Flying Finns
Reaching for Forestry's Holy Grail
Sustainable forestry, including social forestry, must be founded on respect for nature as it is, not as we might want it to be. This requires that we separate what we perceive to be beautiful from forest practices that do, in fact, sustain the diversity of values we wish to leave as our legacy.”
Hammish Kimmins, Ph.D., Canada Research Chair in Forest Ecosystem Modeling, Department of Forest Sciences, University of British Columbia
“We share the same broad goals. Our society is less adversarial and less litigious than yours. There is more respect, even when we strongly disagree with one another. Our solutions aren’t always perfect, but we find ways to get along. I think it is cultural.”
Avrim Lazar, President, Forest Products Association of Canada
Our Canadian neighbors are standing at a crossroads in the midst of an immense forest. Behind them lies a forest history rich in human and natural events. Just ahead lies forestry’s Holy Grail: a sustainable future shared by those who love forests for what they are and those who love them for what they produce.
Once upon a time in America, forestry’s greatest prize was within our grasp too, but then we took a wrong turn and spent the next 40 years lost in a regulatory wilderness, trying to figure out how to get nature to give us the forests we wanted with no effort on our part. Only recently have we rediscovered that nature—and especially wildfire—is indifferent to human need.
Meanwhile, our Canadian neighbors were busy building a forestry empire that is today the envy of the world. The question is, “Will they reach the Holy Grail, or will they get lost in the same wilderness that claimed us?” This is their story, told through the eyes of nine who have dared to reach. Most Americans know Canada best for its beautiful parks. Few know that our neighbors to the north also own and manage some of the most diverse, most productive forests on earth. And they are very good foresters. Credit well focused management plans controlled completely by provincial governments. Canada’s federal government has no authority over provincial forest management decisions. Canada is so large and so remote that 92% of its original forest land area is still forested. Small wonder then that Canadians have been thrust on to a world stage as no nation ever has.
“Ten percent of all the world’s forests grows in Canadian soil,” observes Hammish Kimmins, Canada Research Chair in Forest Ecosystem Modeling in the Department of Forest Sciences at the University of British Columbia. “We should not be surprised that we have become the subject of so much worldwide attention.”
What is surprising is how well Canada is handling its newfound prominence. Indeed, the entire country —or at least those who are interested in forests—seems to have risen to the occasion in one way or another, and there is a unity of purpose that is hard to miss. It is as though a long awaited national conversation has begun.
How to protect Canada’s rich biological heritage, how to convincingly demonstrate to the world that its provincial forests are being sustainably managed, and how to make sure the country’s 1,200 timber communities and 100-some manufacturers also get to share in forestry’s greatest prize, and are not swept away by globetrotting preservationists for whom Canada’s great forests are a Holy Grail of another kind.
Few have been keener observers of Canada’s quest to transform itself from a country with a reputation for heavy-handed treatment of forests into a world-class forest practitioner and conservationist than Dr. Kimmins, a scientist who many consider one of the finest forest ecologists in the world. We met in his cramped office on the University of British Columbia in early May, surrounded by books, papers and mementos of his devotion to forests and his students.
“We have moved on again,” he says of his country’s journey beyond early day exploitation of forests that once seemed so vast they would go on forever. “We moved first from exploitation to administrative forestry, which produced lots of timber but didn’t do a very good job of accounting for variability in nature, to ecosystem-based forestry, which does a good job of accounting for diversity but still has a heavy emphasis on timber, only to recently conclude that while ecosystembased forestry is ecologically sustainable, it still does not satisfy our more aesthetic, intrinsic needs.”
You won’t find it discussed in colorful brochures yet, but what Canadians, their federal and provincial governments and their scientific institutions are now flirting with is a blend of two disciplines that could not, of themselves, be more distant from one another: social science and forest ecology.
“I call it social forestry,” Dr. Kimmins explains. “It is ecologically based, but it sustains values ranging from employment to spiritual. We’re not there yet, and won’t be for some time, but now there is a recognition that ecosystembased forestry cannot meet all of our society’s forest needs. And so we have come face to face with the reality that forestry isn’t about ecology or biological diversity at all. It is about people, about the art, practice, science and business of managing forest stands and forest landscapes to sustain an ecologically possible and socially desirable balance of values.”
