Butt, Gordon, and Don McMillan. “Vol 10, No 2 (2009)”. Jem-Online.Org, 2009, https://jem-online.org/index.php/jem/issue/view/33.
There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that timber is an incredibly valuable economic source for British Columbia, especially on the coast, where there’s massive old growth forests. But who wants to see empty cut blocks where old growth forests used to be? And that my friends, those two simple views, conservation vs livelihood, is how massive conflicts get created. But is there a middle ground in this mess?
In 1995 the Clayoquot Sound conflict had finally reached a closure after years of intense and borderline violent stand-offs and protests. This patch of land located on the west coast of Vancouver Island had three main groups in turmoil, the forest licensees, who wanted to make a living, the BC government, who wanted to boost the economy in that area, and the environemntalists, who wanted to protect a diverse old growth ecosystem.
The end of the dispute brought on a lot of new changes in the way forestry and logging were done in BC, and the shift towards better practices was brought on by the Clayoquot Sound Scientific Panel (CSSP). The changes made were going to focus on more sustainable techniques that left smaller footprints, increased landscape quality and caused less environmental destruction (Butt, and McMillan). One part of this article that stands out to me is the complete overhaul of the system in place, as now the people who were logging it had a responsibility to the community to report what and where they were going to harvest, and also the First Nations bands in the area now had a say in what happened.
Overall this article was an excellent read for me and provided some insight in conflict resolution, and it gave me hope for the future of our forests. This article shows that sometimes you have to make people angry in order to change the status quo. Because of this, logging has changed from purley lines drawn on paper, and without a care in the world to what happens on the landscape to a more forgiving type of logging. Where it’s understood what the role of each plant species is, and the effects of logging has on a forest environment. What happened in the Clayoquot Sound area was the foundation to create a more economically, and environmentally sustainable practice, that’s still in use (although improved upon) to this day.
Even as biased as I am about logging old growth forests, i do realize that its necessary, and people’s livelihoods depend on it, but just because its important doesnt mean you should be able to get away with murder. And this is a great article to show that if you stand up for what you think is right, eventually the people in power will listen.