Media Clipping — Saturday, December 15, 2001, The Daily News, Halifax

Forest report had science

Letters to the editor

To the editor:

Reporter Stephen Bornais let Eldon Gunn off the hook by allowing him to make the claim that there was no science in the 450-page GPI Atlantic Forest Accounts reports. (Critic: No Science in Forestry Report, The Daily News, Dec. 12).

This kind of statement automatically puts the onus on the receiver of the comments to prove the statement is false instead of requiring the person making the claim to prove that its, in fact, true. While this might make interesting reading, it doesn't do justice to the issue being discussed, namely, whether we are going to be leaving much of a forest for our grandchildren.

As a journalist myself, I am always perplexed when I come across an article such as this, where just a little journalistic digging would have unearthed something a bit closer to the truth. Instead, Bornais chose only to juxtapose the two sides in the apparent conflict (Eldon Gunn of Nova Forest Alliance and Ronald Colman of GPI), but offered nothing to shed light on what is really going on.

The issue of science is an interesting one.

Gunn states researchers didn't use science in the two-volume report, only morality. Two points have to be made here. First, one need only turn to the more than 360 references used in the report - that's 360 books, articles from scientific journals, magazines, and newspapers, as well as scientific reports from relevant government departments, all about forestry.

Also referenced were numerous personal communications (primary sources), with various individuals from industry, government, and other relevant groups. Science was quite clearly used and so it is difficult to understand what Gunn means by no science.

Which brings me to my second point. The Gunns of the world would have us believe there is a scientific basis for clearcutting, since it is what happens 99 per cent of the time in this province, thereby providing a rationale for the public, who would find it unacceptable otherwise. The GPI report failed here.

We were unable to come up with a scientific reason why clearcutting should take place to the extent that it does. But we were able to discover that science has little, if anything, to do with clearcutting on this scale.

It's pure economics, according to the government department charged with looking after our forests. Economics, not science. The industry stakeholders involved in the NFA, who Gunn speaks for, know this too.

Another point of clarification: the GPI forest accounts can't take credit for saying the forests are going the way of the cod. The statement was originally made by the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy in l997 in response to the serious problem of overcutting on private lands in Nova Scotia.

Another point of clarification: our forests have not only been declining in the last 40 years, they've been declining for the last 200 years. Forty years is just the time period in which we happen to have forest inventories, provided by the Department of Natural Resources, which we were able to use to illustrate the decline.

Two-hundred years of land clearing, high-grading and clearcutting have made that happen. For Gunn to claim that the province's young forest age-class composition is all the fault of the budworm of the l970s leads me to question his motives entirely. It should have led Bornais, and the reader, to the same conclusion.

Linda Pannozzo
Researcher, GPI Forest Accounts

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