It is clear from his many writings that Dr. Kimmins is comfortable with social forestry’s evolution, just as he is with all of forestry’s blossoming paradigms: ecosystem management, adaptive management, zoning, variable retention forestry and management regimes that emulate the natural range of variability in forests. But he says that many who are pushing social forestry lack a basic understanding of ecosystem function, and are thus poorly equipped to implement forest policies and management practices that can deliver on social forestry’s promise of a brighter future for all. And he worries that advocates are not honoring nature’s ambiguities—the fact that what is beautiful is not always sustainable and what is sustainable is not necessarily beautiful.
“We humans are an emotional species,” Dr. Kimmins observes. “Our eyes and our hearts tell us what we value, what we think is beautiful and good. You would think that our heads could then tell us how to sustain what we value, but we often reject the head part, especially in forests. We reject clearcutting because it is momentarily ugly, and we embrace lighttouch logging because there is little visual change. But nature doesn’t work this way. Appropriately used, clearcutting is quite sustainable, and inappropriately used, light-touch logging is not the least bit sustainable. Sustainable forestry, including social forestry, must be founded on respect for nature as it is, not as we might want it to be. This requires that we separate what we perceive to be beautiful from forest practices that do in fact sustain the diversity of values we wish to leave as our legacy.”
The fact that social forestry—still very much a work in progress—has burst on to the public stage in Canada attests to the two great differences between forest policy formation and subsequent regulation in Canada and the United States.
First, because Canada’s forests are owned by the provinces, and the federal government has no hand in their management, people living in, say, Alberta or Quebec have absolute control over how forests in their provinces are managed. But in the United States, where most public forestland is federally owned, people living in, say, Montana, Idaho, or Oregon have no voice in the management of forests that often comprise 30 to 40% of their entire land base.
Worse, there are no credible mechanisms for building public consensus, or for reconciling conflicts between timber-dependent communities and the federal government, or communities and often-distant environmental groups. If a Florida environmental group disagrees with a management decision that favors a logging community in Montana they can hire a lawyer who can upend the decision in court. All that’s needed is a modest understanding of conflicting U.S. federal environmental laws and regulations.
Second, Canadians hold their environmental groups accountable for their actions, just as they hold Canada’s forest products industry responsible for its actions. In fact, the leader of Canada’s largest forest industry association believes the two disparate groups share the same social license.
“We certainly do share the same social license,” says Avrim Lazar, President of the Ottawa-based Forest Products Association of Canada. “The fact that most forestland in Canada is owned by the provinces creates a very different starting point in all of our discussions. We no longer fight with environmentalists. We engage them. We share responsibility for the health and sustainability of our publicly owned forests and the communities that depend on them.”
The forest products industry is Canada’s largest industrial employer. Direct employment is over 375,000. Add in indirect employment and nearly one million workers—one in 30 Canadians are dependent on the industry. After tax earnings have been chaotic in recent years, just as they have been in the U.S: $1.9 billion [Canadian dollars] in 2001 compared to $5 billion in 2000. Chalk it up to fierce global competition and, until this past year, the complete absence of pricing power. But as bad as 2001 was, exports of lumber, panel products, paper and pulp still generated $34.2 billion dollars.
Canadian wood and paper producers are well aware of their place on the global stage—a place they occupy not just because theirs is such a large industry, but more so because the forests they harvest from comprise 10%- plus of all the world’s forest and, equally, because Canada still has 92% of its original forest land base, a preservationists dream come true. “Our visibility—and the fact that we are the world’s leading lumber and paper exporter—makes us a target in environmentally sensitive markets,” Mr. Lazar says. “We have a special responsibility to assure companies that market or use our products that our forests are being sustainably managed. This is why third party certification is a condition for membership in our association. We want our customers to know that we are good forest stewards and that we intend to honor our global environmental commitment.”
Almost 20% of all commercially managed forestland in Canada—143 of 724.7 million acres—has been certified as being sustainably managed in accordance with standards set by North America’s three leading independent certifiers: the Canadian Standards Association, the Forest Stewardship Council and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. Although their standards differ significantly most of North America’s leading retailers and consumers, including Home Depot, Lowes, Staples, Centex Homes, Hallmark Cards and Time Warner Inc., accept all three as verifiable, third party evidence of sustainable forest practices.
