Anthony Britneff
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Journalism: The over-exploitation of BC forests
Library: Destruction of wildlife habitat and loss of biodiversity
Journalism: Loss of forest-related employment
Journalism: The need to expedite final treaties with First Nations
Journalism: Loss of primary forest
Journalism: Loss of carbon sequestration capacity
Other notable forest-related writing and reports
Noteworthy writing and reports from the forest-industrial complex
Forest News
Library: The over-exploitation of BC forests
Library: Loss of primary forest
Library: Loss of the hydrological functions of forests
Make conservation of the hydrological function of forests a higher priority than timber extraction
Library: Loss of forest-related employment
Library: The need to expedite final treaties with First Nations
Transition from clearcut logging to selection logging
Library: Increase in forest fire hazard
Journalism: End public subsidization of BC's forest industry
Library: End public subsidization of BC's forest industry
Library: The need to reform BC forest legislation
Journalism: The need to reform BC forest legislation
Library: Creating a new vision for BC forests
Forest industry public subsidy calculator
Manufacturing and processing facilities
Forest Trends
Investigations
Community Forest Mapping Projects
Area-based calculations of carbon released from clearcut logging
Journalism: The increase in forest carbon emissions
Library: Increase in forest carbon emissions
To protect biodiversity, transition away from clearcut logging
Peachland Watershed Protection Alliance
Library: Loss of future employment resulting from exporting raw logs
Mapping old forest on Vancouver Island
Mapping old forest in Omineca Natural Resource Region
Mapping old forest in Skeena Natural Resource Region
Mapping old forest in Northeastern Natural Resource Region
Mapping old forest in Cariboo Natural Resource Region
Mapping old forest in South Coast Natural Resource Region
Mapping old forest in Thompson-Okanagan Natural Resource Region
Mapping old forest in Kootenay-Boundary Natural Resource Region
Forest Conservation Organizations
Mapping old forest on Haida Gwaii
Mapping old forest on the central coast
Library: Ecologically damaging practices
Journalism: Ecologically damaging practices
Critical Issues
Analysis
Comment
Listed species: Cascades Natural Resource District
Listed species: 100 Mile House Natural Resource District
Listed species: Campbell River Natural Resource District
Listed species: Cariboo-Chilcotin Natural Resource District
Listed species: Chilliwack River Natural Resource District
Listed species: Fort Nelson Natural Resource District
Listed species: Haida Gwaii Natural Resource District
Listed species: Mackenzie Natural Resource District
Listed species: Nadina Natural Resource District
Listed species: North Island Natural Resource District
Listed species: Peace Natural Resource District
Listed species: Prince George Natural Resource District
Listed species: Quesnel Natural Resource District
Listed species: Rocky Mountain Natural Resource District
Listed species: Sea-to-Sky Natural Resource District
Listed species: Selkirk Natural Resource District
Listed species: Skeena Natural Resource District
Listed species: South Island Natural Resource District
Listed species: Stuart-Nechako Natural Resource District
Listed species: Sunshine Coast Natural Resource District
Listed species: Thompson Rivers Natural Resource District
Listed species: Coast Mountains Natural Resource District
Action Group: Divestment from forest-removal companies
Fact-checking mindustry myths
First Nations Agreements
Monitor: BC Timber Sales Auctions
BC Timber Sales auction of old-growth forests on Vancouver Island
Monitoring of forest fires in clearcuts and plantations: 2021
Library: End public subsidization of forest industry
Examples of engaging the mindustry:
Portal: The over-exploitation of BC forests
Portal: The need to reform BC forest legislation
Portal: The need to expedite treaties with First Nations
Portal: The need to get more organized, informed and inspired for change
Portal: Develop a new relationship with forests
Portal: Destruction of wildlife habitat and loss of biodiversity
Portal: Loss of the hydrological functions of forests
Portal: Increase in forest fire hazard
Portal: Loss of carbon sequestration capacity
Portal: Increase in forest carbon emissions
Portal: Ecologically damaging forestry practices
Portal: Loss of forest-related employment
Portal: Loss of future employment resulting from raw log exports
Portal: Costs of floods, fires and clearcutting of watersheds
Portal: The economic impact on communities of boom and bust cycles
Portal: Loss of economic development by other forest-based sectors
Portal: The true cost of subsidies provided to the logging industry
Help
Loss of trust in institutions
Portal: The instability of communities dependent on forest extraction
Portal: The psychological unease caused by forest destruction
Portal: Loss of trust in institutions caused by over-exploitation of BC forests
Portal: Social division caused by over-exploitation of BC forests
Journalism: The instability of communities dependent on forest extraction
Journalism: Psychological unease caused by forest destruction
Journalism: Loss in trust of institutions as a result of over-exploitation of BC forests
Journalism: Social division caused by over-exploitation of BC forests
Library: The instability of communities dependent on forest extraction
Library: Psychological unease caused by forest destruction
Library: Loss of trust in institutions as a result of over-exploitation of BC forests
Library: Social division caused by over-exploitation of BC forests
Resources: Psychological unease caused by forest destruction
Resources: The economic impact on communities of boom-and-bust cycles
Resources: Loss of economic development potential in other forest-based sectors
Journalism: Cost of floods, fires and clearcutting of community watersheds
Journalism: The economic impact on communities of boom-and-bust cycles
Journalism: Loss of economic development potential in other forest-based sectors
Library: Cost of floods, fires and clearcutting of community watersheds
Library: The economic impact on communities of boom-and-bust cycles
Library: Loss of economic development potential in other forest-based sectors
Portal: Permanent loss of forests to logging roads
Portal: The economic costs of converting forests into sawdust and wood chips
Journalism: Permanent loss of forests to logging roads
Library: Permanent loss of forests to logging roads
Journalism: The economic costs of converting forests into sawdust and wood chips
Library: The economic costs of converting forests into sawdust and wood chips
Resources: The economic costs of converting forests into sawdust and wood chips
Resources: Ecologically damaging forestry practices
Resources: Conversion of forests to permanent logging roads
Library: Getting organized
Journalism: Getting organized
Forest politics
Forest Stewards
Portal: Plantation failure
Library: Plantation failure
Journalism: Plantation failure
Library: Loss of carbon sequestration capacity
Portal: Soil loss and damage
Journalism: Soil loss and damage
Library: Soil loss and damage
Resources: Soil loss and damage
Journalism: Loss of employment resulting from export of raw logs
Journalism: Destruction of wildlife habitat and loss of biodiversity
Journalism: Loss of the hydrological functions of forests
Journalism: Increase in forest fire hazard
Action Group: Sunlighting professional reliance
Making the case for much greater conservation of BC forests
Science Alliance for Forestry Transformation
Bearing witness:
Economic State of the BC Forest Sector
Big tree mapping and monitoring
Reported Elsewhere
Protect more
Start a forest conservation project
Get involved
Article reference pages
Physical impacts created by logging industry
Nature Directed Stewardship at Glade and Laird watersheds
References for: How did 22 TFLs in BC evade legal old-growth management areas?
References for: BC's triangle of fire: More than just climate change
References for: Teal Cedar goes after Fairy Creek leaders
References for: Is the draft framework on biodiversity and ecosystem health something new? Or just more talk and log?
