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Episode Air Date: April 16th, 2020

Transcript: 

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<<Music: April Showers- ProleteR>>

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[00:00:19.950] - DS
Hi, I'm your host, DevonSimpson. Welcome to WildWay a podcast for those who are sustainable. Those who want to be sustainable and those who have a hankering for learning. On today's episode, we're going to investigate the current state of sustainable forest management. And we're going to talk about indigenous and non-indigenous collaboration. But first, let me set the scene a bit.

I'm in the Capilano watershed in North Vancouver, right below Cleveland Dam. This area is a part of the temperate coastal rainforest where Douglas Firs and Western Red Cedars were logged in the early nineteen hundreds. I've come here to say hi to Grandpa Capilano. He's almost a thousand years old and he's a tree, an old growth Douglas fir, to be exact, and probably because of how difficult it would have been to remove it from this canyon. It was spared by loggers.

He seems lonely. An ancient relic in the second growth forest fenced off from the path appears to be a bit of a spectacle. There's a huge dump right next to it. And you can see X marks from where the loggers chopped it down 100 years ago. No chain saws back then as far back as I can remember. I've been infatuated with forests, camping, hiking, playing among the trees. We British Columbians are truly blessed to be in the presence of some of the world's most amazing forests.

B.C. coastal temperate rainforests contain some of the most productive photosynthesize and ecosystems. They make up 25 percent of the world's temperate rainforests (Langlois, 2011).  . Around half of these trees are old growth, meaning that they contain trees of a mixed age, ranging from about 250 years old to a thousand years old. In a media release December twenty nineteen, the Sierra Club B.C. states that these forests are among those that contain the highest carbon storage per hectare. Through the persistence of clearcutting, B.C. remains of 'Brazil of the north'. The cooler climate in temperate rainforest as opposed to tropical rainforests like those found in Brazil allow for slower decomposition of organic material. Because of this, a large amount of fungi and mushroom species have flourished in these forests. There are some great studies that are being done right now on the symbiotic relationships between fungi and tree roots. They explore the nutrient exchange between the two. Every time a new report comes out, it only goes to show that there's a lot left to be discovered in these mysterious and biomass rich forest ecosystems.

Today, the main threats to b.c.'s forest are habitat loss integration. Old growth forests in particular are a concern for a couple reasons. Because of climate change, they will never grow back to their original state and the species that live here cannot live in younger same age forests such as those planted in logged areas and the logging industry targets the places with the largest trees first. The Ancient Forest Alliance asserts that the movement towards second growth logging is inevitable when the unprotected old growth runs out.

This Sierra  Club B.C. calls for Canadians to increase conservation and have stricter forestry laws that improve management. This includes indigenous protected areas that are aligned with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2020). A study on the authority of forest governance found that across Canada, the current problem of forest management is a void between the well-being of Canadians and the ecological integrity and assessment of forest stewardship (Böhling, 2019). Policies found that marginalized communities within Canada are the most affected by mismanagement.

This is because they typically rely on these natural resources in place, high cultural importance on them. So we have our solution. Save all the trees. I wish it was that simple.

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[00:03:44.400] - CBC NEWS ClIP
It's being called a crisis. Workers at another B.C. lumber mill, Cambridge, are holding Trent Amer's and contractors furious, meaning layoffs for 300 loggers. Methey has been plagued by a series of mill curtailments and closures have value added. If you don't have anything to add value to.

[00:04:03.030] - DS
Oh boy. I guess we should talk about what value added forestry looks like. Value Added describes the act of turning raw lumber into a finished product. Much of this is not occurring in British Columbia, leaving rural communities at a loss for jobs. Some research studies have estimated that three billion dollars of raw logs have been exported from British Columbia (Parfitt, 2017). The way we do forestry needs to change. It needs to be sustainable. Second, growth value added forestry model.

Here's my conversation with a B.C. forester. She's working toward just that, making our forests sustainable.

