An argument Against Forestry.

"The storm starts when the drops start dropping / When the drops stop dropping, the storm starts stopping." -Dr. Seuss

As I write this, my province is underwater. Friends and family have been completely evacuated or trapped in their homes, and the city I call home is cut off by land from the rest of the country. Water is saturating the ground so heavily the roads and bridges are collapsing. Landslides are wiping out critical infrastructure and leaving motorists stranded. The harsh wind has led an empty barge across the water, leaving it beached at Stanley Park.

As a child, I remember four distinct and predictable seasons. Spring was always wet and mild; the sky was a lighter grey from February until May or June. Summer was a mix of cloudy days and bright blue skies; the temperature was warmer than spring but entirely reasonable. Around September, we would fall into autumn once more. Halloween was usually cold and rainy, and our costumes had to incorporate a jacket. In winter, it would usually be a wet, sticky cold, and it would usually snow just in time for Christmas and would be gone by the end of January or February when the rain would start again. We barely ever saw droughts or had water restrictions. We have a love-hate relationship with the name Raincouver.

It seems, though, as an adult, my experiences about our climate and weather patterns are anxiety-inducing. We no longer have truly distinct seasonal patterns; instead, the regulated seasons are just chaos. I don't even recognize the place I grew up in, which started changing rapidly after 2003. The Okanagan had a massive forest fire, and since then, fires, pine beetle, flooding, and creatures facing extinction have been the norm.

Then in 2020, the pandemic begins wildly spreading, covid is reaching every corner of the world. There are no longer geological barriers that stop the spread of this virus. We had to create barriers within our homes' walls or the masks on our faces to attempt to slow nature down. The year was devastating for many families and a time of reflection and self-growth for others.

Unfortunately, 2021 continued to push humanity's limits. Just as we started to use a brilliant breakthrough of scientific technology to immunize the masses, our interlude began — a dance of Earth, wind, fire and water: in BC, we experienced the weather phenomenon known as the "heat dome." Our provinces' temperatures break local and national heat records daily. Fires raged across most of the province, burning the town of Lytton to the ground and terrorizing many others. Blake and I were in the middle of some of it. We were in the Okanagan for work, and then we travelled to northern BC to film an interview. The air quality was so poor in areas the masks we were wearing were a blessing. We all feared losing everything to fire. It's all any of us could talk about in passing.

As we drove around the province, the one thing that stood out loud and clear was that logging wouldn't stop. As the forests burned around us, logging trucks were still loaded to the hilt and rolling down the highways. Ancient trees were felled quickly to avoid the future protection order. There were large scars in the mountains from various stages of clear-cutting.

Many of our friends and family dealt with evacuation notices, uprooting their kids and pausing their lives. Their mental health started suffering even more than during the lockdown. They didn't know if they'd recognize the home or community if anything survived. But industry keeps chipping away at the finite resources left.

Luckily, heavy rains came, and many fires snuffed themselves out. We knew we'd be in for a long, cold winter. Perhaps this would be a break physically and mentally from the anxiety-fueled year and a half we had all collectively experienced.

Cue the "Vancouver tornado," "bomb-cyclone," and "atmospheric river" in rapid succession.

I sit here writing this while isolated from the rest of the province as I watch friends and family scramble to pack up their lives in camper vans and move to slightly less affected areas. Their motorhomes, campervans and go-bags have remained packed since summer evacuation orders. All escape routes have their perils, and people are in a panic navigating how to get to their safe houses without being carried away by landslides and raging rivers. High winds are knocking trees into power lines and creating volatile conditions. And once again, the topic of logging and deforestation is creeping in.

The Pacific Northwest and a brief history of logging in BC:

The pacific northwest (PNW) includes northern California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and British Columbia. Some maps also include the Prince William Sound region of Alaska. This area is protected on the east by mountains and the west by the ocean. Scientists refer to this region as a temperate rainforest, and this ecosystem is a subregion of the Cascadia bioregion. Due to its unique conditions, this subregion has existed as a conifer hotspot for about 200 million years. To put that into context, that includes the Triassic and Jurassic periods. Flowering plants were introduced in the Cretaceous period and flourished, again, due to the particular conditions.

According to David Wade, author of Rainforest: Ancient Realm of the Pacific Northwest (2000), the PNW is the only region on Earth where this ecosystem thrives in such considerable size. We live in such a unique environment; we should cherish it and protect it. Instead, we've sold it all to business. 60% of British Columbia's rainforests are considered harvestable land and seen by industries as nothing more than a tradeable commodity.

In the early days of forestry in BC, around the 1820s, trees were harvested primarily for ship masts. The gold rush in the Caribou created a need for roads, rail, housing, heating, cooking and commercial establishments. Despite the gold rush going bust, other minerals and metal deposits were of value, so the small towns built would often remain and demand timber never let up. Logging was extremely labour intensive and slow because they only had human will and animal labour. Once the 1940's introduced combustible engines, our forests started coming down faster than ever. That's okay, though; this resource is so plentiful we could never run ou, right?

The donkey engine and other industry-related technology allowed us to get more giant trees and deeper into the forests from the roads. The more challenging terrain drove the lumber mills and workers to innovate technology. As the technology improved, foresters gained more access to premium timber.

Settling colonies created a high demand, and technology allowed extraction volume to increase steadily. Ambition, lack of foresight, and disregard for any formal study around industry actions' impacts trumped sustainability and foresight.