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Everything posted by Anthony Britneff
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The government's true agenda to have the forest industry including First Nations destroy the rarest-of-the-rare, at-risk, irreplaceable, large primary forests in British Columbia is nothing short of deliberate ecocide on a global scale. No-one including First Nations has the right to destroy the remaining primary forests. All need inviolate protection. Thanks to Ben Parfitt for exposing the NDP provincial government's double-dealing and duplicity on old growth and primary forests. We have long alleged government's shell game with conservation and protection ever since the first Old Growth Strategy in 1991. But we now have irrefutable proof. Friends who have responded to me on reading Ben's story of government subterfuge have done so using words like: disappointing, distressing, discouraging. These are not the words that will have the government change course. We need to write to our respective MLAs with strong words of outrage requesting the secret mapping project be terminated. Don't think about writing to your MLA; do it now. The provincial NDP must pay dearly for this deceit and for its betrayal of British Columbians. P.S. I just wrote an email expressing outrage to my MLA and copied it to the premier Find your MLA's email address at this web link: https://www.leg.bc.ca/learn-about-us/members The premier's email address is premier@gov.bc.ca -
The purposes and functions of existing forest legislation are inadequate to meet 21st century needs. WITH MANY FORESTRY COMMUNITIES upset with the poor stewardship of their local forests and with contamination of their drinking water from clearcut logging, one wonders why appeasing initiatives like the Old Growth Strategy (1991), the Protected Areas Strategy (1993), and the Old Growth Deferral Initiative (2021) have not delivered. The only substantive changes to how forests are stewarded, or not, have resulted from new legislation. Politicians eager to appease public concerns about forestry without conviction (i.e., without changing the law), do so by offering up these flavour-of-the-month, appeasing initiatives, which are bound to fizzle and fail because their requirement is not rooted in law. For example, the 1991 Old Growth Strategy morphed into the Protected Areas Strategy (1993) as a response to Canada’s commitment to the goals of the 1992 United Nations’ convention on biodiversity one of which is to conserve biodiversity. Instead of protecting representative areas of biodiversity across the province, the government ended up with about half the protected area being rock and ice in the alpine! Thirty years later in 2021, having side-lined the Old Growth Strategy of 1991, the government initiated the Old Growth Deferral Initiative to appease public opposition to the logging of primary forests. Over two years this initiative has become an exercise in “talk-and-log” while the primary forests continue to be destroyed. Having blown the chance to protect a representative framework of provincial biodiversity in the 1993 Protected Areas Strategy, the government is at it again, thirty years later, with the latest appeasing initiative -- the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework. The big changes in forest stewardship happened in 1978 with the passing of the Ministry of Forests and Range Act and a brand-new Forest Act; in 1995 with the enactment of the Forest Practices Code of British Columbia Act; in 2002 with the passing of the Forest and Range Practices Act; and in 2004 with the rescinding of the Code. The passing of the Forest and Range Practices Act and the rescinding of the Code fettered the responsibility of government to steward the forests. That responsibility no longer resides in forest legislation and has been devolved to industry and the resource professionals. What is significant about the legislative changes after 1978 is that the 1978 Ministry of Forests and Range Act survived and remains in force today. Why is that? In a nutshell, the answer is that the Act does not provide the forests ministry with a stewardship purpose. All the other main forestry acts since 1978 deal with HOW the forests are stewarded; whereas the Ministry of Forests and Range Act spells out WHY the forest ministry exists and WHAT it does as described by five purposes and functions—it is the mission statement for the ministry. So, what are the five purposes and functions of the forest ministry? For the most part, they are timber-centric and industry-focused: To encourage maximum productivity of the forest and range resources in British Columbia; To manage, protect and conserve the forests and range resources of the government, having regard to the immediate and long-term economic and social benefits they may confer on British Columbia; To plan the use of the forests and range resources of the government, so that the production of timber and forage, the harvesting of timber, the grazing of livestock and the realization of fisheries, wildlife, water, outdoor recreation and other natural resource values are coordinated and integrated, in consultation and cooperation with other ministries and agencies of the government and with the private sector; To encourage a vigorous, efficient and world competitive timber processing industry, and ranching sector in British Columbia; and, To assert the financial interest of the government in its forest and range resources in a systematic and equitable manner. These five purposes and functions may have served the interests of British Columbia in the late 1970s but not into the ’80s and ’90s, and certainly not into the 21st century. Astonishingly, in 2024, the forest ministry has no stewardship purpose for the conservation of biodiversity, soil and water, for the maintenance of ecosystem health and for the sustainable use of forest resources. We need to re-write the purposes of the forest ministry to include a stewardship purpose in a new Ministry of Forests Act for the 21st century that will strengthen ecological stewardship with enforceable regulations in all forest legislation. Anthony Britneff worked for the B.C. Forest Service for 40 years holding senior professional positions in inventory, silviculture and forest health.
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David Elstone’s ablution of the forest industry is history by omission, a version that does not withstand closer scrutiny. What Elstone fails to tell readers is that the forest industry made its own bed and is responsible, not for the mountain pine infestation itself, but for the way in which it chose to log dead wood and where. The forest ministry’s own records show that the industry did not log only dead trees but also plenty of live trees in its salvage operations, often more valuable tree species than beetle-infected lodgepole pine. The ministry's own data shows that in several interior timber supply areas, non-salvage logging exceeded its mid-term timber supply projections. Additionally, the ministry’s records of cutblock layout and of permit dates indicate that the forest industry deliberately first logged infested pine forests closest to their mills thereby making worse the problem of finding timber economical to log at a later date. Perhaps these two facts give rise to an alternative version of events to that portrayed by Elstone and explain how the forest industry exacerbated the timber supply crisis of today. As to Elstone’s trumpeting of a recent study that found that 85 per cent of the B.C. pellet industry’s fibre supply comes from byproducts of sawmills, we are left asking: Who financed the study? Drax. Who provided the data? Drax. And why didn’t the UBC faculty member and forest professionals who authored the study use the same data sourced by Ben Parfitt from official government records? Finally, Elstone is vexatious to impugn Ben Parfitt for saying that the date on which infestations began was in 2009. This is obviously a reporting or editorial error, not one made by Ben Parfitt, who wrote a major documentary titled “Battling the Beetle" in 2005.
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Len and David: Although the removal of the "unduly' clause is symbolic, I agree that it might be a signal from premier Eby of better forest policy and management to come . . . we shall see. But the premier's announcement is not a paradigm shift from "business as usual" (oligopoly, clearcutting and subsidies). Prior to 1978, the BC Forest Service managed provincial forests by eighty-one public sustained yield units (PSYU). By the early 1970's many PSYUs were badly overcut. Around 1978, the then director of forest inventory, Frank Hegyi, who had good technical foresight, wisely planned to increase the scale of resolution of the forest inventory from public sustained yield units (PSYU) to smaller landscape units. The Inventory Branch had delineated landscape units for the province. Former deputy minister, Mike Apsey (newly arrived from the CEO position at COFI) disallowed this change. Apsey had different plans: to decrease the scale of resolution of forest inventory, planning and management from eighty-one PSYUs to thirty-six timber supply areas (TSA), thereby averaging the AAC over large TSAs that included overcut and undercut PSYUs. As I understand the proposed Forest Landscape Plan in premier Eby's announcement, areas of primary forest to be conserved and areas where logging is planned will be spatially defined. That is good in itself. But the devil in the detail for the new Forest Landscape Plan will be the estimation of timber supply because the inventory and the timber supply review (TSR) process that inform allowable annual cut (AAC) determinations are outdated. Also, the forest ministry’s growth-and-yield models for the estimation of timber volumes are statistically inappropriate for use at the polygon scale of resolution for landscape units.