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[00:04:39.300] - CP
I'm Cheryl Power. And put it in a nutshell, I am an assistant manager with the University of British Columbia's Research Forest. And actually they have two different research forest. So I'm the one that's in Maple Ridge on the coast that's called the Malcolm Knapp Research Forest. I'm one of the foresters here and I manage all of the silver culture and a lot of the forest operations. And we also have a lot of research and education programs going on here that I'm involved in, in forestry and in silver culture.

We're were looking at the services that an ecosystem can provide. And sustainability is about being sure that those forest ecosystems stay healthy and resilient and they can continue to provide all of these services that we need. But for me, sustainability is about more than just the ecosystem itself. It's about how humans are interacting with each other and with forest ecosystem here. You can't really have sustainability like you can. You can work out, for example, how much is being removed from the forest for human needs or what are the impacts on the forest because of human needs and what inputs we need to put back in.

Like, for example, tree planting or something like that to replace that. But that's that's an analytical exercise and we can do that. But it's more than that. It's it's humans figuring out how they're going to reconcile with each other, for example, with First Nations, but also just with the earth, like collectively as humanity. How are we going to have a sustainable relationship with the Earth, with the ecosystems that support us? Humans have been practicing Soulsville culture for at least hundreds of years.

And as you know, consumption of for us on various levels has proceeded and progressed throughout the world to varying degrees. So culture has been a means to ensure that those inputs that I was talking about aren't happening to, you know, to try to make sure that the forest becomes productive again as quickly as possible and to the maximum extent possible. So things like silver culture and even this whole field of ecological restoration are very, very similar endeavors. It's basically trying to ensure that that soils and biological diversity and say trees are an obvious example because so more trees to make sure that they are restored and that, you know, in silver culture is more specific to growing trees.

And for us to make sure that they have the diversity and that they have just the stalking, we would call it, meaning just that all of the areas are reoccupied again by trees as soon as possible to make up for what we've a research force or a very special thing. I mean, in British Columbia, we're really blessed because most of the forest land is public land. Over 90 percent, actually close to 95 percent of the forest in British Columbia is publicly owned and therefore, most of it is.

Accessible to the public, you know, albeit with some reasonable rules. In a research forest there. They're very special case. They're just tiny little parts of b.c.'s Forest. And we actually have really lovely trails, systems and roads that can be hiked on. But we have a fair amount of restriction on what kinds of recreation can take place because we have to protect all the research projects. And there's a lot of very long term research projects going on.

[00:08:32.610] - DS
So what's like a main project that you're working on right now?

[00:08:36.100] - CP
oh' Boy there have been so many over the years. So this research forest started in the 1940s. We actually have about a thousand different research projects that have been done here, very multi-disciplinary. It's just about everything you can think of that you might want to study in a forest. One of my interesting projects that crosses between research and and just, you know, my silver culture operations that I'm doing is as part of my regular routine work is below ground ecology and biodiversity work. And what we call different silvaculture system.

And that's being done in collaboration with Susanne Smart, who you might have heard of, who has looked at below ground on fungal neck and neck trees. And it's not just the trees. There there's many other plants involved even, but focusing mainly on the on the trees here and how they communicate and transfer resources to one another and how that may be enhanced under types of silver culture that leave. These are what she's termed mother trees, meaning some of the bigger, older sort of HUBB trees in that ecosystem that provide a whole lot of connections that make the new forest potentially healthier.

One of a number of her new installations all across B.C., mostly focusing on Douglas Fir and its role in the below ground ecology, but also looking at the whole range of the species and the silver culture and how to make sure that forests under the stress from changing climate can be more resilient and and sustainable and healthy in the future. So it's a big project. It's really great to be involved with, Suzanne, as I mentioned, for a long time.

So I'm I'm very interested in her work. And we've we've talked about it many times over the years. So I've worked very closely with Suzanne and and others in her group putting that project together and doing the reforestation in it. And that's a project that's very, very long term, very educational. They'll be a major project for decades to come. You know, I don't know if everybody realizes, but when we think about forests and how sustainable they are, I think one thing that's really interesting is, is, you know, we we harvest trees and then we replant trees, you know, every year.