 Columbia Forest Region Photo by Government of Canada |
Mr. Lazar sees increasing interest in social forestry as yet another opportunity for his members to demonstrate their commitments to sustainable forestry.
“The licenses our members operate under are granted by communities, by the provinces,” he explained. “People care about wild things and wild places, just as they care about jobs and recreation. We have to honor these values, be they social, economic, cultural or environmental, so whether you call it ecosystem management, social forestry or sustainable forestry really doesn’t matter. The fact is we are engaged, we are involved, we embrace these values because if we don’t we lose our license to work in the public’s forests. Our member companies are required by law to seek citizen input before they submit their management plans to the provinces for approval.”
Although Canada—and especially British Columbia—has witnessed some of the same eco-terrorism now common in the U.S., including protests carefully choreographed for television news crews, a recent industry-funded survey reveals six in ten Canadians has a favorable impression of the industry, compared to just 47% for corporations in general. Not surprisingly, the industry’s favorable rating has improved steadily since it launched a major public relations offensive a few years ago. But equally clear is the fact that there is an un-quantifiable closeness between the industry and the country as a whole.
“We share the same broad goals,” Mr. Lazar observes. “Our society is less adversarial and less litigious than yours. There is more respect, even when we strongly disagree with one another. Our solutions aren’t always perfect, but we find ways to get along. I think it is cultural.”
It must be. How else does one explain the fact that Canada’s largest forest industry association was able to work side by side with Canadian environmentalists, crafting language for the Canada’s Species At Risk Act, that country’s more proactive version of our federal take-no-prisoners Endangered Species Act?
“None of the participating groups wanted an act that trampled one side or made one side feel more righteous than the other,” Mr. Lazar explained. “So we worked out a compromise we collectively believed would help wildlife.”
Now Mr. Lazar and his members face a new challenge: a global push by conservationists to create a system of forest and wetland reserves in the 752.9 million acre boreal forest, a Canada-wide region spanning 76% of the country’s entire forestland base. Protests and boycott threats grabbed the early headlines, but in January the Forest Products Association of Canada, the World Wildlife Fund and Ducks Unlimited of Canada unveiled a bold strategy—the Canadian Boreal Forest Initiative—defining their mutual hopes for creating a land template that will include research areas, interconnected parks and commercial forestlands. The shared objective is to advance a series of scientific initiatives that promote sustainable forestry and habitat conservation while also providing jobs for the estimated four million people who earn their living in one manner or another inside the vast region.
As a show of solidarity Mr. Lazar’s group is contributing $200,000 to World Wildlife Fund boreal research and another $100,000 to Ducks Unlimited research. Meanwhile, San Francisco-based Forest Ethics is again rattling its boycott sword. The new targets: catalogues produced by Lands’ End, LL Bean, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Victoria’s Secret, J Crew and JC Penny. Forest Ethics says these catalogues are made from paper harvested from the boreal region, a practice it calls “despicable.”
“I expect we will have our squabbles as this project moves along,” says Mr. Lazar. “But we are pragmatists. Experience tells us we will arrive at mutually acceptable terms for conserving and developing the boreal forest.” Assuming Canada’s ability to calm nervous U.S. catalogue publishers he is probably right.
Few Canadians have a better grasp on Canada’s often-ambiguous public discourse than Tom Beckley, an American-born Ph.D. sociologist who teaches at the University of New Brunswick. Dr. Beckley has been studying public processes and values for years. He recently co-authored a book, “Two Paths Toward Sustainable Forests,” which compares forest policy formation processes in the U.S. and Canada.
“Although our early forest histories are similar, some big differences developed through time,” he said in a May telephone interview. “Because 94% of Canada’s forests are provincially owned people feel closer to the decision makers, feel that their concerns are heard and respected. Our politics are less contentious than yours, and ours is a less litigious society. We are more inclined to trust each other, to find ways to work out our differences. For these reasons I think most Canadians are more comfortable with a close government-industry relationship than people are in the U.S., though I sense this may be changing. But because so much of our forest is still undeveloped we have a window of opportunity, assuming our willingness to learn from the mistakes of others.”
