Beyond Core's Recommendations
In February of 1994, Stephen Owen's Commission on Resources and the Environment (CORE) tabled its Vancouver Island report. The howls of discontent arose from both environmentalists and loggers. Because it pleased no one, is the CORE report then a balanced compromise solution that will work? No!
Left photo: Tofino Creek, Clayoquot Sound - 1993 clearcut. Right photo: Klaskish Inlet & Valley - wilderness condemned by CORE
The solution of how to achieve sustainable land use and sustainable employment in forest based communities eluded Owen. There are lots of reasons why. Not the least of them is that CORE's terms of reference put such restrictive blinders on his field of vision that he could only see in front of him the current path of resource use and control. Recent experience indicates that this path represents the problem- in the entrenchment of corporqte industrial ways-not the solution.
Specifically, CORE could not consider Clayoquot Sound, the heart of the wilderness left on Vancouver Island. It also was not allowed to look at tenure reform, "land claims," alternative logging methods, and wood allocation. This must be done to get at the heart of the jobs problem on Vancouver Island and come up with creative solutions to the desperate scrap over who gets the last valley bottom old growth-the logging industry or future generations.
Another problem Owen faced was the current state of knowledge about the biodiverswity and ecosystems on Vancouver Island, which falls abysmally short of that needed to make wise decisions. Additionally, aboriginal land title rights were only acknowledged and could not be addressed.
As if these constraints were not enough, the artificial limit of 12% on "protection" truly prevented a conservation solution. Already 10.3 % of Vancouver Island's land base was protected, although much of that was rock, ice, alpine and non-productive forest. The skew towards non-productive lands in the already protected areas made it impossible to achieve a representative protection of ecosystems through new additions of only 1.7% more of the land base. The additional 1% above the minimum 12% that CORE did recommend was still far short of that needed to achieve a balanced representative park system.
Then, to complicate Owen's process, hundreds of Clayoquot Sound protesters were sentenced for what they believed to be noble acts of defending the last vestiges of ancient forest. Meanwhile, scheduled layoffs in the forest industry continued: forest industry workers were sentenced to unemployment and crumbling communities.
It is a hell of a mess.
Despite Harcourt's assertions that 80% of the old growth forests remain in BC, on Vancouver Island less than half of it remains. Of that, over two-thirds of the timber in low to mid-elevation areas- the best there is-has been cut. Time and old growth timber are running out, and more and more people now admit it, from retired loggers to the government to the faceless timber barons.
The parallels with the Atlantic cod industry are an urgent warning about continuing on our current course. The complete liquidation of both the ancient forests and the wild sea resources of Newfoundland has left a swath of jobless communities and ruined economies. Let's not let Vancouver Island become the Newfoundland of the West.
It's time for courage and new solutions. Let's go beyond the CORE report and use it as a springboard.
WCWC's Vancouver Island Vision published in an eight-page tabloid paper last fall and widely distributed on the Island (copies are still available on request) is a bold attempt to realistically grapple with the underlying problems and present feasible solutions. It calls for about 40%$ of the land base to be set aside as wilderness areas and protected corridors. Some of these lands have already been logged. These areas would be restored and left to resume a natural state. More than half of the proposed protected wilderness network has no commercial forest value.
The WCWC Conservation Vision calls for the rest of the productive forest land base to be taken away from the big companies and control given to local communities. Clearcut logging would be outlawed, to be replaced by ecoforestry selection logging management systems. Native land title would be justly settled through treaty negotiations as a perquisite to our land use plan's implementation.
Without the big companies acting as middle men, there are still plenty of resources to share, both between native and non-native Islanders and between people and the wild living creatures of Vancouver Island.
