studying trees, their growth, their interaction with the environment, and their chemical and physical structures. Lakehead University, in Thunder Bay, and several other universities across Canada offer tremendous opportunity to anyone with the academic credentials for and an interest in such studies.
Forestry Practices Governed by Law
From the early 1960s, Canadian citizens began to take a more active interest in the way we manage our forests. It was discovered that not all was as we wanted and we became more proactive.
As a practising industrial forester, I took the brunt of many citizens’ disgust with what was perceived as the irresponsible behaviour the forestry industry had displayed in its forest-managementpractices. Gradually, through the 1970s and 1980s, that disgust fed the creation of powerful citizen lobbies led by passionate activists and it found its way into our schools and other public institutions.
I remember loggers emotionally appealing to me to do something on their behalf to “get the truth out there.” Their children were being bullied by their classmates and many were ashamed of their parents’ jobs. Those were frustrating, maddening times, and it was difficult for forest workers to keep their cool and remain objective.
Until recently, industrial foresters have had an almost impossible job getting our perspective into the public arena. Those of us who attempted to get our story out were often not skilled at working with the media and consequently often looked incompetent, antagonistic, and even deceitful. Let me try to explain how things stand today.
Since 2010, some of the best known and progressive environmental action and lobby groups have taken a different approach. Groups such as the David Suzuki Foundation, the Canadian Boreal Initiative, Forest Ethics, and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), among others, decided to look for common ground and work with the forest industry on agreed objectives. Together they have formed the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, which currently includes a total of six environmental groups and eighteen forest industry companies as members.7
Greenpeace remains a notable exception and has chosen to continue its confrontational methods. Significantly absent as partners to the agreement are the First Nations, who say their treaty rights are being ignored.8Hopefully, in the not too distant future, all parties will come together to work on the common cause of sustaining the boreal forest. It’s time to face up to the reality that there will never be total agreement on all issues, and the best way to realize improvement is to work together on those issues that we can agree on.
Forest management in Ontario and across Canada is guided by policy developed under the collective wishes of citizens expressed through our elected representatives and the legislation and regulations passed by provincial parliaments. All foresters practising in Ontario are accountable for their professional actions.
When I arrived in Ontario, my employer required that I join the Ontario Professional Foresters Association (OPFA) and become a registered professional forester (RPF). In order to become a member, I had to pass an exam as evidence of my knowledge of past and current Ontario forest policy.
The OPFA was created by the Professional Foresters Association Acton April 3, 1957.9 That act, requested by a core of dedicated foresters, gave them a rallying base from which to collectively increase their forestry competency and standards of practice. Since October 16, 2000, the practice of forestry has been subject to the Professional Foresters Act, 2000, which recognizes professional forestry as an independent self-regulatingprofession.10All RPFs are governed by the requirements of that act and our code of ethics that can be accessed through an online search of the OPFA website.
Now that I am retired and inactive, I have chosen to focus on the concluding words of “A Commitment to Learning,” the last value in that code, which states, “A member shall … use their knowledge and skills to aid public awareness of forestry in Ontario.”11I am doing that through direct communication via one-on-oneconversations, public speaking, leading forestry tours, and with my visual art and writing.
The forests that exist today in Ontario are a reflection of past citizens’ demands (or lack of) on politicians, the politicians who were elected, their willingness to enforce legislation once enacted, and, to a large extent, natural events that were beyond human control. As proactive citizens in a democracy, such as Canada, we have the power to require our politicians to pass the legislation we want and to hold them accountable for implementing that legislation. However, the onus is on us to be well informed of the consequences of filling our demands because many of the demands we are making will not give us the forest we want or will need in the future.
Just How Dynamic Is the Boreal Forest?
No individual or group has complete knowledge of the forest, so sharing what knowledge we have is essential to achieving responsible management. Sitting as we “northerners” do in the middle of the boreal forest, we have a responsibility to ensure its continuing health.
I spent most of my boyhood roaming the bush where I developed a life-longlove for things natural — the scenery, rocks, water, flora, and fauna, the whole kit and caboodle. That doesn’t mean that I was a tree hugger or an animal-rightsactivist, no, not at all. Instead, I made use of what I loved because at an early age I realized that I was a legitimate part of the natural world in which my species, like all others, had evolved through competition for living space and food.
As I observed the relationships among the different parts of the forest, I discovered that each individual living part of it was dependent on utilizing some other part, sometimes to the benefit of the one being utilized, but sometimes not. Sometimes the use of a species by another affected a third species — sometimes negatively and sometimes positively. An example of the latter scenario would be how dragonflies prey on other insects, such as black flies, deerflies, and mosquitoes, which in turn prey on moose and humans. The moose and we benefit from the dragonfly’s predation.
Through my observations, I also learned that there is no single “balance of nature.” Nature is in constant flux. What today appears to be in balance may tomorrow be thrown off balance by some intervention, be it from another species, including man, or some weather, atmospheric or, potentially, celestial event. No patch of forest that one sees today will ever again be exactly the same, because as we observe the woods some plants are growing while others are declining and, with that change, mammal, bird, and insect populations also modify. Even the soil may be changing. The interaction of so many variables becomes so complex that the chances of a repeat occurrence are infinitesimal.
After moving to Ontario, I familiarized myself and fell in love with this area of the boreal forest. As a practising forester in Newfoundland and Ontario, I prescribed clear-cuttimber harvesting. Since my youthful opposition to clear-cutting, my training and personal observations have taught me that, if we are to utilize the trees of the boreal forest, and return similar species without too dramatic a change occurring, even-agedforest management is essential. Boreal tree species have evolved for millennia, accommodating disturbances by insects, disease, wind, fire, and, yes, man. This has resulted in a forest that is made up of large areas that contain trees that are all the same age. Adjacent areas similarly have trees of a single age — the age being dependent on the time of disturbance from which that area of the forest originated. We call that an even-agedforest.
Here in northwestern Ontario, forms of harvesting other than clear-cuttingwill more likely result in “uneven-aged” (multi-aged) stands, with a different mixture of tree species. For example, we will probably witness a transition from the current preponderance of jack pine and black spruce to more balsam fir and white spruce. What will then happen to any other plant or animal species that may rely on even-agedstands of jack pine and black spruce? I offer a partial answer to that question in the following chapters of this book. Please read on with an open mind.
Sustain Forests with Wants in Mind,