Like many others I interviewed, Dr. Beckley validates the existence of a shared social license to harvest timber from provincial forests.
“Oh absolutely,” he declared. ‘We all feel it, not just for all that it means environmentally, but also because so much of our economy is directly dependent on international markets. Third-party forest certification manifests itself in our awareness of the need to demonstrate not only that our forests are being sustainably managed, but also that there is significant public buy-in. It’s true that the provinces own most of the land and have most of the power, but they do not operate in isolation. Ours is a very transparent society. Scrutiny is constant.”
 Balancing values - Communities throughout British Columbia rely on forestry for their economic stability, yet less than one third of one percent of the province’s forestland is logged each year. More than half of British Columbia’s forestland, a total of 86 million acres, will likely never be logged for environmental or economic reasons. |
“For years even our largest forest products companies were locally owned,” he recalls. “Now as a result of mergers, consolidations and shutdowns we are seeing more foreign ownership. It remains to be seen whether Canadians will be as comfortable or as trusting as they were when their neighbors were running things.”
For now though, the relationship between Canadians and their forest products industry seems solid. No less a conservation force than Jean Cinq-Mars gives the industry high marks for their efforts to reach out to all Canadians.
“For a long time the industry was perceived to be confrontational and insensitive to the public’s more intrinsic forest values,” he observed. “But they’re doing better now. I suspect the possible loss of European markets had a lot to do with it, as did the increasing number of ecologically aware pension and investment funds. The media played a role too by focusing the public’s attention on perceived environmental wrong-doing.”
Mr. Cinq-Mars is president of Wildlife Habitat Canada, a non-profit foundation created by Canada’s federal government in partnership with several conservation groups. It is funded by revenues from the sale of migratory bird hunting stamps, much like Ducks Unlimited is in the U.S. The organization promotes stewardship and applied science in resource management and is engaged in numerous habitat conservation projects across Canada.
“It is easier here than it is in your country,” Mr. Cinq-Mars concedes. “Our population is small compared to yours, and we are more like a family. Also, we have more land to work with. Our relationships are much less adversarial; there is more of a feeling that we share the same responsibilities. We are more comfortable working with companies, and, of course, the provinces own most of our forestland. They have no choice but to accept responsibility, make the rules, collect the royalties and fund economic and environmental programs.”
Mr. Cinq-Mars organization does not lobby or litigate, as do virtually all conservation groups in the United States. “We get money from the federal government, so it would not be acceptable for us to lobby. And litigation designed to stop activity or lock up land is unknown in Canada. Mainly, we try to raise awareness if problems and propose structural and lasting solutions.”
Among the problems: wildlife habitat fragmentation, especially in southern Ontario and Quebec where forestry, agriculture and urban sprawl collide; loss of old growth forests, insect and disease infestations and larger, more frequent wildfires; loss of ecological characteristics associated with wild forests, including large downed woody debris; multiple canopies and large trees; and the industry’s push into timber-rich northern Canada.
Among Habitat Canada’s recommended solutions: an expansion of regionally limited habitat conservation plans, linking Canada’s sustainable forestry initiatives with science-based habitat inventory and monitoring programs, better identification of habitat action items, especially in boreal forests and development of a communications program to keep Canadians and Canada’s global wood product customer base abreast of progress in habitat conservation.
“It all comes down to mutual trust and respect,” Mr. Cinq-Mars observes. Like Dr. Kimmins, Mr. Cinq-Mars has watched forestry in Canada move from one paradigm to the next: exploitation first, then administrative forestry and ecosystem management, and now social forestry.
“Canadian forests have long been used for privately produced products: timber, pulp, paper,” Mr. Cinq-Mars says. “These are all good, but now the public in starting to recognize non-timber values: fishing, hunting and camping for example. And elsewhere in our society there is a recognition that forests also provide ecological services we all need: carbon sequestration, climate control, flood and erosion control and improved air and water quality. Our challenge is to accommodate all of our needs and wants without forcing any part of our society to bear more than their share of the burden.”