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BC'S current logging industry should be allowed to fail
Anthony Britneff commented on Anthony Britneff's record in Comment
Hi Margaret, Thank you for your well considered comment. In response to the selected quotation from your comment, I remind readers that every clearcut is approved by a government forester, who has sworn an oath of allegiance to the Crown, the trustee of public forests on behalf of the public. Further, that same forester is a member of Forest Professionals BC (new name, previously called the Association of BC Forest Professionals) to which all practising foresters belong. The Professional Governance Act, which replaced the Foresters Act, requires Forest Professionals BC to serve and protect the public interest with respect to the conduct of registered professionals. Furthermore, Forest Professionals BC has a Code of Ethical and Professional Conduct embodied within bylaw 9. Within this code of ethics, under a section titled "Standard 2 - Independence", a practising forester is required to exhibit objectivity and independence in fact and appearance by, among other requirements, upholding the public interest and professional principles above the demands of employment or personal gain. So contrary to your assertion, I find it entirely reasonable to expect practising foresters to obey provincial laws and regulations and to abide by the bylaws of their governing body by giving priority to the public interest over the interest of employers. Most would agree that destruction of public forests (biodiversity, soil, water, carbon and air) is not in the public interest. What has happened by way of destruction to the forests of the province under the mismanagement of professional foresters over the past 50 years shows me that collectively they are a failed profession. As to the future, I will say that Professor John Innes, the former dean of forestry at UBC, did much to improve the education of forestry students. My hope is that a new generation of foresters will have a good basic grounding in conservation biology, in hydrology and in forest ecology that will enable them to abhor the extensive destruction of our forests (biodiversity, soil, water, carbon and air) perpetrated by their predecessors through excessive clearcutting and will motivate them to work towards repairing the damage. Finally, I need to acknowledge my part in the collective failure of the profession. I was a registered professional forester in B.C. for almost four decades. I resigned my membership on January 7, 2022. I resigned because, in good conscience, I could no longer belong to Forest Professionals BC when I consider that the harm done by some of its members to biodiversity, soil, water, carbon and air far out-weighs the good done by many members working for the public and private sectors and for some First Nations. Forest Professionals BC by association and some of its members had become for me agents of ecocide. -
We need to move from “fibre exploitation” to forest reparation. Only if we manage forests for the sustainability of biodiversity, soil, air and water can we derive through sustainable use of forest resources the economic and social benefits that intact forest ecosystems bestow. IN TWO DECADES, employment in British Columbia’s forest industry has fallen by more than 40,000 direct jobs, and the industry today contributes only two per cent to B.C.’s gross domestic product while employing only two per cent of the province’s workers. Given this, why all the hullabaloo about the loss of 300 Canfor jobs in Prince George? And why another knee-jerk government response in the form of a new subsidy, amounting to $90-million? This is the same old pattern repeating itself, a pattern of subsidization following an industry downturn that has contributed to the decline of the very industry that the subsidies ironically purported to support. A flagrant example of government subsidies that has accelerated the crisis in our forests is a Ponzi scheme known as “crediting,” which awards some of the biggest forest companies in the province with more trees to cut down when they deliver “lower quality” logs to the province’s wood pellet and wood pulp industries. Examples of other direct subsidies that have accelerated the loss of the province’s forests include those for forest management and electricity. The largest subsidies by far are indirect such as those for carbon and for the loss of carbon sequestration capacity. In recent years, the annual cost of all these subsidies is roughly equivalent to the industry’s contribution to the provincial GDP. More beguiling than subsidies is industry propaganda. Through misrepresentation about sustainable forest management, the industry bamboozles the public and importers of B.C.’s forest products with phoney certification schemes. The federal competition board is presently investigating two certification schemes for misrepresentation. Even government politicians and senior government officials, who should know better, parrot the rhetoric of “sustainability” and sing the praises of certification, sending a false signal to the public that all is well. Acting as a suction pump for public subsidies, the industry—dominated on the coast by Western Forest Products and in the interior by Canfor and West Fraser—directly controls most of the timber in public forests and is largely self-regulated—quirkily known as professional reliance. Given excessive subsidies and self-regulation, no one should expect the industry to rationalize its activities in the public interest by lowering the boom on logging, processing more logs in B.C. and reinvesting profits in secondary manufacturing facilities in the province. Anyone doubting this need only ask why BC forest companies have invested so heavily over the last few years in mills and forest operations in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, the Carolinas, Georgia and Louisiana. B.C.’s industry as presently constituted needs to fail completely, as must the weak legislative framework that allows it to clear-cut most of the province’s primary and old-growth forests to the detriment of biodiversity, soil, air and water. Many millions of hectares of BC have been logged, burned, replanted and then burned again by forest fires—to the point of exhaustion. The image above shows 1700 hectares, now typical of the tortured Chilcotin Plateau. We need to move from “fibre exploitation” to forest reparation. Only if we manage forests for the sustainability of biodiversity, soil, air and water can we derive through sustainable use of forest resources the economic and social benefits that intact forest ecosystems bestow. To do this, legislation must be repealed and re-written to place ecosystem management on a legally enforceable footing and forestry schools must be renamed: for example, the UBC Faculty of Forestry might be renamed the UBC Faculty of Ecology. Foresters are a failed profession in B.C. Meanwhile, the export of raw logs and egregiously low-value products like wood pellets must be immediately halted. By curtailing these exports, we can reduce the supply of timber to move toward a sustainable rate of logging that provides for the economic needs of British Columbians to build houses and to make furniture and other value-added products. Let the entrepreneurs have free-market access to the timber they need to build small-scale, community-based, secondary manufacturing facilities. This could be achieved by cancelling tenures and forest licences and by auctioning all publicly owned timber at regional log markets. But here expectations must be tempered. The promise of value-added only works if there are healthy forests containing quality wood. First, though, we must immediately bring logging rates way down and start to build a new, value-focussed industry from the ground up. Anthony Britneff is a Victoria resident who worked for the B.C. Forest Service for 40 years holding senior professional positions in inventory, silviculture and forest health. -
On the one hand, Mike Harcourt's NDP government introduced the Forest Practices Code of BC Act BUT, on the other hand, it invoked a policy to limit the impact of non-timber values (e.g., biodiversity, water soil and visual quality) on timber supply to six (6) per cent.
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British Columbia’s Big Lie
Anthony Britneff commented on David Broadland's record in Fact-checking mindustry myths
Thank you. A brilliant piece of investigative journalism that ties together so much of what scientists, conservationists, informed citizens, and even bureaucrats courageous enough to speak the truth, have been saying ever since Claude Richmond, the last Social Credit forests minister, initiated in 1990/91 the Old Growth Strategy (1992) and the Protected Area Strategy (1993). The Harcourt (1991), G. Clark (1996), Miller (1999), Dosanjh (2000) and Campbell (2001) provincial governments all failed to implement the Old Growth Strategy and ignored it. The opportunity to conserve biodiversity was largely lost by the time Christy Clark became premier in 2011. The Protected Area Strategy ended up protecting far more rock and ice than it did biodiversity. The six (6) percent cap as policy to limit the impact that non-timber values (e.g., water, soil, biodiversity, visual quality) could have on the province's timber supply was initiated by the Harcourt NDP government after Andrew Petter, the forests minister, had introduced the Forest Practices Code of BC Act (1995), which preceded the Forest and Range Practices Act (2002). Originally the Harcourt government set the overall cap at 6 per cent. However, the biodiversity measures increased the impact on timber supply to 8 per cent. In order to reduce the overall cap to 6 per cent for all non-timber values including biodiversity, the forests ministry reduced the impacts for visual quality to gain back the 2 per cent(1). Most of the member foresters of the Association of BC Forest Professionals have never understood the science of conservation biology as it was not part of their education. As a consequence, most professional foresters tasked with managing public forestlands are ecological illiterates(2) incapable of advising Eby and Ralston against continuing to promulgate the "big lie". References Old Growth Strategy(1992): https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/library/documents/Bib1569.pdf Protected Areas Strategy (1993): https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/library/documents/bib7332.pdf Footnotes (1) Source: Ministry of Forests, "Forest Practices Code - Timber Supply Analysis" (February 1996). The report shows how new management practices under the Code will affect timber supply when compared to pre-Code practices (see attachment). (2) Including myself . . . at least I recognized this deficiency in my forestry education fairly early in my career and made an effort through self-study to learn about conservation biology and rudimentary ecology. MOF_FPC_Timber-Supply_Feb 1996.pdf -
The UBC forestry faculty needs to go back to school on carbon sequestration for promulgating bull like this: “As long as intensive silviculture is practised in forest management, the carbon sequestration of younger working forests can be more productive than mature forests as a carbon sink" . . . If you’re committed to more intensive management, I can double the carbon stock on that forest,” . . . “The working forest is a better carbon sink in general.” Source: BIV 10 November 2022, "Climate smart forestry" at https://biv.com/article/2022/11/climate-smart-forestry
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Once again, great policy research and superb journalism. Thank you. A bitter pill for the dinosaurs in the forestry sector and profession to swallow.
