While Vancouver Island isn't the only place in North America
where environmentalists and the forestry industry are at
loggerheads, some of the most bitter and high-profile
confrontations have taken place here. The island's wet climate is
particularly favourable to the growth of thick temperate
rainforest , part of a belt that once stretched from Alaska to
northern California. The most productive ecosystem on the planet,
old-growth virgin Pacific rainforest contains up to ten
times more biomass per acre than its more famous tropical
counterpart - and, though it covers a much smaller area, it is
being felled at a greater rate and with considerably less media
outrage. Environmentalists estimate that British Columbia's portion
of the Pacific rainforest has already been reduced by two- thirds;
all significant areas will have been felled, they predict, within
about ten or fifteen years. The powerful logging industry claims
two-thirds survive, but even the Canadian government - largely in
thrall to and supportive of the industry - concedes that only a
small percentage of the BC rainforest is currently protected.
What is clear is that the government wants a very firm lid kept
on the whole affair. In 1990 it commissioned a report into
public opinion on the issue in the United Kingdom, which
takes half of all British Columbia's plywood exports,
three-quarters of all its lumber shipments to Europe, and a third
of all Canada's paper pulp output. It observed that "UK public
opinion appears to be highly uncritical of Canadian forestry,
largely because awareness of the subject is low … [there is] a
reassuringly romantic and simplistic image of Canadian forestry
based on a lumberjack in a checked shirt, felling a single tree."
The report concluded that "media attention and coverage of Canadian
forestry management issues should not be sought". It's hard to see
that opinions will have changed much since.
No such apathy exists in British Columbia, however. The
controversy over logging often pits neighbour against neighbour,
for some 250,000 in the province depend directly or indirectly on
the industry, and big multinationals dominate the scene.
Employment is a major rallying cry here, and the prospect of
job losses through industry regulation is usually enough to
override objections. The trend towards automation only adds
fuel to the argument: by volume of wood cut, the BC forestry
industry provides only half as many jobs as in the rest of Canada,
which means, in effect, that twice as many trees have to be cut
down in BC to provide the same number of jobs.
Some environmental groups have resorted to such tactics
as fixing huge nails in trees at random - these ruin chainsaws and
lumber-mill machinery, but also endanger lives. Countless people
have been arrested in recent years for obstructing logging
operations. The most level-headed and impressive of the
conservation groups, the Western Canada Wilderness Committee
(WCWC), condemns these acts of environmental vandalism, and instead
devotes its energies to alerting the public to the landslide damage
and destruction of salmon habitats caused by logging, and the
dioxin pollution from pulp mills that in the past has closed
220,000 acres of offshore waters to fishing for shellfish. They
point out that the battle is over what they call "the last cookies
in the jar", for only a handful of the island's 91 watersheds over
12,000 acres have escaped logging; the old-growth bonanza is nearly
over, they argue, and the industry might as well wean itself over
to sustainable practices now, before it's too late.
In the meantime, however, ninety percent of timber is still
lifted from the rainforest instead of from managed stands,
clear-cutting of old-growth timber is blithely described by the
vast McMillan company as "a form of harvesting", and independent
audits suggest that companies are failing to observe either their
cutting or replanting quotas. The provincial government has pledged
to improve forestry practices, but only a tiny percentage of the
province lies within reserves with a degree of environmental
protection