Mr. Cinq-Mars also serves as president of the National Forest Strategy Coalition, a 55-member public-private partnership whose mission is implementation of Canada’s National Forest Strategy, a sweeping plan that calls for simultaneous and sustainable, ecosystem-based development of Canada’s forests and its forest products sector. “It is a bit of a miracle,” he says of the coalition’s remarkably diverse membership.
“We have coalition partners who until now have rarely seen eye to eye, including the Sierra Club and our forest products industry. This could not have happened were it not for the fact that all of our members feel the Forest Strategy is well balanced and evenhanded. There is something in it for everyone.”
That such a diverse group could discuss two seemingly conflicting objectives—a robust forest industry economy and an equally robust forest conservation strategy—in the same conversation attests to Mr. Cinq-Mars considerable diplomatic skill and, further, to the fact that Canadians know how to have a respectful dialogue with one another. “We have our disagreements from time to time,” he says, “but Canadians prefer not to waste time, money or energy fighting about problems that are common to all of us. We like the round table—the partnership approach. It is an underpinning in our society, not just where the environment is concerned, but with health care, social programs, all aspects of Canadian life. Even so, American-style radical environmentalism is creeping into Canada’s forest dialogue, especially in British Columbia, a fact that Mr. Cinq-Mars laments.
“There have been some protests, including tree sittings. A few have chained themselves to logging equipment, the same things you see in your country, including exaggeration and sensationalism to gain attention and money. But they can’t stop the world here like they can in the U.S., so I expect that so long as we can keep our national dialogue going, hold confrontation to a minimum and avoid costly litigation, public support for our evolving Forest Strategy will continue to grow.”
Unlike Canada, there is no national dialogue—or strategy—for managing and conserving forests in the United States. And in the current litigation-driven environment, it is unlikely one could be developed.
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But Canada and the United States are alike in one respect: the federal governments in both countries fund impressive forestry research programs. But there is [again] one major difference. In Canada, most federal research dollars flow into active management programs maintained by provincial scientists and foresters who work in concert with leaseholder forest products companies that do the harvesting, replanting and habitat conservation work to standards set by the provinces. But in the U.S. most [but not all] federally funded forestry research is more theoretical, meaning it cannot be quickly or cheaply transferred to the ground. And because the U.S. government no longer manages federal forests for timber production, private, state and tribal forest landowners are the primary end users of taxpayer-funded research that can be easily adapted for daily use: growth simulation models, fire models, soil-hydrology maps, habitat and site classification systems and forest inventory data.
“A theme in Canada today is identifying management regimes that resemble or approximate natural processes, just like in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s explains Jim Fyles, a Ph.D. forest ecologist at McGill University in Montreal. Dr. Fyles was recently selected to head the Sustainable Forest Management Network, a federally funded program that funds university-level research in much the same way that the National Science Foundation does in the U.S.
“The original idea was to simply devise management regimes that would emulate natural disturbance patterns, like wildfire, insect and disease infestations or storms,” he recalls. “But we have evolved from that rather unsophisticated view to a recognition of the very complexity of the question. The larger issue is that humans are here, and have needs that rarely match natural processes.”
As the new program leader for the research network, Dr. Fyles first challenge is to foster a research culture amongst stakeholders who are under no obligation to follow his recommendations, much less implement the network’s findings, whatever they may be.
“All of us who are engaged in research have to be careful not to stop on sensitive provincial toes,” he explains. “Most of Canada’s forests belong to them, not to the federal government or private industry. But in a broad sense we are helped in our work by the fact that our forests are so vast and our population is so small compared to yours.”
Beyond doubt the biggest challenge facing Dr. Fyles involves bridging vastly different stakeholder cultures: the timber industry, communities, Indian tribes [known as First Nations in Canada] and environmentalists.
“Fostering an early comfort level is key,” he says. “Scientists often lead cloistered lives, unaware of the rough and tumble national discourse that goes on around them. We have to change this by encouraging greater interaction between them and the stakeholders we serve. Otherwise, a great deal of very useful research will never be applied.”
But science does not deal in absolutes—and there are few forest scientists willing to respond to public worries with simple “Yes” or “No” answers. There is always a caveat; a fact that Dr. Fyles concedes will frustrate the network’s outreach.