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Once again, great policy research and superb journalism. Thank you. A bitter pill for the dinosaurs in the forestry sector and profession to swallow.
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Teal Jones' TFL 46 is publicly owned land and includes the Fairy Creek watershed. The timber supply review process allows for public discussion of Teal Jones' management plan for the tree farm licence (TFL). As a part of that public discussion, professional forester Martin Watts submitted to Teal Jones eight questions about, and a further eight comments on, its management plan for TFL 46, a plan which staff with the forests ministry had previously reviewed. This leads me to ask additional questions: Was the plan crafted by professional foresters? If so, by whom? Was the plan reviewed by professional foresters in the forests ministry? If so, by whom? Does the plan accommodate the public's interest? A professional forester is bound ethically by the Association of BC Forest Professionals to uphold the public interest. Do Martin Watts' questions and comments point to incompetence on the part of professional foresters crafting the plan and those within the forests ministry reviewing the plan?
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Re: “B.C.’s wildfire strategy is leaving whole communities behind,” op-ed, Times Colonist, Feb. 4. Lori Daniels and Robert Gray do not mention the role played by clearcuts and young plantations in the recent mega-fires. These mega-fires were mostly ignited in clearcuts and then spread rapidly through vast areas of highly flammable, young plantations. This observation appears to be borne out by satellite imagery. Yet, in this op-ed, the words "plantation" and "clearcut" are not to be found. Surely the role of clearcuts and plantations in the recent mega wildfires has not escaped the notice of these two leading forest-fire experts? So, why the omission? Is it deliberate? If so, why? For two authors that advocate "going big and bold”, why would they not recommend that the forest industry and government take remedial action to mitigate against wildfire (and against massive carbon emissions from logging) by reducing or stopping industrial clearcutting? That would certainly be bold.
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This hard-core analysis puts the lie to three lines from the mantra frequently chanted by the forests ministry and industry (mindustry); repeated ad nauseum by industry lobbyists like the Truck Loggers’ Association (TLA), Council of Forest Industries (COFI) and Resource Works (RW); and parroted by the United Steelworkers union (USW) and industry-friendly journalists: B.C.’s forests are sustainably managed for timber production; B.C.’s forests that meet the certification standards of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA), the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and/or the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) are sustainably managed; and, B.C.’s chief foresters since 2004 are independent and their allowable annual cuts are unfettered, professional determinations. Understandably, the result of this constant barrage of misinformation, disinformation and misrepresentation is a confused and duped general public, not to mention the First Nations negotiating forest agreements with the provincial government. If the mindustry's deception continues unchecked by First Nations' and public scrutiny, First Nations will likely find their forest agreements to have more timber on paper than is to be found on the ground, and those most vulnerable among us will be badly, if not mortally, affected by an increasing frequency in the occurrence of floods, water contamination, landslides, heat waves and wildfire. Collectively, we have an ethical responsibility to mitigate against these dangers as best we can. The TLA, COFI and RW frequently bleat that an open, frank dialogue on forestry is needed, based on science. Any dialogue needs first to have all sides to the discussion acknowledge that science tells us that clearcut logging is: Destroying terrestrial and aquatic habitats, extirpating species and driving others to extinction; Fouling drinking water for communities; Ravaging soil and the fungal life necessary for forest health; Releasing vast amounts of carbon from below and above ground into the atmosphere; Disturbing large and small watersheds both of which are highly sensitive to clearcut logging resulting in flooding and landslides; and, Causing in part the large, rapidly moving and intense wildfires of recent years. With no acceptance of the science, the forest industry has forfeited its right to dialogue and the government must disassociate from industry and start to regulate in the public interest, which includes community safety. This begins with the drafting of new forest legislation, the banning of all logging of primary forests, the ending of log exports, and the reduction of the annual timber harvest by as much as 80 per cent. But the uncertain future presently unfolding and made the worse by the deepening climate emergency, is a future that belongs to all of us. All of us have a duty to end the mindustry's deceptions and to hold the provincial government and forest industry accountable for damages, both at the ballot box and in the law courts.
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This hard-core analysis puts the lie to three lines from the mantra frequently chanted by the forests ministry and industry (mindustry); repeated ad nauseum by industry lobbyists like the Truck Loggers’ Association (TLA), Council of Forest Industries (COFI) and Resource Works (RW); and parroted by the United Steelworkers union (USW) and industry-friendly journalists: B.C.’s forests are sustainably managed for timber production; B.C.’s forests that meet the certification standards of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA), the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and/or the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) are sustainably managed; and, B.C.’s chief foresters since 2004 are independent and their allowable annual cuts are unfettered, professional determinations. Understandably, the result of this constant barrage of misinformation, disinformation and misrepresentation is a confused and duped general public, not to mention the First Nations negotiating forest agreements with the provincial government. If the mindustry's deception continues unchecked by First Nations' and public scrutiny, First Nations will likely find their forest agreements to have more timber on paper than is to be found on the ground, and those most vulnerable among us will be badly, if not mortally, affected by an increasing frequency in the occurrence of floods, water contamination, landslides, heat waves and wildfire. Collectively, we have an ethical responsibility to mitigate against these dangers as best we can. The TLA, COFI and RW frequently bleat that an open, frank dialogue on forestry is needed, based on science. Any dialogue needs first to have all sides to the discussion acknowledge that science tells us that clearcut logging is: Destroying terrestrial and aquatic habitats, extirpating species and driving others to extinction; Fouling drinking water for communities; Ravaging soil and the fungal life necessary for forest health; Releasing vast amounts of carbon from below and above ground into the atmosphere; Disturbing large and small watersheds both of which are highly sensitive to clearcut logging resulting in flooding and landslides; and, Causing in part the large, rapidly moving and intense wildfires of recent years. With no acceptance of the science, the forest industry has forfeited its right to dialogue and the government must disassociate from industry and start to regulate in the public interest, which includes community safety. This begins with the drafting of new forest legislation, the banning of all logging of primary forests, the ending of log exports, and the reduction of the annual timber harvest by as much as 80 per cent. But the uncertain future presently unfolding and made the worse by the deepening climate emergency, is a future that belongs to all of us. All of us have a duty to end the mindustry's deceptions and to hold the provincial government and forest industry accountable for damages, both at the ballot box and in the law courts.
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Thank you Yves for your critical analysis. You have made an important contribution to the discussion. In my view your critique underscores the need to draft new, good forest legislation in British Columbia that will take us progressively forward for the next 50 years.
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Canfor statement on old-growth deferrals
Anthony Britneff commented on David Broadland's record in Forest politics
The legal disclaimer for Don Kayne's letter is about a third as long as the text of his letter, which in itself is a red flag about the reliability of what he writes, much of which is questionable. Perhaps more galling than Kayne's need to hide behind a legal disclaimer is his arrogant presumption that all British Columbians would want to hear from him, or would trust what a CEO has to say, especially one in charge of a corporation that lost its social licence long ago. -
Assistant Professor Gregory Paradis’ answer withholds the larger truth about carbon storage in plantations compared to primary forests. He fails to tell listeners and readers that a primary forest has stored way more carbon than would an equivalent area of short-rotation plantation on the same site. Therefore, Paradis ignores telling two important points about logging primary forests: (1) Substantial carbon emissions from above and within the soil are immediately released into the atmosphere through the act of clearcut logging of primary forests; and, (2) The lost carbon capacity created by logging primary forests and replacing them with plantations is huge, a carbon debt that will never be repaid under short-rotation industrial logging. In his answer, Paradis is focusing on the wrong metric to mitigate against climate change in times of climate crisis. The key to understanding what Paradis is saying is the word "rate". The rate (i.e., how fast) at which a plantation captures carbon is not what is important. What is important is the absolute amount of carbon captured, which is much higher in primary forests than it is in plantations. Essentially, Paradis is saying that the City of Langford outside Victoria has the highest rate of population growth in B.C.; what he is not saying is that Vancouver has a much higher absolute population but a lower rate of population growth than does Langford. If the object is to populate the province densely as much as possible, it would not make sense to raze Vancouver to the ground and put a "Langford" in its place because a "Langford" has a higher rate of population growth than does a “Vancouver". In this analogy, it is the absolute amount of population that is important, not the rate at which population grows; the same is true for carbon.