And that happens here in many other places of reforestation is a big thing. And the tree planters that are working for me now, you know, they're incredible. That's one of the toughest, most demanding jobs that there is. And it takes really, really special people to be able to do a job like that. I just can't say enough about what they're doing for all of us here. Trees are going to absorb a lot of carbon emissions. They're going to help her or at least slow climate impacts.

We need to plant a lot more trees. That's what the United Nations and the governments of most countries and the scientists is saying. That's going to be really challenging. I was I actually was looking at some numbers. There's a big jump country planting this year. I think it's over 300 million trees that are going to be planted this year because there's been all these wild fires and forest health issues like diseases and insects. They actually take out a lot more forest every year.

These are kind of, you know, forces of nature. You know, the natural disturbances, they take out a lot more than people are logging every year. Three hundred, three hundred and ten million trees this year about was the figure I was looking at. That's how many trees are going to be planted. So there's a real uptick. I need I need people.

[00:12:31.800] - DS
Thank you so much for talking to us today cheryl

[00:12:34.820] - CP
 OK, bye.

[00:12:37.740] - DS
So far, we have found that social justice and environmental justice are intrinsically linked to crisis as a forest management. Well, the timber companies, they want to have old growth forests, the oldest in the world. And the second, the exploitation of raw logs and the closure of mills that has massive job losses in B.C..

But there's also a third from the middle of the seventeen hundreds. To the end of the two thousand consecutive. Treaties, legislation and policies of Canadian governments have systematically displaced indigenous people from their lands and attempted to assimilate them into non-indigenous Canadian society (Nenko, 2019). Most indigenous communities reside within forested areas of Canada and have close cultural and economic attachments to the land, thus making them particularly exposed (Halofsky et at 2018). Indigenous communities want decision making that is socially just and economically sustainable (Böhling, 2019). Engagement and inclusive development with indigenous communities is key to a mainstream adaptation of a new forest management system (Caverly et al. 2020).

Did you know that 94 percent of the forests in Canada are under public ownership?

Throughout my research for this podcast, I saw a lot of enthusiasm for ecosystem based management, a change in force management is really the switching of governing authorities and involving and recognizing communities and strengthening the local powers, really making them the forest stewards (Böhling, 2019). The idea of a community forest has been around since 1945. But it was really in the 2000s that they became a thing. In 2004, there was a timber reallocation and changes to the Forestry Act allowed for four pilot programs of community forests (BCCFA, 2016).

Today 2020, there are 63 community forests across British Columbia, right north of Vancouver. A new community forest is being piloted in Squamish. A study found that community forests created over time this unexpected union of neighborliness between indigenous and non-indigenous community members. They found an increased well-being and this was all possible because it clarified and recognized indigenous rights (Pinkerton, 2019). The same study hypothesized that there would be long term sociological and psychological benefits to these communities. This is because of increased understanding of indigenous rights, values and culture through truth and reconciliation (Pinkerton, 2019).

Participation in forest and resource management increases awareness, enhances education and research opportunities. It improves self-reliance of rural communities. It employs communities. It decreases conflicts. And it is sustainable. A study in the Cheakamus Community Forest found that because the community in Whistler had increased participation in decision making, they had more control over the sustainable path of the resort town (Gilani et al. 2018). They also found that creating seasonal variation in mountain resorts influence forest management by shifting extraction to recreation (Gilani et al. 2018). .

So more of this,

<<hikers>>

can mean less of this.

<<tree falling>>

Canada leads the world in sustainable forest management (Böhling, 2019). However, there is still this wicked problem of how to balance everything. There's First Nation claims of Aboriginal title over traditional lands and societies, demand for larger protection of b.c.'s rich biodiversity. But then there's also industries need to be certain in business operations and the province's reputation of being the best place on earth (Böhling, 2019). 

I suspect that as younger workers who are more aware of environmental and sustainable issues earn management positions, these community gaps will lessen. There will be an increase in awareness of land use management and I'll make us the people. A larger stakeholder in our own forests. The coastal rainforests are super important to us. They are critical to indigenous culture, important for economy. And we love to enjoy the forests through mountain resorts, camping, observing wildlife and collecting medicine. Ecosystem based value added management that recognizes and honors indigenous land rights is where we need to be.

