Media Clipping — Saturday, March 9, 2002, The Halifax Herald

99 per cent clearcutting: Axes flash anew in forest fight

By Ralph Surette

CONFLICT over forest policy has been burning hotter and hotter this winter, although not entirely in public view, as an embattled forestry establishment struggles to avoid admitting there's any problem at all with its relentless clearcutting.

In the most recent episode, the Woodlot Owners and Operators Association, the Environmental Network Forest Caucus and the Ecology Action Centre pulled out of the Nova Forest Alliance (NFA), after two other groups left earlier.

The NFA is the Nova Scotia version of a national program funded by Ottawa to pursue best practices and improved forestry. The dissident groups say they've been suckered: that the Nova Scotia government and the big operators who dominate the NFA have scuttled all movement towards sustainable forestry while pretending to pursue it, using their presence as a cover to pursue "liquidation" forestry.

Tensions rose last fall when GPI Atlantic released an elaborate report, citing hundreds of sources, that rang the loudest alarm yet on the decline of Nova Scotia's forest, pointing to the loss of virtually our entire stock of old growth trees and the reduction of the forest to small, knotty wood.

The establishment counterattacked in the form of an analysis and statements by Eldon Gunn, professor of engineering at Dalhousie University and, incidentally, chairman of the NFA. Gunn accused GPI (for "genuine progress index") of having "no science" behind its report and of indulging in "landscape myths" by harking back to times when the forest was in better shape. He also claimed that the diminishing age of the forest was explained by the spruce budworm infestation of the 1970s, and pooh-poohed examples of sustainable forestry as part-timers and hobbyists messing around.

GPI counterattacked with another large report, not only defending its science but accusing Gunn of misrepresenting the original report from end to end – indeed, of hardly reading it at all – for the sole purpose of belittling it. Especially, it pointed out, the budworm was a Cape Breton/Colchester County affair whereas the entire forest was degrading, and had been long before the budworm.

And it repeated a devastating statistic: The "value-added" – basically the jobs spun off from the raw resource – of Nova Scotia forestry is only one-third of Ontario's, one-half of Manitoba's and two-thirds of New Brunswick's. If the public could see it clearly, this would be the same argument we're having over natural gas: What are we getting in return for the exploitation of our resource? Since we not only gave Crown lands away to large companies but subsidized them in various ways for decades as well, the answer might be: less than nothing.

What Gunn meant by "no science" was ultimately that GPI deviated from the standard one-dimensional accounting method: wood in, wood out.

GPI argues that watershed protection, wildlife habitat, soil degradation, recreation potential and other factors must also be counted in the true value of a forest, which also seems to be the public's view.

The sticking point: Not only is clearcutting merciless, but 99 per cent of all cutting in Nova Scotia is clearcutting. The establishment can't in the slightest accept any deviation. The Nova Scotia government has been improving its policy, including with a package in January extending 30-metre buffers along waterways (which can be selectively cut but not clearcut) to private land and requiring that "clumps" be left in clearcuts every few hectares. Still, this falls short of challenging the clearcutting juggernaut. It would have been more impressive, even as a symbolic gesture, had government, for example, tripled the width of the buffers, requiring at least token selective cutting. But even a token is apparently too much.

If the powers that be accepted that even a significant fraction of forest activity should be selection cutting, it might break the ice and be considered the beginning of progress. It might also ease the pressure for protected areas, since a select-cut forest is an intact forest even while being cut. But money, big technology and old Nova Scotia politics – an unfortunate mix – dictate otherwise. Meanwhile, watch for the next round. The tensions necessarily rise as the slaughter progresses.

Copyright © 2002, Ralph Surette