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Vicky Husband's advocacy for the conservation of nature, especially salmon, grizzly bears and primary forests is well known and has been justly honoured. In spite of Vicky's dedicated work along with that of other like-minded stewards, our suicidal destruction of primary forests and the web of life they support continues unabated, now placing at risk the lives, safety and health of British Columbians. My hope is that Vicky continues her work until she sees light penetrating the darkness and substantive change that values the conservation of the natural world without price.
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Logging in BC releases immense quantities of carbon emissions, degrades needed ecosystem services, destroys habitat for at-risk wildlife and creates conditions that allow larger and more intense forest fires. It’s time to downsize the industry to a level that meets BC’s own needs and no more. All large forest fires in BC involve many thousands of acres of clearcuts and plantations, both of which have a higher fire hazard rating than primary and mature forest (Photo: BC Wildfire Service) JOBS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA’S FOREST SECTOR have become a talisman exploited by the forest industry and its associations in persuading politicians of the importance of the sector to the provincial economy. As forestry jobs have steadily declined, industry lobbyists like the Council of Forest Industries, Resource Works and the Truck Loggers’ Association have become increasingly creative in overstating the contribution of the forest sector to the provincial economy by, for example, inflating job numbers with indirect jobs. If Statistics Canada were to count jobs this way, we would have many more jobs than there are residents in the province. Between the years 2000 and 2019, the forest sector of British Columbia shed 50,000 direct jobs largely due to mechanization and depletion of old growth forests. About the same number—50,000—remain, mostly in manufacturing. So let’s question the talisman. Is it that ridiculous to shed the remaining number of direct forestry jobs in the woods and manufacturing by, say, 40,000? Perhaps not. Let’s examine some of the compelling reasons for a reduced workforce in forestry: Tree cover loss expressed as area per capita is greater in BC than in most forested countries of the world; greater than in Brazil, Indonesia and Russia. This rate and extent of clearcut logging has a large carbon footprint. The prevalence of highly flammable clearcuts and young plantations (less than 25 years) has become a significant driver of the size of wildfires…the mega fires of recent years that destroy homes and impact air quality so badly that our health is endangered, including the spread of COVID. In fact, wildfires in BC have increased in size and intensity so dramatically that they, together with logging, now exceed fossil fuels as the province’s major source of climate-destabilizing carbon. You won’t find this in the provincial government’s carbon accounting because it has deftly chosen to ignore carbon emissions from logging and wildfire. Consequences of clearcut logging more familiar to the reader include: the loss of the little remaining old-growth forests growing in ecosystems rich in biodiversity; the destruction of fish and wildlife habitat (salmon, caribou and grizzlies); and the relentless extermination and extirpation of animals, plants and fungi. In many ways, climate change in BC is all about water. Here, clearcutting is instrumental in contaminating the drinking water for many rural communities; in depleting groundwater causing more frequent and prolonged drought events; and, of huge concern to the residents of Grand Forks and the Okanagan Valley, in increasing the frequency, magnitude and duration of major flood events. The excessive rate of clearcutting is permitted by a grossly inflated allowable annual cut (AAC). But the question is: to what end? Only 20 percent of the forest products derived from clearcutting are destined for our domestic market. The remaining 80 percent satisfies export markets mostly in the United States, China and Japan—all of which have higher standards for the conservation and protection of old-growth forests than does BC. This means that those three countries are conserving their ecosystems at the expense of the degradation and loss of our ecosystems. In spite of the high level of exports of forest products, the forest sector contributes a meagre two per cent to the provincial gross domestic product (GDP) and only two per cent to the provincial labour force. In other words, our provincial economy is sufficiently robust and resilient to absorb further job losses in forestry and reduced exports of raw logs and forest products. Accordingly, would it not be in the public interest to ban clearcutting and substantially lower the allowable annual cut thereby reducing the export of raw logs and forest products and cutting back the labour force in the forest sector? If we as a society in BC can shed 400,000 jobs in two months of 2020 to deal with a global pandemic, is it that ridiculous to transition, say, 40,000 forestry jobs into non-destructive forest and value-added enterprises and into other economic sectors in order to mitigate a global climate emergency already having such profound consequences for BC's environment and residents? Anthony Britneff worked for the BC Forest Service for 40 years holding senior professional positions in inventory, silviculture and forest health.
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Logging in BC releases immense quantities of carbon emissions, degrades needed ecosystem services, destroys habitat for at-risk wildlife and creates conditions that allow larger and more intense forest fires. It’s time to downsize the industry to a level that meets BC’s own needs and no more. All large forest fires in BC involve many thousands of acres of clearcuts and plantations, both of which have a higher fire hazard rating than primary and mature forest (Photo: BC Wildfire Service) JOBS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA’S FOREST SECTOR have become a talisman exploited by the forest industry and its associations in persuading politicians of the importance of the sector to the provincial economy. As forestry jobs have steadily declined, industry lobbyists like the Council of Forest Industries, Resource Works and the Truck Loggers’ Association have become increasingly creative in overstating the contribution of the forest sector to the provincial economy by, for example, inflating job numbers with indirect jobs. If Statistics Canada were to count jobs this way, we would have many more jobs than there are residents in the province. Between the years 2000 and 2019, the forest sector of British Columbia shed 50,000 direct jobs largely due to mechanization and depletion of old growth forests. About the same number—50,000—remain, mostly in manufacturing. So let’s question the talisman. Is it that ridiculous to shed the remaining number of direct forestry jobs in the woods and manufacturing by, say, 40,000? Perhaps not. Let’s examine some of the compelling reasons for a reduced workforce in forestry: Tree cover loss expressed as area per capita is greater in BC than in most forested countries of the world; greater than in Brazil, Indonesia and Russia. This rate and extent of clearcut logging has a large carbon footprint. The prevalence of highly flammable clearcuts and young plantations (less than 25 years) has become a significant driver of the size of wildfires…the mega fires of recent years that destroy homes and impact air quality so badly that our health is endangered, including the spread of COVID. In fact, wildfires in BC have increased in size and intensity so dramatically that they, together with logging, now exceed fossil fuels as the province’s major source of climate-destabilizing carbon. You won’t find this in the provincial government’s carbon accounting because it has deftly chosen to ignore carbon emissions from logging and wildfire. Consequences of clearcut logging more familiar to the reader include: the loss of the little remaining old-growth forests growing in ecosystems rich in biodiversity; the destruction of fish and wildlife habitat (salmon, caribou and grizzlies); and the relentless extermination and extirpation of animals, plants and fungi. In many ways, climate change in BC is all about water. Here, clearcutting is instrumental in contaminating the drinking water for many rural communities; in depleting groundwater causing more frequent and prolonged drought events; and, of huge concern to the residents of Grand Forks and the Okanagan Valley, in increasing the frequency, magnitude and duration of major flood events. The excessive rate of clearcutting is permitted by a grossly inflated allowable annual cut (AAC). But the question is: to what end? Only 20 percent of the forest products derived from clearcutting are destined for our domestic market. The remaining 80 percent satisfies export markets mostly in the United States, China and Japan—all of which have higher standards for the conservation and protection of old-growth forests than does BC. This means that those three countries are conserving their ecosystems at the expense of the degradation and loss of our ecosystems. In spite of the high level of exports of forest products, the forest sector contributes a meagre two per cent to the provincial gross domestic product (GDP) and only two per cent to the provincial labour force. In other words, our provincial economy is sufficiently robust and resilient to absorb further job losses in forestry and reduced exports of raw logs and forest products. Accordingly, would it not be in the public interest to ban clearcutting and substantially lower the allowable annual cut thereby reducing the export of raw logs and forest products and cutting back the labour force in the forest sector? If we as a society in BC can shed 400,000 jobs in two months of 2020 to deal with a global pandemic, is it that ridiculous to transition, say, 40,000 forestry jobs into non-destructive forest and value-added enterprises and into other economic sectors in order to mitigate a global climate emergency already having such profound consequences for BC's environment and residents? Anthony Britneff worked for the BC Forest Service for 40 years holding senior professional positions in inventory, silviculture and forest health.
