"The Earth enemy wears
a cloak of decency."Anonymous
Forestkeeping:
A History Of The Department Of Lands And Forests
In Nova Scotia
1926-1969 Dr. Wilfrid Creighton,
Department of Government Services Publishing Division, 1988,
paperback, ISBN 0-88871-075-5
Forests
of
Nova Scotia: a history
Ralph S. Johnson, Department of
Lands and Forests and Four East Publications, Halifax, 1986,
paperback, ISBN 0-920427-08-1
Introduction
On September 28th, 2002, I
took part in a rainy field day in Middle Musquodoboit, well organized
by the
Nova Scotia Woodlot Owners' and Operators'
Association. There
was a good turn-out of about 60 people.
I was accompanied by two
friends who share similar, ecocentric environmental values. This field
day was
held at the 1,400 acre "woodlot" of Dr. Wilfrid
Creighton, a
98-year-old professional forester and former
deputy minister of Lands
and Forests. "Woodlot" is one of those commonplace taken-for-granted
terms,
which, like "resources", is a significant part of
the industrial
forestry problem. It conveys, through the use of
particular language, a
"growing timber", human-centered world view of the living Acadian
forest.
Notwithstanding their titles, this is also the view
expressed
in the above two books, Forestkeeping
and
Forests of Nova Scotia. It is not a view that
"nature knows best", but that woodlots need to be
"managed"
and brought, through human intervention, into
industrial
forestry production. Non-managed woodlots are
called "idle" and
"stagnant" in the Ralph Johnson text, and this is seen as a major
problem in N.S. (Johnson,
p. 355) Any "management" perspective towards
forests or any "restoration" forestry, rests on an implicit or
explicit
set of values about how humans should relate to forests. It also rests,
even if unconsciously, on a
perspective about the desirable nature of
the society that we all live in, and which will heavily impact any
forestry - whether industrial, "low impact" or
"certifiable."
This field day was a "first"
for the Woodlot Owners' Association. We were told by Tom Miller, the
president of the Association at this event, that
Wilfrid Creighton's
woodlot represented the kind of
forestry values that the Association
was after. The woodlot, presented as a role model for others seeking
alternatives to industrial scale forestry, sometimes
employs up to a
dozen local people. The invitation flyer
for the field day used the
environmental card and was headlined "The Old Man and the Trees."
(There
did not seem to be any awareness by the Association
of the
contradiction of having a commercial
blueberry operation since 1953,
with its heavy biocide use, as part of the Creighton "sustainable"/low
impact woodlot. People for the field day actually
assembled in a
building at a neighbour's commercial
blueberry operation.) The flyer
informed that we were invited to:
"View work in progress by woodlot
operators and consider the options,
- Horse logging and extraction
trails
- Forwarder/porter
- Small harvester/processor
- Skidder and tree length method
- Pre-commercial thinning choices
in mixed hardwood stands"
We rotated through all the
above project sites at the Creighton woodlot. It was clear to me and my
two friends, that this woodlot operation, with its
five miles of "all
weather" roads, was much better than
the massacre of the regular
industrial-capitalist forestry in the province. There was obvious care
to
minimize site damage in taking out the wood. So this
was a ‘soft' or
allegedly low impact forestry. But
the wood was
being taken out and not
left. The economic interest was the dominant one in this woodlot
and,
it seemed, for its "interpreters" at the project sites during the field
day. Wildlife and non-forestry
environmental concerns were at best
footnotes in our group discussions, as we rotated through the
various
sites. There was one site, a riparian zone, where wildlife concerns
were prominent. But the focus
remained, even at this site interpreted
by a biologist, human/corporate-centered; accepting the legitimacy
of
the overall industrial forestry frame of reference, so that our job was
to fit to this, while fighting for
"wider" forest leave strips along
stream banks.
We were proudly told at the
field day that the Association is now a member of the Forest
Stewardship
Council in the Maritimes, although no individual
woodlots
of members have yet been "certified." This first
field day for the
Association was also meant to be the start of a counter trend to the
"woodlot owner of the
year" award/field day. The woodlot owner of the
year prize is handed out annually by the provincial
Department of
Natural Resources and has become part of the ongoing celebration of
industrial forestry
within Nova Scotia, with compliant media PR
coverage and plaque awarded.
