By Roy L Hales
When Island Timberlands arrived in 2012, they found Cortes island residents waiting behind a blockade. The Vancouver Observer sent a young film maker to cover the story, but Daniel Pierce found more than just another clash between a logging company and local environmentalists. He is still documenting British Columbia’s fight for sustainable logging.
Continue reading British Columbia’s Fight For Sustainable Logging
Though Cec Robinson has been a recognized personality in the logging blockades, he would rather work in his garden, or go fishing. Only there is a lot at stake. Speaking as one of Cortes Island’s streamkeepers, Cec said you need cold, clean water for healthy streams. Cool clean water comes from healthy forests.
Continue reading Cool Clean Water Comes From Healthy ForestsBy Roy L Hales
Most of the great forests that once covered the West Coast are gone. Though there is still an extensive canopy, the trees are scraggly compared to the stumps and historical photographs left from decades ago. The clear cutting in British Columbia is so extensive that, since 2003, the forests have been emitting rather than storing carbon. Some call for a more environmentally sensitive industry and an example of Cortes Islands quest for sustainable logging is about a mile from my home.
Continue reading Cortes Island’s Quest For Sustainable LoggingOriginally published on A Conversation On BC Forests (2011).
As a woodworker on the drier southern BC coast with a very small woodlot, and some working familiarity with the timber journey – from seed to old tree and from sawn lumber to sailboat, it seems
obvious to me that there’s still a tug of war between two polarized goals in forestry. One strives for Quantity, the other strives for Quality. It’s a simplification I know, but then we could also call it
Ishmael’s battle between Takers and Leavers, and ask who is winning. Nearly always in our modern addiction to economic growth, gross volume wins over real value. But the short-term quest for higher quantity has already severely compromised long term timber quality in many coastal watersheds. Does this have to be the eternal dilemma in our transient relationship with wild forests, trees and wood? Or is this really a false dichotomy built on ignorant assumptions? Is there a better middle path, a more gracious future in a truly sustainable forestry?
Originally published on the Cortes Tideline (2014)
I believe that most of us now realize that a mature forest ecosystem is a complex community of interconnected, interdependent organisms demonstrably capable of developing, expanding and sustaining itself. To appreciate this, we only have to consider the forests that existed in much of North America and, more specifically, on our Pacific Coast, when we Europeans arrived.
Continue reading A Mature Forest Ecosystem