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The hidden agenda of industrial forestry companies in BC is privatization of publicly-owned land. Rural communities dependent on forestry need to resist that and support changes that would increase local, public control of the working forest. THE FOREST SECTOR has deep roots in rural British Columbia with multi-generational families working in the industry either directly in logging or in related businesses like selling logging trucks. Continued forest industry decline threatens a long-established way of life for those relatively few people remaining in the sector. The forest industry’s decline began in 1988. Since then, that decline has been exacerbated by the impacts of the mountain pine beetle epidemic and by a shortage in timber supply owing to unsustainable logging, wildfires and forest health issues related to clearcutting and climate change. Since 1988, the forest industry has contracted radically. The pulp mills that once stood in Prince Rupert, Kitimat, Ocean Falls, Port Alice, Campbell River, Gold River, Tahsis and Woodfibre are long since gone. Since 2000, over 80 sawmills province-wide have been shuttered. Mining, not forest products, is now B.C.’s largest export sector. The Elk Falls pulp, paper and lumber mill at Campbell River on Vancouver Island is one of many major forest product manufacturers around BC that have closed permanently since 2000, cutting forest-related employment in half. Rural British Columbians have dealt with, and adapted to, massive job losses in the forest sector over the last three decades. In 2000, jobs in forestry, logging, support services and wood products manufacturing numbered 101,000. Since then, over 55,000 jobs have been lost. The industry’s once-proud claim that forestry paid for healthcare and education is now illusory. Government revenue reporting shows that forestry does not pay its own bills never mind underpinning social service expenditures. The forest industry now accounts for a mere 2 percent of provincial gross domestic product. The once vibrant Ocean Falls (inset), now all but abandoned. The choice for industry was clear and it decided on its strategy years ago: maximize short-term profit; invest profits in mills overseas as the best of the old-growth forests are logged; shutter mills; and sell associated assets and working forest (tenure). Forest-dependent British Columbians have a choice between two options for their future: to maintain the industrial status quo and suffer further decline, or to collaborate with government in changing how forestry works in B.C. and reap the rewards of forward thinking. Ninety-four percent of B.C. remains public land. By retaining public ownership of the land, British Columbians keep open their options for land use compatible with timber production. This allows for diversified local economies. The forest industry has had a “working forest” since the beginning of the 20th century. It is called the “tenure system.” Unlike the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), from which land can be removed for other uses, timber volume or land cannot be removed from a forest tenure holder for other uses without compensation. So, with security of timber supply in place, why do some rural British Columbians sign petitions for a “working forest” at the behest of the Council of Forest Industries and the BC Forestry Alliance? They do so not recognizing that the forest industry already has a working forest and blind to the industry’s hidden agenda, which is to privatize forest land. That said, the present working forest or tenure system does badly need revamping to take away control of public forests from an oligopoly of multinational corporations and to place it in the hands of local forest trusts. This would require removing large corporate industry from the woods and having it do what it does best, which is manufacturing, not forestry. Regional log markets would allow mid-sized and small manufacturers to access the available supply of timber. Local residents would find employment both in the woods under the administration of local forest trusts and in private sector manufacturing plants—niche, value-added and primary. A forester general would report to the legislature and have powers to set standards for regional forest practices, to audit the activities of local forest trusts and regional log markets, to oversee regional research, and to provide the legislature with detailed, annual forestry reports. Change in the governance of forests along these suggested lines would preserve a rural way of life now badly threatened by maintaining the industrial status quo. Such change would be focused on local economic and environmental well-being. This vision would be achieved by re-writing forestry laws based on the principles of sustainability and conservation, of local forest administration, of open access to timber, and, last but not least, of reliance upon the will of rural British Columbians to change, survive and succeed. Anthony Britneff worked for the B.C. Forest Service for 40 years holding senior professional positions in inventory, silviculture and forest health.
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The hidden agenda of industrial forestry companies in BC is privatization of publicly-owned land. Rural communities dependant on forestry need to resist that and support changes that would increase local, public control of the working forest. THE FOREST SECTOR has deep roots in rural British Columbia with multi-generational families working in the industry either directly in logging or in related businesses like selling logging trucks. Continued forest industry decline threatens a long-established way of life for those relatively few people remaining in the sector. The forest industry’s decline began in 1988. Since then, that decline has been exacerbated by the impacts of the mountain pine beetle epidemic and by a shortage in timber supply owing to unsustainable logging, wildfires and forest health issues related to clearcutting and climate change. Since 1988, the forest industry has contracted radically. The pulp mills that once stood in Prince Rupert, Kitimat, Ocean Falls, Port Alice, Campbell River, Gold River, Tahsis and Woodfibre are long since gone. Since 2000, over 80 sawmills province-wide have been shuttered. Mining, not forest products, is now B.C.’s largest export sector. The Elk Falls pulp, paper and lumber mill at Campbell River on Vancouver Island is one of many major forest product manufacturers around BC that have closed permanently since 2000, cutting forest-related employment in half. Rural British Columbians have dealt with, and adapted to, massive job losses in the forest sector over the last three decades. In 2000, jobs in forestry, logging, support services and wood products manufacturing numbered 101,000. Since then, over 55,000 jobs have been lost. The industry’s once-proud claim that forestry paid for healthcare and education is now illusory. Government revenue reporting shows that forestry does not pay its own bills never mind underpinning social service expenditures. The forest industry now accounts for a mere 2 percent of provincial gross domestic product. The once vibrant Ocean Falls (inset), now all but abandoned. The choice for industry was clear and it decided on its strategy years ago: maximize short-term profit; invest profits in mills overseas as the best of the old-growth forests are logged; shutter mills; and sell associated assets and working forest (tenure). Forest-dependent British Columbians have a choice between two options for their future: to maintain the industrial status quo and suffer further decline, or to collaborate with government in changing how forestry works in B.C. and reap the rewards of forward thinking. Ninety-four percent of B.C. remains public land. By retaining public ownership of the land, British Columbians keep open their options for land use compatible with timber production. This allows for diversified local economies. The forest industry has had a “working forest” since the beginning of the 20th century. It is called the “tenure system.” Unlike the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), from which land can be removed for other uses, timber volume or land cannot be removed from a forest tenure holder for other uses without compensation. So, with security of timber supply in place, why do some rural British Columbians sign petitions for a “working forest” at the behest of the Council of Forest Industries and the BC Forestry Alliance? They do so not recognizing that the forest industry already has a working forest and blind to the industry’s hidden agenda, which is to privatize forest land. That said, the present working forest or tenure system does badly need revamping to take away control of public forests from an oligopoly of multinational corporations and to place it in the hands of local forest trusts. This would require removing large corporate industry from the woods and having it do what it does best, which is manufacturing, not forestry. Regional log markets would allow mid-sized and small manufacturers to access the available supply of timber. Local residents would find employment both in the woods under the administration of local forest trusts and in private sector manufacturing plants—niche, value-added and primary. A forester general would report to the legislature and have powers to set standards for regional forest practices, to audit the activities of local forest trusts and regional log markets, to oversee regional research, and to provide the legislature with detailed, annual forestry reports. Change in the governance of forests along these suggested lines would preserve a rural way of life now badly threatened by maintaining the industrial status quo. Such change would be focused on local economic and environmental well-being. This vision would be achieved by re-writing forestry laws based on the principles of sustainability and conservation, of local forest administration, of open access to timber, and, last but not least, of reliance upon the will of rural British Columbians to change, survive and succeed. Anthony Britneff worked for the B.C. Forest Service for 40 years holding senior professional positions in inventory, silviculture and forest health.