Creighton and Johnson
I decided to read
Creighton's book, a slim volume of 154 pages, as background preparation
for the field
day. Creighton retired from the government in 1969.
After
I had read his book, I became interested in
reading Ralph Johnson's
400-page history of forestry in Nova Scotia. This book is co-published
by the
Department of Lands and Forests. Johnson's book,
which should be
called "Forest Industry of Nova
Scotia: A History" - as opposed to
"Forests of Nova Scotia", is dedicated to Wilfrid Creighton. Both
these
individuals have been chief foresters over long periods of time within
Nova Scotia, although Johnson
worked for the Bowater Mersey Paper
Company for 37 years, 31 of them as chief forester. What is highly
instructive is that this more or less official
history of forestry in
Nova Scotia is written by a long time pulp
mill employee! The foreword
to Creighton's book Forestkeeping,
by Lloyd Hawboldt, describes both
this
author and fellow forester Ralph Johnson as having
earned "The
title of father of forestry in Nova Scotia."
(Creighton, p. x) To
complete the round of plaudits, we are told by Hawboldt in the same
foreword:
"Under Wilfrid Creighton the
Department of Lands and Forests
entered a period of expansion and
expertise that moved the
reputation
of Nova Scotia into the front ranks of forestry." (Creighton, p. xi)
A contemporary perspective
was demonstrated at a meeting of the "Standing Committee On Resources"
at the Nova Scotia Legislature on October 29th,
2002. In the Minutes,
posted on the internet, one of two
spokespersons (Ms Nancy
McInnis-Leek, Director of the Forestry Division), appearing for the
Department
of Natural Resources, noted:
"If you look back, the chief
foresters of our time, in the past, have
always written a book at the end of their
25 years in government. Each
one reads similarly. It reads such as, we are running out of wood,
there are
bad practices, the industry is
going to collapse, we have to
find a way to do things better. What we found is,
the industry adapts, people adapt
and things change.
We hope that we are not ever walking down a path
that is going to lead
us to the fisheries issue. It is easier to see the trees, it is easier
to manage the trees."
Both the forestry books
discussed in this essay are written by authors who are in some sense
"setting the
record straight", and in the process are
establishing
their critical credentials. Yet both writers have had an
important role
to play in establishing the
forestry record in Nova Scotia. Both books
are published (blessed?)
by the provincial government department
responsible for forestry. The books are celebrations of government,
with some secondary mention of contradictions. Both
are human-centered
books, with an economic,
"production of timber", focus. The books
acquiesce to the basic government view that the orientation of
forestry in the province is to be determined by the
main industrial users of the
forests. This is how Johnson
put it:
"Industry requires reasonable
assurance of adequate raw material in
order to establish mills which may cost
millions of dollars." (Johnson,
p. 253)
Both books show examples of
how industry has economically shafted the government, taxpayers and
small
woodlot owners, for example, through low stumpage
rates on crown
(public lands) leases. Crown forestry
land on long term leases has been
handed over to the pulp mills. Creighton's book shows how in the 60s,
stumpage for the Scott Paper 230,000 acre crown
lease was $2 per cord
for softwood and 50 cents per cord
for hardwood. (Creighton, p. 132)
During this same time period, Stora was paying $1 per cord stumpage
from
their crown lease. (Creighton, p. 130) Once any
crown land is tied
up in a pulp lease, alternative land use -
say for parks or protected
areas - becomes totally constrained. Creighton points out that for the
Scott crown
lease, "withdrawals" by the province could not
exceed one per cent of the
lease. (Creighton, p. 133)
Both books accept the use of
biocides on forests (see Creighton, p. 144), with Johnson inveighing
against
"so-called environmentalists" who opposed this.
(Johnson p.
350) Creighton accepts biocide use on blueberry
fields. (Creighton, p.
96) Johnson, unlike Creighton, makes critical comments about clear
cutting. Yet
Johnson himself worked for a pulp mill which used
clear
cutting:
"I am reasonably certain that
clearcutting as commonly practised here
offers little or no economic advantage
over partial cutting systems
when all costs are added in; and, furthermore, that over the long run
it is
ecologically unsound. Yet
clearcutting with planting is the chief
method practised in Nova Scotia today."
