Don’t Blame Conservation for Forest Industry Misfortunes

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This column is the opinion of Torrance Coste, the National Campaign Director of the Wilderness Committee. For more information on CBC’s Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

The chance to protect the most endangered ancient forests is finally on the table in British Columbia, and a familiar chorus is singing the all-too-familiar song that any planned postponement of logging is an attack on jobs.

On November 2, the British Columbia government announced its intention to postpone logging in 26,000 square kilometers of old-growth forest. Encompassing just over half of the most at-risk old-growth forests that remain unprotected in British Columbia, the two-year deferrals would come into effect upon First Nations approval. Then the discussion between the provincial government and Indigenous communities about how to protect the forests permanently could begin – without the roar of chainsaws in the background.

The move comes more than a year after the government released the findings of its Old Growth Strategic Review Panel, which called for a paradigm shift in British Columbia’s forests, and after more than 1,100 people were arrested at roadblocks in and around Fairy Creek.

The new plan has been criticized by First Nations leaders for lack of consultation, by the environmental movement for being an incomplete step that came far too late, and by logging companies, forestry unions and lobby groups in because of the impacts they say it would have on employment in the province.

I will address this latter group of critics here, because while the loss of jobs in the logging industry is real, conservation is not what drives it, and the scapegoating of environmentalism must end. .

The forest industry is doing badly; no one disputes that. Over the past two decades, dozens of factories have closed, entrepreneurs have gone bankrupt and the industry has lost tens of thousands of jobs. But at the same time, logging of old-growth forests at risk continued unabated. Hard times for loggers and mill workers have not come in exchange for the safety of southern mountain caribou, spotted owls and other dependent old-growth species staring the barrel of extinction.

What’s behind the job loss then?

Well, tens of thousands of hectares of forest in the interior of British Columbia have been affected by the mountain pine beetle outbreak and worsening wildfires. The three worst fire seasons on record have all occurred since 2017.

And, like all industries, the forestry sector has become mechanized and globalized. Logging operations that previously required crews of workers can now be carried out by one or two skilled people and modern, sophisticated equipment.

Factories and manufacturing sites, where most forestry industry jobs are located, have either been increasingly computerized or moved from places like Tahsis and Mackenzie to South Carolina and Louisiana. And every year, millions of raw, unprocessed logs are exported from British Columbia.

RCMP officers walk around protesters chained to a tree stump during an anti-logging protest in Caycuse, British Columbia. Torrance Coste. (Jen Osborne/The Canadian Press)

In heavy industry, efficiency reigns supreme and forestry is no exception.

The problem arises when the pursuit of this efficiency includes reducing overhead, including man-hours. Forestry in British Columbia has become exceptionally good at this. According to Statistics Canada data, only Alberta creates fewer jobs per cubic meter of wood cut than British Columbia

The same data shows that logging levels and employment in the forestry sector have now decoupled after years of being linked. The rate of logging goes up and down, but the number of jobs just goes down.

Again, these trends do not play out in a conservation context. The amount of protected forest in British Columbia has not increased dramatically over the same period, and the province lags far behind other jurisdictions in conservation.

Yet the job-versus-environment, lumberjack-versus-tree-scratcher tropes remain rock-solid. These binaries are not new, nor organic.

The environmental movement has historically failed to align our positions with working class solidarity. This failure has created the false impression that you can either care about wild creatures and giant trees or rural family jobs, not both. Forest industry leaders also contributed, insisting that setting aside threatened forests will undoubtedly create hardship.

These messages have an impact. Hostility between people working in logging and those involved in forest protection campaigns is on the rise. Both parties learn to see themselves as bullies who don’t care about nature or as naive, out-of-touch city dwellers. In my experience, none of the stereotypes are remotely accurate.

As with most issues, this division has a disproportionate impact on Indigenous communities. Centuries of land dispossession compound these broader challenges in ways most of us probably cannot imagine. For many reasons, solutions must center on returning land to indigenous peoples.

The pain felt by those who worry about their future in the forest industry and those who want to protect ancient forests is caused by the same problem. We’ve cut too many trees, too quickly, in too many places, for too long — a century of industrial logging has caught up with us.

It is time for the environmental movement to demand wartime investments in the economic transition of forest communities. We must insist that plans to leave old trees standing include a pathway to other opportunities for workers.

The forest industry must accept the findings of the Old Growth Strategic Review Panel and their ramifications. The panel did not recommend postponing logging in at-risk forests for fun. They did it because irreversible loss of biodiversity is likely if we don’t. Ancient forests cannot be replaced, and one day soon we will only cut down the trees that have been planted by people.

Continuing to take down those who haven’t been down for a little longer isn’t worth the sacrifices. The paradigm must change.

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