“We scientists are very uncomfortable with absolutes,” he explains. “But if your question is, ‘Do we know enough to be managing our forests on such a large scale?’ the answer is ‘Yes,’ with the caveat that we will never know all that there is to know about the forests we depend on for so much, which is why we have a social responsibility to proceed, and a scientific responsibility to keep looking for answers to questions we cannot answer today.”
Of all the questions that are being asked by stakeholders—and consumers of Canada’s vast forest bounty—none is asked more often than this: Are Canada’s forests being sustainably managed? It is the question that has driven provinces, the Canadian federal government and Canada’s export-dependent forest products industry to embrace third party forest certification—seen by environmentally conscious consumers, among them Home Depot and Lowes, as the only true verification that Canada’s forests are, in fact, being managed sustainably.
“It is such a value-driven question,” Dr. Fyles observes. “As much as anything I think the answer lies in our commitment to keep asking questions and keep adapting our management practices as we learn more about forest productivity, habitat conservation and biological diversity. But clearly some of our past management practices were not sustainable, and clearly harvest levels will have to be reduced in some areas, if for no other reason than to accommodate an expanding forest reserve system.”
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Dr. Fyles’ many insights are reaf-firmed by Dr. David MacLean, a forest ecologist and Dean of the Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management at the University of New Brunswick.
“Monitoring of multiple species is thekey,” he says of Canada’s efforts to demonstrate to the world that its forests are being sustainably managed. “But, yes, we possess sufficient knowledge about our forests to proceed on large scales, and that is what we are doing. The main adjustment has been in the transition to harvesting regimes that more closely approximate natural disturbance patterns, not just wildfires but the often more subtle impacts of insects and diseases.”
The theme is not new. In fact, most private forestland owners in the United States embraced it a decade ago, leaving more dead snags and green trees on harvest sites for cavity nesting birds, leaving more large woody debris on the ground to help replenish soil nutrients and provide habitat for small mammals, insects, reptiles and amphibians.
“The old ‘cut it flat, burn it black and plant it back’ mindset has given way to a large scale effort to conserve biological legacies,” Dr. MacLean observes. “For example, how to design a harvest that approximates the natural aftermath of a spruce budworm outbreak or a wildfire that burns at varying intensities as it moves through a forest. We still have some distance to go in terms of striking a better balance between ecological function and timber production, but what we are now doing is certainly sustainable.”
Few scientists in Canada have devoted more time or study to replicating natural processes in managed forests than Dr. Stan Boutin, a wildlife biologist attached to the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. “We are painting on a fresh canvas,” he says of adaptive forest management in Alberta. “Our objective is to maintain system variability by reconciling forest practices with disturbance patterns that drive natural succession. It is the opposite of classic German forestry, which sought to control growth through even-age management.”
Dr. Boutin joined the UA faculty in 1986, but he later left the university for three years to work for Alberta Pacific, one of the province’s most admired lumber companies. As a result of this experience he views the industry through different eyes than do many of his research colleagues.
“I give the industry high marks for its willingness to accept change, to embrace our research on the ground,” he says. “We are asking them to leave five to 15% more trees behind in their cut blocks to create the structural components of future biological diversity; and they are doing it willingly. In fact, the creativity that we see in the cabs of our mechanical harvesting machines is stunning. Loggers are very keen observers of nature. Once we teach them how to think like a wildfire they do amazing work.”
Variable retention harvesting is the name given to the shift away from clearcuts that once covered thousands of acres in western Canada’s remote forests. By varying the size and shape of harvest units—and leaving large groups of residual trees in patches of varying sizes and shapes inside each unit—Dr. Boutin and his colleagues are approximating structural and biological diversity created by wildfires as well as insect and disease infestation.
“The patches of trees that are left behind are left for good,” he explains. “We won’t be going back after them in subsequent years. They form the biological legacies we want to pass on to the next forest.”
Dr. Boutin believes forests should be managed on a grand scale—millions of acres at a time if at all possible. How else, he says, can you effectively account for the risk that ecological legacies will be lost to natural disaster or human error?