<<music: INOSSI - Wasted Years>>

So what can you do today to help your forest and actionable step in your local forest could be as simple as picking out matter out of place, even if it isn't yours.

Keep to those designated paths and don't tread on the roots of our trees. Prevent the transport of invasive seeds and species by cleaning debris like soil off your shoes and vehicle tires. Also use forest friendly, sustainable products. And remember, in the case of a community, forest change can be implemented by a small and involved group of individuals. and can bring your community together. This podcast was produced by me, Devon. Consulting and editing by Janet Waters and this project is a Capilano University grad project.

Special thanks to Tom Varga. Sam Taylor. And the Simpson family. You can reach us on Instagram at WildWayPod or WildWaypodcast@gmail.com. You can find our show notes on our website. And please subscribe to our channel and invite your friends. And that's the WildWay.

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References

British Columbia Community forest Association. (2016, April 6). A Brief History of Community Forestry in BC. Retrieved from https://bccfa.ca/a-brief-history-of-community-forestry-in-british-columbia/

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Cantegril, P., Paradis, G., Lebel, L., & Raulier, F. (2019). Bioenergy production to improve value-creation potential of strategic forest management plans in mixed-wood forests of Eastern Canada. Applied Energy, 247, 171–181. doi: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.04.022

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Carlson, M., Wells, J., & Jacobson, A. (2015). Balancing the Relationship Between Protection and Sustainable Management in Canada′s Boreal Forest. Conservation and Society, 13(1), 13. doi: 10.4103/0972-4923.161209

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Caverley, N., Lyall, A., Pizzirani, S., & Bulkan, J. (2019). Articulating Indigenous Rights Within the Inclusive Development Framework: An Assessment of Forest Stewardship Policies and Practices in British Columbia, Canada. Society & Natural Resources, 33(1), 25–45. doi: 10.1080/08941920.2019.1597237

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Forests Archives. (2020, February 24). Retrieved from https://sierraclub.bc.ca/category/topics/forests/

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Gilani, H. R., Innes, J. L., & Grave, A. D. (2018). The effects of seasonal business diversification of British Columbia ski resorts on forest management. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 23, 51–58. doi: 10.1016/j.jort.2018.07.005

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Halofsky, J. E., Andrews-Key, S. A., Edwards, J. E., Johnston, M. H., Nelson, H. W., Peterson, D. L., … Williamson, T. B. (2018). Adapting forest management to climate change: The state of science and applications in Canada and the United States. Forest Ecology and Management, 421, 84–97. doi: 10.1016/j.foreco.2018.02.037

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Kathrin, B. (2019). Collaborative governance in the making: Implementation of a new forest management regime in an old-growth conflict region of British Columbia, Canada. Land Use Policy, 86, 43–53. doi: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.04.019

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Langlois, A. (2011). Coastal Rainforest. Retrieved from https://www.hww.ca/en/wild-spaces/coastal-rainforest.html

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Metsaranta, J. M. (2020). Dendrochronological procedures improve the precision and accuracy of tree and stand age estimates in the western Canadian boreal forest. Forest Ecology and Management, 457, 117657. doi: 10.1016/j.foreco.2019.117657

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Nenko, A., Parkins, J. R., & Reed, M. G. (2019). Indigenous experiences with public advisory committees in Canadian forest management. Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 49(4), 331–338. doi: 10.1139/cjfr-2018-0235

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Parfitt, B. (2017, February 28). The Great Log Export Drain: BC government pursues elusive LNG dreams as more than 3,600 forest industry jobs lost to raw log exports. Retrieved from https://www.policynote.ca/log-export-drain/#.WLQ4jDulkh0.twitter

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Pinkerton, E. (2019). Benefits of collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities through community forests in British Columbia. Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 49(4), 387–394. doi: 10.1139/cjfr-2018-0154

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ProleteR. (2012). April showers. On Curses From the Past[mp3]. Free Music Archive: Dusted Wax Kingdom. 

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