Dynamic Forest. Malcolm F. Squires
toward returning forests to their more natural patterns. Most acknowledge that objective will never be fully achieved, because of our human need for resources.
Significantly, “more than 46 percent of the country’s forests are certified. As of 2015, Canada had 166 million hectares of independently certified forest land. That represents 43 percent of all certified forests worldwide, the largest area of third-partycertified forests in any country.”7I am proud of that.
Fire is the greatest renewal agent in the Canadian boreal forest. The average area burned each year for the past twenty-fiveyears has been approximately 2.5 million hectares, with this area being consumed by an average of approximately 7,500 fires. Only 3 percent of the fires are responsible for burning 97 percent of the area that is burned,8doing so in large firestorms. In comparison, timber harvesting is responsible for only a fraction as much depletion of Canada’s forests as that caused by fires. During 2015, the area harvested — 0.77 million hectares — was only 31 percent of that which is burned in the average year. Also in 2015, 0.44 million hectares, equivalent to 57 percent of the harvested area, was planted and 17.4 thousand hectares was seeded.9 The remainder was left to regenerate naturally.
Among the Nordic and Baltic nations,“The highest proportion of planted forests, but also the smallest forest area, is found in Denmark, with an estimated 66 percent share of productive planted forests (FAO 2014b). Second and third are, however, the two largest countries, Sweden and Finland, with planted forest shares of 43 and 26 percent, respectively.”10
Forest Management Is About Balancing Competing Interests
There are few easy decisions in forestry. Forest management is about balancing competing interests; an action that satisfies the needs of one person may, and usually does, damage the interests of others. Ontario’s legislation and regulations that pertain to forest management require forest planners and practitioners to weigh competing interests and maintain balance while obeying the law. To be successful, forest managers have to be excellent dancers, or to use another analogy, they have to be excellent skaters and stickhandlers.
Competing interests include the province as it tries to satisfy our economic and social needs; First Nations’ treaty rights; forestry, tourism, mining, energy, and transportation industries; and cottagers, hunters, gatherers, those who find spiritual connection with nature, and others. Most of those interests are in direct conflict at some time over forest use, but sometimes they may co-operatewhen they perceive common ground.
Probably the conflict that the public is most aware of is that between First Nations and the forest industry. First Nations look to rights contained in their treaties with government, which they feel are being ignored by government and industry. Forestry companies look to government to guarantee a timber supply and the freedom to harvest using what they feel to be good forest management practices. For example, tensions have been high near the community of Grassy Narrows, Ontario, north of Kenora, for a number of years. There, a forest industry company was found to have polluted a river with mercury, which has injured many in the community because of their dependence on fish from the river as a major part of their diet. The issue has broadened beyond the mercury issue into one of industry’s clear-cuttinginfringing on the community’s rights to the land.
The following quote is from one of several articles addressing that issue that has been in the news for at least four decades and is still current:
More than 100 supporters from across Canada and the United States are in Grassy Narrows this week for an Earth Justice gathering to raise awareness about indigenous rights and protection for the boreal forest.
The event features a tour of a clear-cutarea, sweat lodge ceremonies, traditional feast, training in non-violentprotests and speeches by Grassy Narrows residents and other First Nations leaders who will reiterate calls for an end to the clear-cutlogging on the band’s traditional land-usearea.11
For decades, non-governmentalenvironmental organizations (NGOs) have been in conflict with the forest industry over some of the same issues that upset First Nations, and the following quote is an example:
Armed with a new report, environmentalists have taken another shot at the forest industry practice of clear-cutting.
The Ontario chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) has called on forest companies to adopt alternatives to clear-cuttingto better protect the environment and ecosystems of the boreal forest.
“Clearcutting harms wildlife habitat, water quality and biodiversity,” report co-authorChris Henschel of the CPAWS-WildlandsLeague said Monday.12
It is not surprising that such tensions exist, because so many depend on the forest for so much. With an ever-increasingnumber of people but an ever-shrinkingarea of forest land available to them, conflicts inevitably arise. When humans first evolved, our first priority with the forest was to extract the raw materials for food, clothing, and shelter that were necessary for our survival. In those earliest days, there was no real conflict regarding harvesting food and wood from the forest because the number of people was small and the forests were so vast. As our populations increased and we spread around the world, however, our pressure on the forest increased. More and more, we used what tools were available, or we created, to extract from and change the forest to meet our increasing demands. The first tool was possibly fire and it appears to have been used by all humans, wherever we went, to change our surroundings to our benefit.13 The clear-cuttingtool was developed much later by an evolving human society.
We have since increased in sufficient numbers and developed the technology to eradicate all forests and change the world’s entire ecosystem. Of course we didn’t collectively intend doing such a crazy thing, so some nations have enacted laws to control their citizens who would, through disregard for others, endanger the well-beingof humanity. Canada is one of those nations.
That’s enough about economics and conflict. The focus of this book is on how forests can be best managed so that they will remain healthy and substantial enough so that all of the various interest groups can enjoy them. I want my readers to understand how the northwestern Ontario (NWO) boreal forest behaves when it is left to either, or both, natural and human influence.
The Read from Here
In Chapter 2 I introduce myself and my early perceptions of the forest, foresters, and the forest industry. We then follow the trail that changed me from one who perceived foresters and the forest industry as abusers of the land to deciding to become a forester and work for the industry.
Chapter 3 opens with a short summary of my experiences as a professional forester and how those experiences impacted my earlier perceptions. My career took me from Newfoundland to Ontario, and from both locations I visited other forests across our nation. I became aware that the boreal forest is not a uniform, static entity, but a living, dynamic organism in tune with local climate and soil. Ontario’s forest policy documents and their foundation are discussed from my perspective, which is based on my past involvement. I stress that more public and stakeholder knowledge about the forest, as well as a willingness to share, are needed as essential ingredients for future forest health.
Chapter 4, the longest, describes the overall structure of the NWO boreal forest and its renewal agents, followed by descriptions of the predominant tree species found in the boreal forest and how each interacts with its environment. Fire and its overbearing impact on the natural NWO forest takes up Chapter 5.
Chapter 6 gets into the crux of the book, and that is the role of timber harvesting in the NWO boreal forest, and an unabashed argument in favour of even-agedmanagement and clear-cutting. That is followed by arguments against uneven-agedmanagement and selection harvesting, noting their unsuitability for that same forest.
Chapter 7 describes some of the improvements that have been made in logging practices, and the strengths of current legislation, forestry funding methods, and independent forest audits. In Chapter 8, the concluding chapter, I invite stakeholders, environmental NGOs, and anyone else with a vested interest in the forest’s health —that’s all of us —to commit to finding common ground. If we work together on that common ground, we may be pleasantly surprised at the number of previously unforeseen opportunities that arise to work together