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[Victoria Watcher]

Canada's logging industry is seeking a wildfire 'hero' narrative

B.C. and Canadian forestry associations aim to tell a story that places them as the 'hero' in a fight against wildfires. One critic says the strategy is 'mendacious and dangerous.'

 

 

 

On a rainy Friday in April, industry executives and government officials were sitting on the fourth floor of a Vancouver casino hotel. From the stage, a pitch for the future of forestry was on repeat: what if logging companies could be the heroes who saved British Columbia from wildfires? 

 

Many of the speakers at the annual B.C. Council of Forest Industries (COFI) convention focused on how the sector could return to higher levels of harvest or slow the pace of government regulations. Then the conversation turned to wildfires. 

 

David Coletto, head of the market research firm Abacus Data, presented the results from a poll he designed with COFI. After Canada's most destructive wildfire season on record, the results suggested the B.C. public was ready to accept a narrative that the forestry industry could act as a saviour.

 

As Coletto put it, everybody in this province agrees who is the villain: it's the fire.

 

“And so now you have a place to be a hero in that story,” he said, speaking to members of the logging industry in the room. “That's a complete paradigm shift to where you were a few years ago, where you were often seen as the villain.”

 

Leaning on the data, COFI president and CEO Linda Coady said B.C. needs a “compelling story” that attracts investors, one that describes a convergence between fixing wildfires and increasing the supply of wood fibre. 

 

Jamie Stephen, the managing director of the energy and resources consulting firm TorchLight Bioresources, put it another way.

 

 

https://www.timescol...rrative-8642461

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 26 May 2024 - 06:32 AM.

[Mike K.]

Did the TC mention where their daily newspaper comes from?

[dasmo]

Oil bad cutting forests good. Got it.

[Sparky]

My favourite tree hugger smack down is...."What do you wipe your ass with?"

[Nparker]

I just always assumed they don't.

[Victoria Watcher]

 

 

 

 

May 12:

 

 

 

Amid ongoing drought, Island prepares for another brutal fire season

Island communities are getting ready as B.C. heads into wildfire season under the threat of drought.

 

https://www.timescol...-season-8724775

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 26 May 2024 - 11:48 PM.

[dasmo]

Is herbicide spray in the forestry sector raising B.C.’s wildfire risk?
UBC professor of forest ecology Lori Daniels said that while broadleaf trees have historically been viewed as competitors with a negative effect on the growth of economically-valuable conifers, the science and the thinking around them is evolving.

Letting broadleaf trees grow amid conifers in mixed forest may create create resilience to drought, insects, disease and wildfire.

https://globalnews.c...dfire-risk/amp/

[dasmo]

One day the science might evolve to catch up with common sense maybe!

[max.bravo]

Maybe, but it’ll never catch up to the interests of the forestry industry

[Victoria Watcher]

Maybe, but it’ll never catch up to the interests of the forestry industry

 

I'd expect nothng less from the forestry industry.

 

I suspect politics will always trump science though, when it comes to forests.

[dasmo]

It’s a mandate from the government. Industry doesn’t have a lot of choice since the obvious choice is to let nature do its thing and work with that. More fire isn’t good for the industry. Also there are more connected industries to our forests. Like fishing via salmon spawning etc. We need the forest for the industry. Nature made the forest not us. It’s really simple logic that the geniuses that make policies will eventually admit after the damage is done. Like affordable housing, drugs, homelessness and all the other oversimplified opposite effect policies they enact. Usually it generates new government agencies and NGOs to deal with the increased and new problems they create. Maybe they are geniuses after all?

[Mike K.]

What I don’t get is our forestry practices are far better than they were in the 1800s and 1900s when we logged, re-logged and logged again. Somehat’s changed since then? One major factor is the human element has changed.

Wildfires are as natural as the forests. Human-caused wildfires are an annual wildcard, though.

[dasmo]

1800s couldn’t log certain terrain and couldn’t log faster than the speed of recovery and general nature adaptation. At the speed of hand logging clear cutting and slash burning might have been closest to nature.

There was still a fishing industry in Sooke just 30 years ago. Over fishing and climate change didn’t ruin it, logging did. Salmon need functional rivers to return to. That and maybe letting the Russian seiners fish out waters. The trawlers out of Sooke all knew this. You could see it. At a certain distance up the coast the clear cuts would just go to the waters edge.

[dasmo]

I have a degree in Forestry from DKU I hope you know!

[Nparker]

I have a degree in Forestry from DKU I hope you know!

https://www.dukekunshan.edu.cn/

Edited by Nparker, 27 May 2024 - 08:37 AM.

[dasmo]

Dunning Kruger University

[dasmo]

I have many degrees

[Mike K.]

Logging has been clear cutting trees down to the shoreline for generations.

That’s how we got waterfront properties, and the trees now on our shores are second or third growth. There were also naturally occurring forest fires that wiped out entire ecosystems in one swoop, just like we see now.

Is the bigger issue not what happens beyond Canada’s border? Foreign trawlers don’t care about our watersheds or rivers. They’ll fish until they’re full.

[dasmo]

Speed and scale of cut matter. And only a few generations. Read the book "Bull of the Woods" for a great micro history of the Industry here. 

 

Cutting to river and waters edge matters if salmon are spawning there. This is what destroyed our south island fishing industry. Salmon return to the same river. If they can't the salmon of that river are dead. Simple. This is part of the equation anyway. 

 

Yes fire is natural and nature recovers. Case in point is Thetis Lake Park. That entire area burned to the ground in the early 1900s. It's a forest now. A young forest but one none the less. 

[dasmo]

If you outpace nature you can destroy the industry. Look at the Sandalwood Industry in Hawaii as a great example….