Thanks to Rick Jeffery, CEO of the Coast Forest Products Association, for his reminder of the importance of careful planning in relationship to the proposed cutting of the upper Walbran watershed (“Walbran plans balance green, economic values,” Sept. 23).
The Commission of Resources and Environment Vancouver Island (CORE) planning process he describes was initiated in the early 1990s because the existing practices were not working. This failure was becoming increasingly obvious to the main stakeholders, the people of B.C. Protests were ubiquitous and changes had to be made to the way that our forest lands were being managed.
If these protests had not happened, if the modus operandi of the time had not been challenged, we would have been left with a much-depleted natural environment on Vancouver Island. We survived and prospered, and we have a richer environment for the future as a result of the plan.
Protests caused change, and the change was for the good.
Perhaps we are in a similar situation again, and must re-examine our values and our thinking.
As Jeffery points out, in the late 20th century, there was a growing awareness of the need to protect more natural habitat around the world, and a target of 12 per cent for the amount of land to be protected was accepted by the global community. The 2000 land-use plan for Vancouver Island achieved a 14 per cent allocation.
However, it was never meant internationally that the 12 per cent target would be a cap on protection. It was recognized then, and increasingly recognized now, that some jurisdictions would need considerably more than that to achieve functional ecosystem protection due to their high biological diversity.
B.C. is such a place, and more specifically, Vancouver Island is such a place. A 2000 national report on wild species in Canada showed B.C. to be the province containing the greatest total number and proportion of species at risk.
Nationally and internationally, the number of endangered species has continued to soar. In the year 2000, when the CORE plan was developed, 11,046 species were on the global endangered species list; there are now more than double that number. Canada was late in establishing endangered species protection (2002), but 713 species are now formally recognized to be at risk, a number that increases every year.
The main cause of endangerment at both the international and national levels is habitat destruction. Clearly, we have not done enough to protect species or their habitat. If we had, these figures would show declining, not rapidly growing, numbers.
As a result, the global community, through the legally binding Convention on Biological Diversity, of which Canada is a signatory, has revised the amount of land that should be contained within protected areas and set the target of 17 per cent by 2020. This target value is far less than that recommended by conservation scientists, many of whom have now come to realize that “nature needs half” if we are to sustain the web of life on this planet, as well as maintain global livelihoods.
The target will rise again in the future. This is how it should be unless we can show that we are enhancing, rather than continually depleting, the natural environment and life-support system for future generations. Plans need to be adaptive and must reflect our most current state of knowledge, not that which we knew 20 years ago.
The CORE process and the 14 per cent might have been adequate when it was established, but it is far from adequate now and must reflect current knowledge and global commitments.
This is especially true in dealing with old-growth ecosystems such as the Walbran. Because of the length of time it takes to produce such ecosystems, any decisions to cut them are irreversible. We cannot uncut the magnificent wonder of the Douglas firs in Vancouver’s Lynn Valley that were towering giants up to 130 metres in height. They are gone. Similarly, in another 10 years, when we know so much more, we will not be able to uncut forests such as the upper Walbran. They will be gone.
We have already felled most of the coastal old growth on Vancouver Island and must now protect what little we have left for future generations.
Jeffery is right in his explanation of the past, but we need to carry that knowledge forward into the future and strive for continually better practices and not be entombed by these past plans. That is where we started out 20 years ago.
Philip Dearden is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria and has been involved in land-use issues in B.C. since the 1970s.
