity between government and industry has been their mutual quest for third party forest certification of provincial forestlands, a process they consider to be essential to their global marketing plans for Canadian lumber and paper. And, indeed, there is increasing reluctance on the part of major consumers and retailers to sell or use forest products that cannot be independently certified as having

Long Beach, British Columbia Photo by Government of Canada