PART 1
For the past three and a half years, the Government of British Columbia and the B.C. forest industry have been reassuring the world that all is well in the woods.
After decades of overcutting and mismanagement, and years of international controversy over B.C.'s forest practices and policy, the government promised dramatic changes in the way logging is done: a reduction in the harvesting of old-growth forests, protection of areas critical for maintaining biodiversity, the banning of clearcutting in sensitive areas, protection for streams and wildlife, and a reduction in the size of clearcuts.
All this would change through a series of programs including the Forest Practices Code, the Timber Supply Review Process, and the Protected Areas Strategy. The centre-piece, the Forest Practices Code, was unveiled in November 1993 and enacted in June 1995. Along with the programs, a multi-million dollar public relations campaign was developed to promote all the supposed changes.
But the net result of all this has meant almost no changes on the ground in the forest. Logging companies in B.C. are still clearcutting as many trees, species continue to be put at risk and streams continue to be destroyed. The liquidation of B.C.'s magnificent old growth forests, including globally important rainforests, continues.
Clearcutting is the harvesting method for 92% of l0,000 cutblocks approved by the B.C. Ministry of Forests since June 1995.1 83% of streams in 1996 cutblocks were clearcut right to their banks.2 And in the B.C. coastal region, which contains the ancient temperate rainforests, on average 97% of the approved cutblocks are to be clearcut.3 Moreover, to date less than 6% of B.C.'s low-elevation old-growth forests, the hotspots of biodiversity, have been protected in parks.4
The broken promises exposed in this report should rightly concern the international community. According to a report from the World Resources Institute, over three quarters of the Earth's original forest cover is gone -- much of it destroyed within the last three decades.5 Canada is one of only 3 regions in the world (along with Russia and Brazil) which still has significant remaining primary forest -- about 25% of what remains globally is in Canada.6 Nonetheless, the Council of Forest Industries admits that Canada's forests are being felled at the rate of one acre every l2.9 seconds.7
In B.C., the government promised to slow the ferocious rate of cut, but it has not. Instead, the allowable annual cut for the province has gone down insignificantly and remains millions of cubic metres above government estimates of sustainable levels.8
In the fragile coastal temperate rainforest of B.C. 53% has already been logged. On Vancouver Island over 70% of the rainforest has already been destroyed.9
The World Resources Institute, drawing on the expertise of 90 of the world's top forest specialists, states that two-thirds of B.C.'s temperate rainforest "has been degraded by logging or other development, and much of what remains intact outside protected areas is slated for logging in coming years."10 Most of the remaining rainforest valleys are threatened by logging or roading within the next ten years.
Despite all the promises, nothing has changed in B.C.'s battered forests. But perhaps the most absurd aspect of what is happening in B.C.'s forests is this: a 1997 study by B.C. economic consultants, Michael Mascall and Barbara Campbell, has found that, during the six-year period from 1988 to 1994, the B.C. forest industry received public investment by Canadian taxpayers to the tune of more than $2.5 billion per year.11 Quite literally, Canadians have been paying the B.C. forest industry to cut down the public's Crown forests and pocket the profits -- leaving the public with a devastated ecosystem and higher taxes.
Nevertheless, for the past several months, the industry has been complaining loudly about higher B.C. stumpage fees and so-called "higher costs" for logging under the Code, claiming anywhere from $600 million to $2 billion in extra costs to meet the legalities of the Code.
While unveiling the proposed Code in November 1993, then Premier Mike Harcourt had announced: "Our objective is to dramatically change the way B.C.'s forests are managed and to better protect both the environment and wildlife. Until now, the attitude has been that the forests were there to be exploited. Those days are over."12 Just before his trip to Europe in 1994 to promote the Code, Harcourt claimed, "I'm here to say we've stopped the chop. We've changed practices dramatically."13
None of the rhetoric has turned out to be true.
The allowable annual cut (AAC) of the public's Crown forests has actually increased since July 1995 when the Forest Practices Code was introduced.14
It has been well known for years that the AAC in the province is simply not sustainable and is in fact millions of cubic metres above a sustainable level. As far back as l980, the B.C. Ministry of Forests, in its "Resource Analysis Report," was warning about overcutting and telling the forest industry that "physical limitations [of the old-growth wood supply] are now in sight."15
By l99l, there was wide-spread concern both within the Ministry of Forests and among the public about the fact that the AAC was more than 20% above long-term projections for sustainability.16
In order to deal with this problem the province initiated an extensive Timber Supply Review process. The purpose of this was to bring the cut level down to levels that were closer to government estimates of the sustainable "long term harvest levels".
Also in 1991 the government introduced the Protected Areas Strategy and the following year it created the Commission on Resources and the Environment, a provincial land use planning process. Both of these programs were introduced to contribute to making B.C. forestry more sustainable. Both were expected to have significant downward impacts on timber harvesting levels. In 1995 the Forest Practices Code became law with expectations that the changes in logging would require further reductions in harvest levels, with predictions ranging from 6 to 16%.
And in March l995, B.C.'s Chief Forester revealed that "less than l2 per cent of B.C. has mature stands of trees in areas considered harvestable," while "another ll per cent of the land base is covered by immature forests" -- a clear indication, he said, that the current allowable annual cut is well above the long-term sustainable harvesting level.17
Five years later at the end of 1996 and the conclusion of all of these processes, when the Chief Forester finished revising the AAC determinations for the entire province, the overall rate of cut had been reduced by only 0.4%, from 71.4 million cubic metres to 71.1 million cu.m.18
While even the Ministry of Forests admits that the B.C. industry is logging at least l0 million cubic metres more than it should be for the cut to be sustainable, all the promises to lower the rate of cut are yet to be fulfilled.19
And in some areas the cut is actually increasing. The total rate of cut for about half the province's 7l Timber Supply Areas and Tree Farm Licences has been increased instead of decreased.
The Chief Forester, in recalculating five-year AAC's under the Timber Supply Review process, has alloted increases for 37 Timber Supply Areas and Tree Farm Licences.20
In some areas the cut level is several times above the long term harvest level. For example, in the Nass Valley the sustainable yield is 385,000 cubic metres but the cut level was set at 1.15 million cubic metres. In the Midcoast district where most of the remaining temperate rainforest is concentrated the cut level is approximately double the long term harvest level.
The current level of overcut means that we are now in the situation where all the accessible old-growth forests will be liquidated before a sufficient amount of second-growth forests are available for logging.21
The next round of AAC determinations won't be completed until December, 2001.
And the current reality is:
By the end of l996, the actual annual timber harvest from Crown land for that year was 67.6 million cubic metres, up from l995 when it was 66.8 million cubic metres.22
The unsustainable rate of cut is the single biggest ecological forestry problem we have. Despite openly acknowledging the overcut problem, in spite of the creation of new parks, despite CORE, despite the Forest Practices Code and the Timber Supply Review, the rate of cut has not slowed.