Don't blame conservation for forest industry woes

This column is an opinion from Torrance Coste, the national campaign director for the Wilderness Committee. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

The possibility of protection for the most threatened old-growth forests is finally on the table in British Columbia, and a familiar chorus is singing the all too familiar song that any intended logging deferrals is an attack on jobs.

On Nov. 2, the B.C. government announced its intention to defer logging in 26,000 square kilometres of old-growth forest. Encompassing just over half of the most at-risk old-growth forest that remains unprotected in B.C., the two-year deferrals would come into effect after First Nations approval. At that point, discussion between the provincial government and Indigenous communities about how to protect the forests permanently could begin — without the roar of chainsaws in the background. 

The move comes more than a year after the government published the findings of its old-growth strategic review panel, which called for a paradigm shift in B.C. forests, and after more than 1,100 people have been arrested at blockades at Fairy Creek and surrounding areas.

The new plan has been panned by First Nations leaders over poor consultation, by the environmental movement for being an incomplete step that's come far too late, and by logging corporations, forest sector unions and lobby groups because of the impacts they say it would have on employment in the province.

I'll address that last group of critics here, because while the loss of forest industry jobs is real, conservation isn't what's driving it, and the scapegoating of environmentalism needs to stop.

The forest industry is in a bad way; no one argues this. Over the last two decades, dozens of mills have closed, contractors have gone under, and the industry has lost tens of thousands of jobs. But simultaneously, logging in at-risk old-growth has continued unabated. The tough times for fallers and mill workers have not come in exchange for the safety of southern mountain caribou, spotted owls and other old-growth-dependent species staring down the barrel of extinction.

What's behind the job loss then? 

Well, tens of thousands of hectares of forest in the B.C. interior have been impacted by the pine beetle epidemic and worsening wildfires. The three worst fire seasons on record have all occurred since 2017. 

And, like all industries, the forest sector has been mechanized and globalized. Logging operations that used to require teams of workers can now be done by one or two skilled people and sophisticated modern equipment. 

Mills and manufacturing sites, where most forest industry jobs are, have been either increasingly computerized or moved from places like Tahsis and Mackenzie to South Carolina and Louisiana. And every year, millions of unprocessed raw logs are exported from B.C. 

In heavy industry, efficiency reigns supreme, and forestry is no exception. 

The problem arises when chasing that efficiency includes reducing overhead, including person-hours. Forestry in B.C. has become exceptionally good at this. According to Statistics Canada data, only Alberta creates fewer jobs per cubic metre of timber cut than B.C.

The same data shows logging levels and forest sector employment have now decoupled after years of being linked. The rate of logging rises and falls, but the number of jobs only falls.

Again, these trends aren't playing out against a backdrop of conservation. The amount of protected forest in B.C.has not risen dramatically over the same period, and the province lags far behind other jurisdictions in terms of conservation.

Yet the jobs-versus-environment, loggers-versus-tree huggers tropes remain rock solid. These binaries are not new, nor are they organic. 

The environmental movement has historically failed to align our positions with working-class solidarity. This failure has created the false impression that you can care about either wild creatures and giant trees or rural family-supporting jobs, not both. Logging industry leaders have contributed to this too, insisting that setting aside endangered forests will undoubtedly create hardship.

These messages have an impact. Hostility between folks working in logging and those involved in campaigns to protect forests is rising. The two sides are taught to see each other as brutes who don't care about nature or as naive, out-of-touch urbanites. In my experience, neither stereotype is remotely accurate.

As with most problems, this division disproportionately impacts Indigenous communities. Centuries of dispossession of land compounds these broader challenges in ways most of us probably can't imagine. For so many reasons, solutions must be centred on returning land to Indigenous people.

The pain felt by those worried about their future in the forest industry and those who want old-growth protected is caused by the same problem. We've cut down too many trees, too quickly, in too many places, for too long — a century of industrial logging has caught up with us.

It's time for the environmental movement to demand war time-level investment in economic transition for forest communities. We must insist plans to leave ancient trees standing include a path toward other opportunities for workers. 

The forest industry needs to accept the findings of the old-growth strategic review panel and their ramifications. The panel didn't recommend deferral of logging in at-risk forests for fun. They did it because irreversible biodiversity loss is likely if we don't. Old-growth forests can't be replaced, and one day soon, we'll only be cutting down trees that were planted by people. 

Continuing to cut down ones that weren't for a little longer isn't worth the sacrifices. The paradigm has to shift.

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