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Poor government leadership has allowed regulatory capture of the ministry of forests by large logging companies. This has resulted in de facto privatization of publicly-owned forests. A Canadian Biomass Magazine article on the bioenergy industry promoting its priorities featured this photograph of a wood pellet trade show. BC’s then-Chief-Forester Diane Nicholls is third from right. (Photograph by Fiona Pun) WHEN I JOINED THE BC FOREST SERVICE in the late 1960s and later as a forester, I was struck by the obvious leadership from the top that permeated throughout the organization to its lowest rungs. The organization was defined by a strong culture of unity of purpose and belonging (1). In those days, the chief forester had direct line authority over operations from Victoria through five Forest Regions to the Ranger Stations. The chief forester had a degree in forestry, had been initiated into the Forest Service with the same basic training as all other foresters, and had risen to the top through merit as a career public servant. Since the 1950s, the common training at initiation into the service had consisted of a compulsory first two years working in forest inventory: the collection of forest information; the mapping of provincial forests; the management of forest data; and the reporting of forest descriptive statistics. So, it was inevitable that any chief forester understood the critical importance of forest inventory in its application to forest management, to forest planning and especially to the setting of an allowable annual cut (AAC). That all began to change in 1978 with the introduction of a new Forest Act and a major reorganization of the Ministry of Forests, which centralized forest administration. For example, over 103 Ranger Stations and Field Offices were replaced by 36 District Offices. Eighty-one management areas (known as Public Sustained Yield Units) were merged into 36 management areas (known as Timber Supply Areas) largely to rationalize over-cutting. 1978 was the year in which the forest industry began the regulatory capture of the forests ministry, the organization trusted with the management of the public’s provincial forests. By “regulatory capture,” I mean the co-option of a public regulator for the benefit of private companies. Mike Apsey, who had previously worked for the Council of Forest Industries, became the deputy minister. During his tenure as deputy minister, Apsey instituted a policy dubbed as “sympathetic administration” toward the forest industry. Previously, the role of the Forest Service had been strictly to regulate the industry. Not from then on. Apsey also initiated the Ministry of Forests and Range Act, which is still in force today. That legislation clearly spells out five purposes and functions of the forests ministry, which are, for the most part, timber-centric and industry-focused. In this Act Apsey introduced a new notion of “multiple use” of forests. In retrospect, one purpose—“Encourage a vigorous, efficient and world competitive timber processing industry and ranching sector in British Columbia”—coupled with the policy of “sympathetic administration”, set the course for eventual regulatory capture of the forests ministry by the industry. As matters stand today, the forests ministry not only fails in this statutory charge but gives superordinate emphasis to it over the other four purposes. This is accomplished through massive subsidies to the forest industry—to the detriment of biodiversity, soil, water and carbon. Today these subsidies have rendered futile the fifth purpose of the ministry, which is to “assert the financial interest of the government in its forest and range resources in a systematic and equitable manner”. BC’s forest sector is now a sink for subsidies and a source for carbon. In 1984, Apsey left the BC Forest Service and returned to the Council of Forest Industries as its president and chief executive officer. Throughout the remaining years of the 1980s BC’s public service underwent significant privatization and contracting out of its activities. The forests ministry was a prime target for both, an example being the privatization of the seedling nurseries. In 1992, Mike Harcourt was elected premier and the direction set by Apsey and successive Social Credit governments shifted. Larry Pedersen rose to the position of chief forester in 1994 based on merit as a career public servant with the BC Forest Service. He was the last chief forester whose position needed mastery of forest inventory, growth-and-yield modelling and the process of AAC determination. The Forest Practices Code of British Columbia Act (the Code) was enacted in 1995 under the progressive leadership of Harcourt’s government. Andrew Petter was the minister responsible for the Code and a province-wide program of land-use planning. The government initiated the Code in large part at the behest of the forest industry to calm international export markets for BC’s forest products, which had experienced boycotts because of the province’s poor forest practices. BC had become known as the “Brazil of the North.” The drafting of the Code infused enthusiasm in ministry staff and restored faith in the BC Forest Service as a regulatory body. Stakeholders and the public were engaged in land-use planning and in reviewing draft legislation. After his election as premier in 2001, Gordon Campbell ransacked the public service, including the BC Forest Service. Prior to 2002, the office of the chief forester was also the main policy arm of the forests ministry. Much forest policy was based in science thanks to a long-established, internationally renowned research branch reporting to the chief forester. The chief forester’s position was also responsible for the inventory, silviculture, tree-seed improvement and forest health programs as well as for land-use planning, timber supply analysis and AAC determinations. But in 2002, Campbell’s government began to dismantle the BC Forest Service including the chief forester’s division. Campbell’s purge scrapped detailed annual and periodic reporting; eliminated the research branch (2); removed the inventory (3) and forest health (4) programs from the forests ministry; and reduced by 94 per cent the silviculture budget (5) for the reforestation of forests destroyed by wildfire and by the mountain pine beetle. The chief forester’s only remaining statutory responsibility was for AAC determinations. Campbell enabled the complete regulatory capture of the forests ministry by giving industry a prominent role in the writing of forest legislation. Just a few metres down the hall from my office, lawyers from the Council of Forest Industries were actively engaged in the drafting of the Forest and Range Practices Act to replace the Code. I mean drafting, not reviewing. This was unheard of in government and possibly illegal. The Forest and Range Practices Act was assented to in late 2002 and most of the Code was rescinded in 2004. This meant that the only remaining standards for forest practices were tree-seed standards and stocking standards. Other operating standards were embodied in Government Action Regulations (GAR) and are not legally binding. The Forest and Range Practices Act pays lip service to what are described as ten “non-timber resource values” such as biodiversity, soil and water. Timber is the eleventh value. Objectives for some of these 11 resource values are found in the Forest Planning and Practices Regulation, most of which are meaningless without benchmarks against which to measure results. The industry’s influence can be seen in the wording in that regulation of the extent to which the non-timber values could be protected. Such protection could not “unduly reduce the supply of timber,”(6) which meant in policy not more than 6 per cent for a management unit, an arbitrary and meaningless level of protection. From now on, timber was king in law; land-use plans were allowed to become outdated; and the forests ministry only needed to pretend it was managing public forests for multiple uses and for ecosystem and cultural values other than timber. This Act, its attendant regulations and an ingenious policy of “professional reliance” were the passport to industry self-regulation, and they remain so today. Professional reliance replaced government regulation with professional opinion. Essentially, the Campbell government devolved regulatory responsibility to industry, which abnegated its responsibility to professional reliance. The BC Forest Service had become an extension of the forest industry. In 2003, with the morphing of Mike Apsey’s small business program into BC Timber Sales—a logging giant responsible for 20 per cent of the allowable annual cut—government became industry. In his political allegory, Animal Farm, George Orwell concluded: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” (7) So it is now with the industry and the ministry: the “mindustry.” The forest industry operates through the forests ministry and the ministry effects its policy through the industry. Since the forest industry’s coup d’état du ministère, the Council of Forest Industries even approves senior management positions in the ministry of forests. The critical qualification appears to be the right response to the question: “How useful are you going to be to us?” I remember asking a ministry staff member if he had been successful in winning a junior management position in the ministry. He told me, without a hint of irony, that his appointment was awaiting final approval from the Council of Forest Industries. Starting in 2009, the forests ministry executive dabbled in social engineering by actively setting about “changing the culture” of the organization to have staff view their work through “an industry lens” (as opposed to a public-interest lens) and to instil a “can-do” attitude