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2. Forest Policy in British Columbia and the Conflict over Clayoquot Sound
- Georgetown University Press
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35 2 Forest Policy in British Columbia and the Conflict over Clayoquot Sound Forests are central to the ecology, economy, and politics of British Columbia. About two-thirds of the province is forested and is home to a rich diversity of plant and animal species. Forest products are one of the biggest exports in British Columbia, and the forest industry alone is a source of approximately ninety thousand jobs. Beginning in the 1990s, forest management rose to the top of the provincial government’s agenda while also attracting increasing international attention. For much of its history, however, forest policy in British Columbia was formulated inside a relatively autonomous subsystem and generated little public controversy overall. In the 1990s, the politics of forest policy broke out of the confines it had operated within in the past, and the province found itself under the watchful eye of an increasingly skeptical public at home and abroad. The conflict over Clayoquot Sound was in the eye of this storm of protest; for opponents, it symbolized everything that was wrong with forest management in the province and became a rallying point for changing forest practices throughout British Columbia. The first part of this chapter examines the historical and institutional context of forest policymaking in British Columbia prior to the outbreak of conflict in Clayoquot Sound. The discussion focuses first on the origins and maintenance of the forest policy subsystem and then briefly examines the emergence of cracks in the subsystem and resulting changes in forest policy. This discussion sets the stage for understanding the Clayoquot Sound case, the dynamics of which are detailed in the next three chapters. A brief overview of the case at the end of the chapter provides an introduction to the conflict. 36 The Expansion of Conflict in British Columbia Forest Politics The B.C. Forest Policy Subsystem The Canadian constitution gives primary authority over land and natural resource management to the provinces, such that the federal government has played little role in British Columbia’s forest policy and politics. The B.C. Ministry of Forests is the key manager and regulator of provincial lands, often working in close collaboration with timber companies who are granted longterm leases to forest resources. Because most of the land in the province is publicly owned, and about a quarter of the province is suitable for timber harvest, the Ministry of Forests historically has had a great deal of authority over what happens in the woods of British Columbia. While the decentralization of authority over forest policy in Canada sets it apart from the United States, where authority resides at the national level, the early history of British Columbia’s forest policy resembles that of its neighbor to the south. For much of the nineteenth and half of the twentieth century, B.C. forests were logged with little concern or attention to future timber supplies . As a result, a portion of the province’s forestland was converted to farms in the nineteenth century (Bryner 1999, 313). In 1912, the province passed its first forestry law, the Forest Act, which established a forest service but did little to stop the widespread practice of logging old-growth forests and replacing them with faster growing second-growth forests. Beginning in the 1940s, however, people questioned the policy (or nonpolicy) of liquidation and conversion , fearing that timber supplies might run out if companies were allowed to “cut and run.” In 1947, the provincial government intervened by amending the 1912 Forest Act. The new legislation delegated more responsibility for timber management to private companies but required timber companies to replant logged areas and regulated the rate of cut. Despite the changes in forest policy, timber harvesting continued at a rapid rate. Hoberg and Morawski (1997, 392) note that the government’s policy of sustained-yield forestry actually accelerated the rate of cut in old-growth forests: “The legitimacy of the [forest policy] regime was supported by the concept of sustained-yield forestry, which in British Columbia was used to justify the rapid conversion of old-growth forests to more routinely managed second-growth forests” (see also Howlett and Brownsey 1996). Kamieniecki (2000, 182) believes that professional foresters were “deliberately optimistic” about the sustainability of their policies, convincing “sympathetic policymakers and the public that it was possible to cut trees at a high, sustainable rate.” Kamieniecki’s statement aside, it is doubtful whether foresters or anyone else connected to the timber industry had to...