More than a century of focusing on lumber value over supporting the environment is coming back to bite B.C., but there is still hope governments and the industry can apply sustainable practices.
The Kettle Valley Wildlife Hall was packed with residents from the Boundary Region, dignitaries and guest speakers to talk about wildlife resources in critical danger after generations of what guest speaker BC Liberal Caucus MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie Mike Morris said is “not seeing the forest for the trees.”
He was among other guest speakers talking about everything from recent wildfires, declining wildlife populations, atmospheric rivers, flooding and the solutions that could help at least mitigate extreme weather as climate change progresses.
Morris has been working on changing provincial natural resource management policies for the past 20 years, with a highlight being a 2015 government report Getting the Balance Right: Improving Wildlife Habitat Management in BC.
“I’ve been an environmentalist and always will be,” Morris said in later comments. “Barry (Brandow) had contacted me a while ago on this and that was a very good turnout for the area.”
He explained he’s had a lifelong passion for environmental stewardship. When Christy Clark was Premier, she appointed Morris as parliamentary secretary with a sole focus on wildlife habitat. During that time, he studied the province’s resource management, where it was right now and where it is headed.
Even then, he said he saw many of the warning signs of disasters happening today, like giant wildfires and more violent storms, as well as droughts and watersheds losing their ability to maintain moisture levels.
Also during that time, he wrote an internal paper that was leaked, titled “You Can’t See the Forest for the Trees” looking at the century-long history of the forestry industry’s management of the province’s timber stands. Many of the problems stem from long-outdated policies that no longer fit the reality of lumber harvesting, he said.
“I really wanted to see why there was this myopic focus on the growth and yield of a tree,” he said. It looked at the amount of trees we’ve lost, the effect on wildlife and the hydrological integrity we lost from harvesting. That led to wildfires and droughts and floods. It’s the genesis of the discussion we had in Rock Creek.”
His paper looked at every Royal Commission on the forestry industry from 1910 to today and he found much of the province’s timber harvest is still based on 1945’s commission on sustainable yields, when it was believed B.C’s forest would last essentially forever. Back then, there was no concern for loss of trees because it was believed there were so many it would never compromise the other ecosystems in the forests. This was all based on technology and harvesting practices from the 1930’s.
By the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, the then-provincial governments modernized the logging industry with the same myopic view, Morris said.
“We turbocharged the industry. We went from five-axle trucks to 10-axle trucks,” he said. “We had million-dollar feller-bunchers that could do the work of 20 men. We have sawmills that can consume 2 million or more cubic metres, when 30 or 40 years ago they consumed 100,000 or 200,000 cubic metres.”
This has led to 30 million hectares harvested and replanted with monoculture seedlings that do little to restore the lands or fully support biodiversity, he said.
While changing how forests are managed in B.C. may not help level out climate change globally, it will help the province’s forests cope better with sudden events, like floods and fires. With fires, he said better policies around managing watersheds would help keep moisture in the ground so they won’t burn as intensely as they do now. Harvesting policies that aim to maintain biodiversity and protect wildlife will help mitigate built-up fuel from fallen trees and provide food and shelter for wildlife.
While unhappy it’s taken years of physical damage to get his colleagues and industry leaders to pay attention, Morris said he’s not going to stop, even after he leaves political office. Right now he’s continuing to push for changes and is encouraging colleagues to join advisory boards to learn more and bring their influence to foster changes between business and in the Legislature.