“Many people believe forestry is simply a matter of managing tree growth and reproduction,” he begins. “This isn’t true. Forestry is about managing large landscapes for long periods of time. You need a land base large enough to hold all of the pieces you are trying to conserve, which means you need a land base large enough to allow you to distribute the impacts of human development. There is no other way in which to account for inevitable ecological losses caused by natural disaster or human error; no other way to avoid the steady increase in human activity that results when activity is confined to smaller and smaller spaces.”
 Columbia Forest Region Photo by Government of Canada |
In Alberta—and across most of Canada—grand scale forest management is still possible in a way that it is no longer possible in most industrialized nations; first because much of Canada’s vast forestland base is still virgin, second because the wildfire regimes that have dominated the country’s boreal forests for thousands of years are relatively easy to approximate, and third because the provinces own Canada’s forests and can manage them in any way they see fit. Unlike our U.S. Forest Service, provincial forestry organizations answer only to their provincial constituents, not the entire country.
“It makes a big difference in what we are able to do,” Dr. Boutin concedes.
Two time zones east of Edmonton, amid Quebec’s spectacular mixed conifer and hardwood forests Dr. Sylvie Gauthier, a fire ecologist with Natural Resource Canada’s Canadian Forest Service, is studying long-term wildfire cycles in the province’s commercial forests. Her objective mirrors that of forest scientists working in every Canadian province: identify management strategies that more closely resemble observable natural disturbance patterns.
“Our goal is to develop forest practices that promote the natural evolution of forests as well as the natural diversity of habitats,” she explains. “We have assumed that we could simply replace the large openings that wildfires create with harvesting regimes that produce similar sized openings, but we’re learning that it isn’t that easy.
We have created regions with a large amount of young forest. Now we need to develop harvesting systems that maintain the mix of species and the variety of structure observed under natural conditions. Variable retention harvesting systems do account for species and structural diversity, but we still need a spatial component—openings of varying sizes featuring [for example] mixes of randomly spaced small and large trees in stands, and a mixture of young, mature and old-growth forest in the landscape.”
For a time it was assumed that such intended randomness might result in more costly harvesting, and it is true that it costs are higher than they are for simple clearcuts, but according to Dr. Gauthier, the newer approaches she and her colleagues are testing may in fact yield more timber, with the added benefit that harvest sites might be ready for harvesting sooner than they might be if they were clearcut.
“As with all forest-related decisions, there are trade-offs,” she says. “Some factors, like increasing timber volumes, are easy to measure, and others, like changing habitat or maintaining biological diversity, are more difficult to measure. But we are making steady progress. What is most important is that the results of our research be applied on the ground as quickly as possible.”
Dr. Gauthier gives Canada’s provincial lumber and paper producers good marks for their willingness to put Canadian Forest Service research to the test, particularly in a time when many wonder aloud about whether the pace of harvesting needed to sustain the industry can continue with so much public attention focused on forest sustainability and biological diversity.
“We are clearly at a crossroads in Canada,” Dr. Gauthier concedes. “We have a vast forest that has never been harvested. Some people want it to stay that way, but I’m certain that it is possible to manage some of these forests in a sustainable way, while conserving biological diversity and producing wood and other economic benefits for northern communities. For scientists and society as well the key lies in learning how to minimize the ecological risks associated with harvesting. With knowledge and experience we can turn the unknown into the possible.”
Of all the forestry research projects underway in Canada few, if any, rivals EMEND, an acronym for Ecosystem Management Emulating Natural Disturbance. It spans an astonishing 125 square miles and involves partners from academia and industry. Collaborative research on this scale has never been undertaken on public forestland in the United States, not that it isn’t needed.
“They have turned us loose to find some answers,” says Dr. Jan Volney, one of two EMEND project leaders and Senior Research Scientist in Forest Insect Ecology with the Canadian Forest Service. “We are defining a new research paradigm for forestry, at least in Canada. Extensive collaboration, no turf battles and very few institutional barriers, just way I like it.”
It is clear that Jan Volney loves knowledge the same way Hammish Kimmons loves it. Books, scientific journals and reports are stacked high on every flat surface in their too-small offices, including chairs normally reserved for guests. Both men have also been in the forestry research game for a long time, 35 years in Dr. Volney’s case: long enough to be willing and able to challenge conventional wisdom.
