Meares Island tribal Park. Photo by Adrian Dorst
More jobs and more wilderness
It's a realizable dream
Continuing down Vancouver Island's "status quo development road" will lead us to a place where others regret being. When resources are depleted, wild ecosystems destroyed and soils and waters degraded, a region becomes permanently impoverished. Although we are not the "Brazil of the North", we certainly could become the "Newfoundland of the West!"
Envision a better future. Having a sense of what kind of a future you want for yourself and your children creates goals you will naturally work to achieve. This paper presents a new vision for the future of Vancouver Island. An Island where preserved wilderness and "working forests" exist side by side and both permanently employ a lot more than the giant forest companies' tree farms do today. One where communities, both native and non-native control the forests and where local citizens, NOT MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES, reap the rich profits. One where soils - eroding and ecosystems - destroying clearcutting is outlawed and replaced by selection forestry management. One where tourism and fisheries industries have a future because the habitat they depend upon is protected.
Sustainable forestry with full environmental protection may be just a dream. But if we work to make it a reality, the island we envision will be a lot better place to live than the nightmare of lower quality forests, less fish and fewer jobs we are drifting towards under the status quo!
A Conservation Vision
It took 100 years to log one-third of Vancouver Island's commercially valuable ancient forests. It took only 36 years to clearcut the second third. Much of what now remains is on extremely steep slopes. Most of the big-treed, valley bottom forests are already logged. Only nine of Vancouver Island's approximately 170 large primary and secondary watersheds (over 5,000 ha) are unlogged. According to the federal government, at the current rate of logging, all of the Island's unprotected, commercially valuable ancient forests will be logged by the year 2020.
The thick forest floor vegetation, like that shown growing in the ancient temperate rainforest of Clayoquot Valley in Clayoquot Sound, protects soil and purifies water. Photo by Gerrit Sommer
If we let this happen we won't have jobs and stable communities. We won't have healthy salmon streams. We won't have the diversity of life with which Vancouver Island was blessed before the advent of industrial forestry.
Western Canada Wilderness Committee believes that most people want enough natural forests set aside to sustain healthy, species - rich ecosystems and enough land, if logged and managed properly, to build a healthy economy. And most people know that our current industrial development strategy is standing in the way of both.
Species-simple tree farm plantations, designed to quickly mass produce wood fiber, are not an ecologically viable replacement for ancient forests. Our current parks, which largely consist of poor habitat lands such as mountaintops and bog forests, will not support the complete variety of wildlife populations. Our forest industry is cutting far beyond the sustainable level, even according to provincial Forest Ministry statistics. Yet, despite increased harvest levels, forest workers are being laid off. There is indeed a crisis in our woods!
In response to this crisis, the Western Canada Wilderness Committee is proposing the adoption of a new land use strategy for Vancouver Island - a Conservation Vision that will provide long term stability for both human and wildlife communities. Rooted in the principles of a newly developing science, conservation biology, the Conservation Vision details how to protect the Island's natural heritage and major ecosystems while encouraging a healthy economy.
With a population of only 613,000 on a land base larger than England, Vancouver Island is in a better position to protect wilderness and make the successful transition to a community based, socially just, truly sustainable economy than almost anywhere else on Earth! But to succeed, we must act now. Already, very few large natural areas remain on the Island and clearcutting is scheduled for most of these areas within the next two to three years.
