Overkill on logepole pine beetle

By GERRY WARNER
Staff Writer, Cranbrook Daily Townsman
Nov. 26/04
Trouble is brewing in the woods again, but not the usual tree-huggers vs loggers variety. This trouble identifies itself by turning the forest a sickly red colour. When that happens, foresters know another upswing in the mountain pine beetle is on the way and all hell breaks loose. And hell may well be the operative word here because some people believe the Ministry of Forests (MOF) in its zeal to deal with the mountain pine beetle epidemic may just be over-reacting a tad.
The issue came up at the Kimberley Nature Park Society AGM Wednesday when society members were informed that the MOF has earmarked vast reaches of the province for "aggressive" pine beetle control and one of the areas so designated is the Kimberley Nature Park, which does not yet enjoy full park status and is therefore in forestry terms considered a timber supply area. And this, of course, sets up the scenario that Nature Park supporters fear the most -- logging the park. No one is saying this will happen yet, but it's clearly one of the options being considered. And this is unfortunate because there is good reason to question whether the MOF's "aggressive" pine beetle strategy is justified anywhere, little alone in a park or an area trying very hard to become a park.
The provincial government announced its pine beetle strategy in 2001, greatly reducing stumpage charges and boosting the annual allowable cut. Since then, it's been cut, cut, cut as lodgepole pine, the pine beetle's primary host, gets liquidated from one end of the province to the other. This pleases forest companies, who are reaping huge profits from harvesting cheap lodgepole pine at a time of strong markets. It also pleases the MOF as it promotes its "aggressive" approach to pine beetle management. But is it good for the forest? Justin Calof doesn't think so. Calof is a forest management specialist for the Sierra Club of Canada and he says the Great Lodgepole Pine Liquidation campaign is threatening the integrity of the forest as a whole, and in the long-term, undermining communities that depend on the forest. "The increased harvest levels being proposed go far beyond the capacity of the ecosystem, he said in a recent release. "This strategy is not only bad for the environment; in the long run it's bad for communities." Calof quotes scientific studies that demonstrate serious environmental degradation from large-scale salvage operations of lodgepole pine that are now underway in the Interior including the East Kootenay. Because salvage operations remove excessive amounts of wood from the forest, they deliver few, if any, of the benefits of natural disturbances which leave the bulk of the forest ecosystem intact. "You can't take all of the wood out of these areas and expect the ecosystem to recover to pre-salvage productivity," he says. "Even dead standing trees play a critical role in forest functioning."
I'm not a professional forester, but I've taken a few university-level forestry courses, fought forest fires for a decade in my youth and spent more time in the woods than many RPF's, who because of the downsizing of the Forest Ministry over the years, are forced to spend the bulk of their time behind a desk. And like many others who spend a lot of time outdoors, I've learned to respect Mother Nature and not to mess with her. And this includes the pine beetle, which is a natural component of the forest with a specific role to play. And that role is to remove lodgepole pine from the forest if fire doesn't do it first. And the pine beetle does a far better job than fire of getting rid of lodgepole pine because unlike fire, which is often a catastrophic event destroying everything and bringing the ecosystem back to square one, the pine beetle kills gradually with little or no site disturbance enabling new species of trees to come up in the understory and replace the dense, scraggly lodgepole pine monoculture above it with a new vigorous and diverse forest that eventually hits a dynamic equilibrium known as old growth, which once covered most of B.C. until man ventured on the scene and thought he could "manage" things better. Thirty years ago, the forestry text books referred to lodgepole pine as a "weed tree" not worthy of being harvested. It's role was to act as a successional species, preparing the way for a superior, more stable forest to follow. But back in the 60's and 70's when industrial forestry became the norm in B.C., lodgepole pine became the darling of foresters and their government masters because its short life cycle of 60 to 90 years, promised quick returns for cash-strapped governments. So lodgepole pine became the number one species planted in the province setting us up for the "disaster" we're experiencing today.
In other words it was bad forest policy of successive governments that got us into this mess and we shouldn't allow them to get out of it by clear-cutting the province of lodgepole pine including precious places like the Kimberley Nature Park.
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