Originally published on the Discovery Islander
“Noise is the amount of disagreement between people who make professional judgements.” This is the definition supplied by Daniel Kahneman, a behavioural scientist and Nobel Prize winner, and his two fellow scientists, Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein, who were trying to understand and explain why “a lot of professional judgement actually has no connection to reality.”
Their studies were initially inspired by a survey of 208 federal judges in the United States. On convictions for the same offence that received an average of 7 years incarceration, sentences varied by as much as 50%. Another study found that the value estimates of insurance underwriters varied by 55%, a large enough range that made their assessments almost useless. Psychiatry is particularly “noisy”. So is forestry.
Studies by these three behavioural scientists describe three kinds of “noise”: “level noise” is deviation from the average, “occasion noise” is variation within the individual, and “pattern noise” is variation caused by context.
One of the biggest causes of unheard “noise” by context is the “respect expert” syndrome. This happens when colleagues have uncritical respect for each other’s judgements, and then use these judgements as the measure for validating their own decisions. The result is an escalating deviation from accuracy that goes unrecognized because any errors in judgement have become normalized and institutionalized. “Institutions,” the scientists write, “are designed to create the illusion of consensus. They aren’t looking for the correct answer.” The practice of forestry in recent years in British Columbia is a particularly relevant and dramatic example.
About a decade ago, when the BC government began to transfer the authority for managing forests to the corporations that were logging them, the Registered Professional Foresters (RPFs) hired by corporations became a closed loop of “experts” who were advising their employers on forestry practices. In a process that was far from coincidental, the “expert opinions” they provided just happened to support a very profitable system of logging that became normalized. Indeed, this normalization eventually marked the end of almost all local log processing and pulp production in the province. It also legitimatized the mass cutting of trees and the near-liquidation of old- growth forests, all sanctioned by the “professional” judgement of the RPFs working in concert with the interests of their corporate employers. The end result is a recognized crisis in BC’s forest industry, with the seminal recommendations of the 2020 Strategic Old-Growth Review Panel that forest management must return to the control of the province and must be ecologically based if it is to survive the catastrophe authorized by “expert” advice.
This is the problem we are confronting on our little island in the wholeness of things. Letters to Mosaic entreating them to change their forestry practices to suit a Quadra Island lifestyle, to preserve viewscapes, to save old-growth trees, to foster carbon sequestration, and to protect watersheds are met with dismissive replies. They confidently contend that their professionals who oversee only “precision forestry”, are making the best of judgements, and must be trusted. Concerns about the Hyacinthe Creek watershed, arising from decades of experience by the Quadra Island Salmon Enhancement Society, are dismissed by Mosaic’s “experts” as “Not applicable” in their Forest Stewardship Plan. Not even a global ecological crisis penetrates a dysfunctional system that has been normalized by the ecologically destructive partnership of “professionals” with corporations.
But other options are available. Wildwood near Nanaimo is a model example. Merv Wilkinson bought the 55 hectares of old-growth forest in 1938, selectively logged it for the rest of his life, all while maintaining its original old-growth attributes, which contained more volume of wood than it did more than 50 years earlier.
A more practical and plausible option for Mosaic/TimberWest’s Tree Farm Licence on Quadra would be the recruitment of all its nearly-a-century-old trees to old- growth status, a recommendation in Special Management Zone 19 of the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan, and stipulated by the Old-Growth Strategic Review Panel. Herb Hammond, an independent RPF and internationally respected forest ecologist, understands that the decimation of old-growth forests requires the recruitment of replacements that “are vital to maintaining forest integrity, both in the old forests and in the young forests beyond.” Tree Farms, as they currently exist, would have to mature for a few centuries to evolve a semblance of the intelligence and sophistication of a true forest.
This is supported by the recent findings of UBC’s Dr. Suzanne Simard. Her empirical research has found that forests are complex, co-operative systems of communication and sharing between fungi, trees and multiple other organisms. Indeed, they are networks of biochemical awareness that seem to resemble the sentience of a diffuse consciousness. Her research ends the illusion that trees are merely objects to be measured as annual allowable cut.
On Quadra Island, our forests are at a critical juncture with respect to both our local interests and our planet’s wellbeing. The Mosaic’s/TimberWest Forest Stewardship Plan, like many euphemisms in the industry’s terminology, is neither presented as a “plan”, nor is it “stewardship” in any sustainable ecological sense. It does nothing to alleviate the anxious desperation that the global environmental crisis is causing on Quadra and elsewhere. The response of every community, corporation and government must be commensurate with this unfolding emergency. We don’t have time to waste.
The deadline for submitting comments to Mosaic’s/TimberWest’s Forest Stewardship Plan closed on February 10, 2022. But you can contact our MLA, Michele Babchuk at michele.babchuk.MLA@leg.bc.ca. Perhaps comments could still be received by Lesley Fettes, the District Manager of FLNRORD, who makes the final decision on the acceptability of Mosaic’s Forest Stewardship Plan. She can be contacted at:
Lesley Fettes, District Manager, FLNRORD,
370 S. Dogwood Street, Campbell River, B.C. V9W 6Y7 or Email: Lesley.Fettes@gov.bc.ca
Ray Grigg
for Sierra Quadra
Top image credit: Daniel Kahneman – This work by nrkbeta.no is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Norway License