Photo: Gray Jones
Decked logs from logging in Algonquin Park. On average over 11,000 hectares of the park are logged annually. The trees removed are the future old growth, snags and rotting organic debris that make a wild forest bio-rich and naturally regenerative.
Photo: Simon Wilson
A rare, naturally fallen tree in Algonquin Park. Natural debris is greatly reduced in a managed (continuously logged) forest. The lack of woody debris over time fundamentally changes the soil, diminishes biodiversity and simplifies the ecosystem.
Logging has drastically changed Algonquin's forest ecology
Interview by Jennifer Beale
"For a century we've been reducing Algonquin Park's ability to act in a natural manner." Says Dan B runton, a nature interpreter in the park during the 1970s. "That's ecologically wrong. And as long as we continue to do that we can't call it anything like a wilderness."
According to Brunton, logging is by far the most destructive human activity in the park. Selective logging, which removes the most profitable trees, changes the structure of the forest. So does the replanting of only high-value species. A century of this selective logging has drastically altered the ecology of Algonquin's forests.
Brunton believes conservationists are partly to blame for continued logging in Algonquin Park. For the past 30 to 40 years conservation groups have tried to gain public support to end logging in Algonquin by saying it looks and sounds bad "as you canoe along." This has simply lead to better concealed logging.
"Until conservationists promote logging as ecologically unsound in this park, they end up saying only that 'We don't like some of the interference logging causes to what we want to do in the park'. Then all of a sudden it's not a question of what's good for the park," says Brunton, "but which group of park users is going to get their say in how the park is used. Who now is speaking for the park?"
Brunton argues that conservationists should be taking an ecological approach. This means allowing Algonquin Park to be a wilderness. It also means that peoples' use of the park cannot be the primary factor driving its management.