(Johnson, p. 356)
The strength of Johnson's Forests of Nova Scotia is that it
is a well documented, illustrated,
history of
the forest industry in the province. I recommend it
for this
purpose. His is an economic, not an ecological,
perspective on the
forests of Nova Scotia. Creighton's book shows the same viewpoint. For
Creighton to
claim in the title of his book, that the Department
of
Lands and Forests in N.S. has been in the
"Forestkeeping" business is a
travesty of existing forest realities. "Forest-destroyer" would more
appropriately characterize any true history of the
Department of
Natural Resources. Creighton's book,
with its misleading title, feeds
the ongoing public deception by the Department and forest industry that
all is basically well with contemporary forestry in
Nova Scotia.
Johnson opposes "extensive
parks" in favour of the "multiple use" of forested land, because parks
are to be
"inviolate by man forever." (Johnson, p. 327) So
Johnson
would have no problem with some literature
distributed by the Woodlot
Owners (also distributed by mainstream environmental groups) at the
field day - "Forest
Accounts: Reporting on the state of Nova Scotia's
forests", which holds up for emulation the
selection logging being
carried out in Algonquin Park in Ontario. Creighton and Johnson also
have a
traditional human-centered perspective of wildlife
in forests.
Wildlife is presented in their view, not as having
its own intrinsic
value, but as a "resource" to be managed for human hunting, fishing
and trapping.
The fundamental critique of
industrial forestry in Nova Scotia has not come from its
supporters/
practitioners within government, or from the forest
industry
itself, but from the outside. Any critical
comments made by Creighton
or Johnson in their books seem tepid compared to the past work done by
environmentalists like Charlie Restino, Geoffrey and
Elizabeth May,
Rudi Haase, Neal Livingston, myself
and other dissidents. See for
example, Paul Webster's 1991 Dalhousie University MA Thesis, "Pining
For Trees: The History Of Dissent Against Forest
Destruction In Nova
Scotia 1749-1991."
Industrial ‘sustainable' forestry
Jorg Beyeler, Manager of
Forest Planning for the Department of Natural Resources, in the Minutes
mentioned previously, said in response to a question
from a
politician concerning the new so-called
"Sustainable Forestry Fund" in
Nova Scotia:
"The silviculture program is
targeted at growing timber.
There is no question about that."
This industry/government
silvicultural initiative is the latest attempt to keep the wood supply
coming,
without seriously challenging any of the basic
assumptions of
the existing industrial-capitalist forestry
model in Nova Scotia. The
regulations of the alleged Sustainable Forestry Fund dealing with
silvicultural
programs (which include "weed control", i.e.
chemical/biological spraying, planting, thinning, etc.), came
into
effect in the year 2000 and now cover privately owned woodlands (about
75% of forested lands)
within the province. (There is however, no legal
requirement that a private landowner conduct silviculture
on what is
considered their "property" after cutting has taken place.) "Registered
buyers" of the living
forest must either conduct a silvicultural
program themselves after cutting (which is mainly what is
happening),
or contribute $6.60 per cord for softwood and $1.20 per cord for
hardwood to the
Sustainable Forestry Fund, for the Fund to
administer
such a program. According to testimony given
to the NS Standing
Committee on Resources, there are about 350 registered buyers in the
province,
but about 50 of them are responsible for 95% of the
wood
either bought, used or exported.
Nova Scotia Woodlot Owners' and Operators'
Association
I have had some relationship
with the Woodlot Owners' Association for about the last ten years. This
has included sometimes attending the annual meetings
and occasionally
taking out an annual membership.
This relationship from my perspective
has been supportive, yet critical. I have always personally felt
welcomed by the main activists in the Association at
meetings that I
have attended. Historically, the
Association, which goes back to the
mid-60s, has tried against the unrelenting opposition of the pulp mills
and of their allies in the provincial government, to
be an economic
voice for the small woodlot owner.
However much it wanted to be the
oppositional voice, the Association still couldn't bring itself to
break
totally free and continued to seek "recognition"
from the
industry and government, e.g. inviting the
appropriate minister to
address annual meetings, seeking government grants, joining forest
industry
dominated phoney "coalitions", etc. But in the last
few years
there has been an evolution in the direction
of "low impact" forestry.
