Conservationists see red over reserve deforestation

Page 28

When B.C.'s huge multinational lumber companies began to run short of wood last year, the price of newly cut trees more than doubled. The effects were felt quickly in Alberta, as anybody with enough acreage to justify the name landowner rushed to cash in. Conservationists, and many with a long-term stake in the Alberta forestry industry, expressed their outrage and concern.

"You drive through B.C. and all you see is clear-cuts," said Frank Gauchier, president of the board of directors of the Metis-owned Peavine Lumber Company Ltd. of High Prairie.

"There are these big clear places where you say 'Where have all the tress gone?'"

In the last year his company has moved to eliminate clear-cutting both on and around the settlement lands that it uses, and has replaced it with selective logging.

"We're saving the trees. It's like thinning," he said. Peavine will be able to harvest more mature trees from the area in 15 years, whereas clear-cuts take 60 years or more to grow back, if they ever do.

Gauchier points out that selective logging, using smaller machinery or even horses as motive power, employs perhaps 10 times as many people and will leave residents able to live in the area and tourists able to visit it.

This is exactly what conservationist want to hear, but they don't hear enough of it. They've formed coalitions to deal with forestry problems in the last few years, but they feel that the Alberta government has got environmental. protection way down its list of priorities.

"There's considerable influence from those with big influence with the government," said Colin Young of the Alberta Wilderness Association. He identified truckers and farmers as two interested groups who want Ralph Klein to keep his legislative hands off the trees.

"The government is in the position that private land is private," said Anne McInerney, executive assistant to the assistant deputy minister of Environmental Protection. "We are looking at a permit system for log hauling which will allow checking after the fact."

But they have no intention of regulating the cutting on private land, and insist that reserve land is a federal matter.

"They're trying to pawn the issue off," said opposition forestry critic Nick Taylor. "The environment definitely is a provincial responsibility. Logging has to be done according to good environmental practices. You have to confirm to our environmental laws, whoever you are. We are our neighbor's keeper."

"When it comes to the good of society, we all have to do our part," agreed Anne White, one of the founders of the Alberta Forestry Coalition. "There are all sorts of laws that apply to people, and they limit what we can do to each other." White recently visited the foothills west of Calgary and saw, she said, environmental devastation.

"The extent of this leaves me speechless," she said, adding that the problems gets worse in the Aboriginal communities. "It is a mater there of looking at what is the best for the community. The wise chief puts in a long-term program. Cutting down the timber is short-term, and you're left with a worse mess when it's gone."

White added that she is aware of the conflicts facing some First Nations, with unemployment exceeding 90 per cent in some places, but insists that the short-term solution is no solution at all. Good forestry practices will provide employment now, she said, and will allow sustainable development in the forest so that there will be employment opportunities years down the road, too.

Taylor, the former leader of the provincial liberals, believes that good forestry practices and reforestation should be obligatory for all who are in the forest industry.

He also espouses mandatory advertisement - at full price - to provincial interests before allowing export of wood. He suggests that First Nations landholders look into getting the government, business, or perhaps, environmental groups to subsidize them for maintaining the old growth forests, instea of cutting them down.

Old growth forests are one of the sore points with almost everybody. They provide habitat for everything from birds up to the largest animals, such as moose. Yet these are the very areas which are being lost in Alberta the fastest.

"Alberta is going to have lost 30 per cent of our birds within a few years," cautioned White. "Birders have seen none because the logging companies' version of selecting logging is to take everything that's taller than three feet. There's nowhere left for the birds."

Alberta laws protect the water, the soil and things around a forestry from fire, according to McInerney, but there is no law dealing with forest conservation, and there won't be.

"The provincial government pushes issues off their plates when they don't want anything to do with it," said Young, pointing out that Alberta was more than willing to deal with Native land on the Oldman Dam issue. "But when they want to have their hands on it, they certainly do that."

"Anyone who says they love the land, yet can do this to it, be they white or Aboriginal or whatever - I have a great deal of suspicion of them," said White. Most conservations' scorn, however, is reserved for a provincial government that has avoided taking action against those who, environmentalists suspect, have too much influence in Edmonton for the land's good.