“Canadians are sensitive to global issues, like carbon sequestration, forest certification and biological diversity, because they have become market factors for assessing forest management sustainability,” Dr Volney observes. “But the scientific underpinnings for many of the assumptions and conclusions that are being discussed aren’t fully developed yet. EMEND aims to find some quantifiable, measurable standards that can be used to answer ecological questions.”
The range of research projects underway in conifer, deciduous and conifer-deciduous forests 50 miles northwest of Peace River is indeed impressive: everything from 100% forest retention to zero retention, from prescribed fire to harvest only regimes, plus some related experiments in regeneration, soil nutrient dynamics, habitat diversity for birds and invertebrate species, hydrology, forest health, biomass productivity and factors that influence changes in microclimates.
“You could say we are trying to figure out what makes these forests tick,” Dr. Volney says. “We hope to determine which combinations of harvesting and regeneration techniques best maintain biological communities, spatial patterns in forest structure and ecosystem functions that have been influenced by wildfire for a very long time.”
Like all of the forestry research the Canadian Forest Service is conducting, EMEND has its own political sensitivities, beginning with the fact that the forests in which the work is being conducted belong to the citizens of Alberta, not the Canadian federal government. Moreover, these are economically vital commercial forests, not designated research areas in which harvesting would normally not occur.
“Everything is negotiated—and very political,” Dr. Volney says. “Our provinces are like your states, but they have as much autonomy as countries. It would be impossible for our federal government to impose a collective will. Of course, it would be possible for a large Canadian city—say Edmonton in the case of Alberta—to impose its will in a way that hurt rural, timber-dependent communities. But they haven’t yet, probably because the wealth our timber and gas industries generate is plainly evident in Edmonton.”
Does the sheer magnitude of Canada’s harvesting program worry Dr. Volney?
“Not at all,” he says. “I see systems recovering and I see lots of natural reproduction following harvest. But we need to constantly rebalance our harvesting equation so that we account for increasing forest productivity as well as natural losses caused by wildfire, insects and diseases. And we need to be sure we are managing our forests on the right geographic scale. Is it part of a province, an ecological region, all of Canada or perhaps North America in total? No one knows, but our two countries need to do some big picture thinking together. Otherwise, we are headed for biological problems somewhere down the road.”
Americans living in the rural U.S. West can be forgiven for having difficulty comprehending the enormous scale on which forestry occurs in Canada, much less Jan Volney’s vision, which he likens to the Marshall Plan, the U.S. led effort to rebuild war torn Europe after the Second World War. After nearly a century of prosperity, the West’s timber economy vanished in less than a decade following the litigation driven collapse of the federal timber sale program. Chalk it up to profoundly different balances of political power and very different social and cultural agendas in our two countries.
In Canada the provinces own the forests, make all the management decisions, collect the rent and pay the bills. Good paying jobs in logging and milling remain the economic lifeblood in hundreds of rural communities that still hold real political power. It is no wonder the provinces annually invest hundreds of millions of dollars in forestry research programs, or that they—and the Canadian federal government—have gone to such great lengths to demonstrate to environmentally anxious global markets that Canada’s forests are being sustainably managed.
So our story ends where it began: with a question. Will Canada claim forestry’s Holy Grail? Will Canadians embrace what Hammish Kimmins calls “social forestry” or will they get lost in the same wilderness that claimed us for 40 years. Will social forestry deliver on its promise to find a way in which those who love forests for what they are can share them with those who love them for what they produce? Or will Canadians finally descend into the same legal and political morass that killed much of our forest products industry and pushed America’s federal forests to the brink of ecological collapse. Lastly, will Canadians as a people continue to honor those who get their hands dirty every day, feeding, clothing and sheltering their nation, or will class warfare shred their society as it has ours? Don’t bet on it.
 British Columbia takes special care to maintain the diversity of its old-growth forests. Along the Pacific Coast, they are defined as being more than 250 years old, but inland, where trees donʼt live as long and wildfires are more frequent, 120–140 years old |
human need to use natural resources is fundamental to our continued presence on earth."