where the past is expunged and questioning discouraged. Among other initiatives, this included purging the ministry of the last vestiges of the old public service ethic of the BC Forest Service. This was achieved through downsizing. Finally, the BC Forest Service was officially dissolved in 2012 marking its centennial, 1912 to 2012. The importance of ethics as a part of corporate culture has been, and is, little understood by forests ministry management. The ministry has never had a land ethic. The ethical tone of the ministry is set by its executive ranks and senior managers and is best described by Margaret Somerville’s term “situational ethics,” which enable the worst excesses of the “can-do culture” that we see today, such as concealment, obfuscation, stonewalling and active disinformation. Once instructed to be independent of industry, forests ministry staff under the “can-do culture” and the Forest and Range Practices Act no longer have to put on a false front. In this regard, the present chief forester’s position sets the tone. Instead of formulating policy within government, the chief forester obtains advice from a leadership team comprised of only industry chief foresters. The government has no qualms about inventing a role for the chief forester as a trade envoy shilling for industry and promoting the pellet industry. What next? The chief forester’s face on the back of BC Transit buses promoting laminated lumber in front of twin logos for the Council of Forest Industries and the forests ministry? The point here is that through deregulation, through the steady demise of a regulatory role for the forests ministry and through the decline of a meaningful role for the province’s chief forester, we are left with a forests ministry bereft of laws, of forest policy formulation and of any semblance of independence from the industry it should regulate. The events of the last two decades have rendered the forests ministry unfit to continue as the trustee responsible for the care of the public’s provincial forests and the web of life therein. Change matters. The history of forest governance since 1912 is about change, both good and bad. But since the turn of the century, the forests ministry has completely lost its way, and you, the public, need to reorient it or replace it under new legislation with regulatory purpose that defines a sustainable relationship between the conservation of the natural world and the use of all natural resources. That is my story. Through this portal, we want to hear your story or examples of how the forests ministry has been captured by the forest industry and/or your ideas for renewed public-interest governance of publicly owned forests. Anthony Britneff worked for the B.C. Forest Service for 40 years holding senior professional positions in inventory, silviculture and forest health. He has a masters degree in public administration. Footnotes: (1) For those readers interested in the culture of the BC Forest Service between the end of the Second World War and the 1960’s, they might enjoy Herbert Kaufman’s book “The Forest Ranger: A Study in Administrative Behaviour,” published in 1960 and still in print. Although this study is about the US Forest Service, many of the elements that define the US Forest Service as a successful organization and an efficient bureaucracy applied to the BC Forest Service. (2) Although the research branch was disbanded, the government did not fire all the scientists. Some scientists were transferred to the environment ministry. So, forest research continues to this day but without cohesive direction, policy and administration. Prior to Gordon Campbell, in 1998, the BC NDP under Glen Clark terminated the research branch; but Andrew Petter in his last task as finance minister restored the funding for the branch allowing it to survive for another decade. (3) The forest inventory program moved to a short-lived ministry called the Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management before being returned to the forests ministry with far less staff and reduced budget. (4) The forest health program was devolved to the forest industry under an ill-conceived initiative known as defined forest area management. Predictably the industry was not interested in adding one cent to its costs; so, the program was eventually returned to the forests ministry at less than half its original budget. (5) Although the Campbell government repealed legislation requiring the forests ministry to reforest lands denuded of forest cover by wind, disease, insects and wildfire, the curtailing of reforestation of these lands was politically unacceptable. So, the reforestation budget was returned to the ministry at less than half the pre-Campbell amount. (6) The actual clause repeated for each objective reads “without unduly reducing the supply of timber from British Columbia's forests”. (7) Orwell, George. 1945. Animal Farm. LC Class: PR6029.R8 A63 2003b
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Logging in BC releases immense quantities of carbon emissions, degrades needed ecosystem services, destroys habitat for at-risk wildlife and creates conditions that allow larger and more intense forest fires. It’s time to downsize the industry to a level that meets BC’s own needs and no more. All large forest fires in BC involve many thousands of acres of clearcuts and plantations, both of which have a higher fire hazard rating than primary and mature forest (Photo: BC Wildfire Service) JOBS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA’S FOREST SECTOR have become a talisman exploited by the forest industry and its associations in persuading politicians of the importance of the sector to the provincial economy. As forestry jobs have steadily declined, industry lobbyists like the Council of Forest Industries, Resource Works and the Truck Loggers’ Association have become increasingly creative in overstating the contribution of the forest sector to the provincial economy by, for example, inflating job numbers with indirect jobs. If Statistics Canada were to count jobs this way, we would have many more jobs than there are residents in the province. Between the years 2000 and 2019, the forest sector of British Columbia shed 50,000 direct jobs largely due to mechanization and depletion of old growth forests. About the same number—50,000—remain, mostly in manufacturing. So let’s question the talisman. Is it that ridiculous to shed the remaining number of direct forestry jobs in the woods and manufacturing by, say, 40,000? Perhaps not. Let’s examine some of the compelling reasons for a reduced workforce in forestry: Tree cover loss expressed as area per capita is greater in BC than in most forested countries of the world; greater than in Brazil, Indonesia and Russia. This rate and extent of clearcut logging has a large carbon footprint. The prevalence of highly flammable clearcuts and young plantations (less than 25 years) has become a significant driver of the size of wildfires…the mega fires of recent years that destroy homes and impact air quality so badly that our health is endangered, including the spread of COVID. In fact, wildfires in BC have increased in size and intensity so dramatically that they, together with logging, now exceed fossil fuels as the province’s major source of climate-destabilizing carbon. You won’t find this in the provincial government’s carbon accounting because it has deftly chosen to ignore carbon emissions from logging and wildfire. Consequences of clearcut logging more familiar to the reader include: the loss of the little remaining old-growth forests growing in ecosystems rich in biodiversity; the destruction of fish and wildlife habitat (salmon, caribou and grizzlies); and the relentless extermination and extirpation of animals, plants and fungi. In many ways, climate change in BC is all about water. Here, clearcutting is instrumental in contaminating the drinking water for many rural communities; in depleting groundwater causing more frequent and prolonged drought events; and, of huge concern to the residents of Grand Forks and the Okanagan Valley, in increasing the frequency, magnitude and duration of major flood events. The excessive rate of clearcutting is permitted by a grossly inflated allowable annual cut (AAC). But the question is: to what end? Only 20 percent of the forest products derived from clearcutting are destined for our domestic market. The remaining 80 percent satisfies export markets mostly in the United States, China and Japan—all of which have higher standards for the conservation and protection of old-growth forests than does BC. This means that those three countries are conserving their ecosystems at the expense of the degradation and loss of our ecosystems. In spite of the high level of exports of forest products, the forest sector contributes a meagre two per cent to the provincial gross domestic product (GDP) and only two per cent to the provincial labour force. In other words, our provincial economy is sufficiently robust and resilient to absorb further job losses in forestry and reduced exports of raw logs and forest products. Accordingly, would it not be in the public interest to ban clearcutting and substantially lower the allowable annual cut thereby reducing the export of raw logs and forest products and cutting back the labour force in the forest sector? If we as a society in BC can shed 400,000 jobs in two months of 2020 to deal with a global pandemic, is it that ridiculous to transition, say, 40,000 forestry jobs into non-destructive forest and value-added enterprises and into other economic sectors in order to mitigate a global climate emergency already having such profound consequences for BC's environment and residents? Anthony Britneff worked for the BC Forest Service for 40 years holding senior professional positions in inventory, silviculture and forest health.