Perhaps there has also been a hesitating search for a different social
base of
land ‘owners', to include those who do not orient to
feeding
the forest industry, as well as an
engagement with the mainstream
environmental community. The Association eventually withdrew from
the
"model forest" project in Nova Scotia, because they belatedly found out
it was industry dominated.
There continues to be a fear of "being too
radical" or "not alienating our traditional base" etc., which has
been
expressed to me.
I myself am unsure of
whether the evolution of the Association away from straightforward
"economism" -
that is standing up for the rights of woodlot owners
in
Nova Scotia to participate in collective bargaining
for roundwood-
selling pulp to the mills, fighting over quota and price, etc. - is a
genuine change of
ecological heart, or a positioning for a
"certification" response to the "green" consumer market for forest
goods now opening up. Logging for a green market
does not challenge the
overall industrial paradigm which
is destroying the natural world. This
green market is what the Forest Stewardship Council, with elements of
the industrial forest industry on board, is
feeding/creating.
At the field day, Wade
Prest, a past president of the Association who has sometimes spoken at
mainstream
environmental meetings, gave a short talk
emphasizing how
industrial forestry was "depleting the nutrient
capital" of the forests
in Nova Scotia. At the last Association annual meeting, Prest had
talked of "An
opportunity for the Association to respond to new
values." The last two annual meetings of the Woodlot
Owners have
featured progressive talks. One was by the Buddhist forester Jim
Drescher, whose
"Windhorse Farm" is an alternative in the province
to
the industrial forestry model. The other talk was by
Ron Colman, who
spoke against economic "growth" orthodoxies, and of the "Genuine
Progress Index"
and how to apply this to forestry. Mainstream
environmental groups, who have themselves embraced the
Forest
Stewardship Council, have rallied to the Nova Scotia Woodlot Owners'
and Operators' Association.
Conclusion
I admire Wilfrid Creighton
for being articulate and physically active at age 98. However,
Creighton (who
promoted industrial forestry throughout his life by
reason of his government employment) and his woodlot
have been put
forward as an ecological role model for some kind of sustainable
forestry in Nova Scotia.
That this has occurred, illustrates the
widespread confusion about what such a forestry entails. The low
impact
forestry seen in Creighton's woodlot has to be a minimum, not a maximum
aspiration. Sustainable
forestry is not a word change or a graft onto
the existing industrial capitalist society. It is not a marketing
opportunity, although it is being packaged as such.
For example,
the November 2002 issue of Atlantic
Forestry, a journal stuffed
with ads for industrial machinery, has a picture of Wilfrid Creighton
on its cover.
Inside is a eulogistic article about the Nova Scotia
Woodlot Owners' and Operators' Association and their
field day. The
Association we are told, is articulating a "new vision based on
sustainable forestry." But there
is no new
vision yet, from my
perspective.
A new vision, rooted in an
ecological perspective, must mean an opposition at some level to
economic
growth as an end in itself and to the consumer
society which
accompanies this. An ecological perspective is
ultimately subversive,
challenging the direction, values, and the institutions of industrial
society. In a
presentation to the provincial Royal Commission on
Forestry, back in April of 1983 (published by the
Gorsebrook Research
Institute at Saint Mary's University, under the title "Pulpwood
Forestry in Nova
Scotia and the Environmental Question"), I
noted:
"Forestry policy in Nova Scotia,
as elsewhere in Canada, will be
decided by organized political power,
and not by the rationality of
various arguments which make themselves heard."
Elsewhere in this issue of The Northern Forest Forum, is an
article outlining the kinds of
values that
are needed for a truly alternative and "sustainable"
conservation ethic for the Acadian forest. There are no
"low impact"
short cuts. A sustainable forestry has to be rooted in deep ecology in
its attitude towards the
forests and in its attitude towards industrial
capitalist society. The Woodlot Owners' and Operators'
Association are
now positioned to make an important contribution to such a discussion,
if they are willing
to look deeper. Forestry role models for this
vision are yet to come into being.
November 19, 2002
Published in TheNorthern Forest Forum, Winter Solstice 2002, Vol. 9, No. 4
To obtain any of the Green Web
publications,
write to us at:
Green Web, R.R. #3, Saltsprings, Nova Scotia, Canada, BOK 1PO E-mail us at: greenweb@ca.inter.net