Our current situation:

Oversight and misuse bring us into our current era. We are gaslit to believe that the BC economy would collapse without this harvest level, and the Government would go bankrupt. None of this is entirely accurate. Our economy in BC is not as dependent on the forestry industry as the spin doctors tell us — in fact, in 2020, agriculture, fishing, hunting, and forestry collectively only made up 2.23% of the GDP. Thirteen other categorized industries outgrossed forestry by about 90%.

There has been a loss of 47% in forestry jobs from 2000 to 2015. An astounding 27% of job loss is due to the mechanization of specific tasks in the industry. The closing of sawmills has been devastating on the communities that relied on that financial support; however, this just monopolized those companies that still exist, creating record profits. I want to point out here an additional 33% job loss has occurred from 2015 to 2020. The job loss happens from within, and the profits benefit the fewer hands at the top.

The Government is encouraging maximum productivity:

How on Earth did we allow our province to be seen as one giant farm to be harvested at will by an industry ready to export most of the spoils? Forestry Tenures. Forestry tenure agreements divide public land for private profit with virtually no consultation with the people. Indigenous communities are often brought into the conversation to express their opinions but disregarded in favour of economic growth. Forestry tenures have a particular time frame that grants a company permission to harvest trees on public lands.

The people's Government promotes "harvesting opportunities" offered to private corporations to harvest public lands. And despite protest from the people, the Government's effort and decisions favour industry. The Government encourages maximum productivity of the forests outlined in the company tenure. And while wildlife protection acts appear in the Ministry of Forests and Range Act, the information is often interpreted so that the environment suffers.

Even with good intentions, the industry is still fragmenting or destroying habitats. Unclear definitions and boundaries and poor communication often lead to misinterpretation and damage to protected communities. For example, Blake and I are currently working on a film project that takes us to northern BC. We see fragmented wetlands affect populations of amphibians and other animals who rely on that ecology.

Indigenous people did it right:

For tens of thousands of years, Turtle Island was maintained by over 60 million indigenous peoples sustainably. The various adapted ecosystems regulated climate, aquatic and land creatures flourished, and multiple tribes or bands (terms vary by region) worked congruently with the land. Plains people tended to move with the animals. Some regions thrived with some farming, some hunting. On the coast here in BC, the land was so rich and diverse that the people who adapted to the various biomes here were primarily able to set up a community in one place. Hand-catching fish, selective hunting, and gathering vegetation ensured food stability for the season and future generations. Traditional practices are still essential today; however, colonial society has depleted resources, and some colonial laws prevent traditional hunting in certain areas. Indigenous communities have a universal understanding that this land and time are only borrowed and must be protected for all future generations.

As stated earlier, BC lumber harvesting started around the 1820s. In about 200 years, we have found mechanisms and technology to make harvesting faster and more efficient, leading to larger clear-cutting. Europeans also brought an 18th-century concept that solely focused on a nation obtaining wealth called "economy." The economy is the underlying motivator for the decisions made in the countries we now know as Canada and the United States. Technology and the never-ending search for wealth created a doomed situation for the health of the Pacific Northwest and, quite frankly, the state of the world.

How is forestry affecting the environment:

Our stable weather in BC and the health of our temperate forests are forever linked. When our forests are healthy and flourishing with biodiversity, we have four predictable seasons and mild weather. The land takes care of itself.

British Columbia is primarily new growth now with an emphasis on money-making varieties. Large clear-cut patches litter the landscape that genuinely showcases the efficiency in harvesting large quantities of trees. A satellite view of the province shows a patchwork of various stages of this clear-cut process.

The state of our environment is currently abysmal. Our old-growth deforestation and over-extraction have created a space here in BC (about the size of California for those not from here) ripe for these extreme and previously rare weather patterns.

Clear-cutting and the increase of forest fires are also linked. All elements usually present fire-resistant forests like moss, moisture in the dead floor, mycelial networks underground and many other hard-working systems are destroyed. What is left is soil erosion and kindling. Silvicultures uniformity creates conditions for catastrophic fires.

Clear-cutting also disrupts riparian zones. Riparian zones (a perimeter of land around the edge of the water source) that are healthy have deep roots that protect the border of the water source and the land. When the riparian land is sick or damaged, it changes the properties of the soil and often, this will lead to the breakup of the land. The loose soil leads to erosion which then leads to slides. In the last few days, we've seen runoff on the Coquihalla highway that has taken out many trees and large sections of land, eroding into the raging and bloated rivers. Healthy forests would absorb a lot of this rainfall, and while flooding may still occur, it would be at a less devastating scale.

Conclusion:

We need reform: period. At this point, the industry is being heard at the best seat at the Governments table. No more. Regular citizens need to make their move. Our planet is reaching a critical mass where it can no longer sustain life as we know it. Ignorance, lack of education, greed, short-sighted decisions, narcissism, and this constant chase for a human-derived concept of economic wealth is killing us.

We are playing God, and we are failing miserably at it. We cannot manage nature better than she can manage herself.

Winter is coming. It will be long, cold, wet and dark for us here on the Pacific coast. The once-in-a-lifetime events will continue to happen at a more rapid pace. We are creating more oversized pockets of unlivable dead zones. If we don't start immediately working within our means, we will no longer be able to survive on this planet. I'm in my 30's. I may see devastating famines before I retire, and who knows what else. We are destroying ourselves, which goes against instinct. We exploit rare resources on this planet to make money for what? Ego?

-Amanda