While researching medicle marijuana recently, I came acros some rather interesting information on Lumber vs Hemp. Did you know that 1 acre of Hemp produces 4 time as much fiber for producing paper than wood? And uses less harmful chemicals in the process.

Sorry, medical.

Yeah but, Gary, hemp-cultivation wouldn't require all those lucrative side-bar industries with all of their additional profits: monster machinery, trucks, transportation, mills ...

Fraser Institute could show the risk of a substantial monetary loss, if B.C. gave up on mechanized, clear-cut logging. B.C. so far hasn't dared to allow even selective harvests by horse-loggers. I've seen the documents supporting a Tree Farm Licence which specifically forbid horse-logging.

Got carried away, there. Ben Parfitt,many thanks for an excellent article.

Gary,

A short, interesting read: Hemp by Mark Bourrie.

Among its many advantages is that it does well on marginal land, doesn't suffer weed problems and conditions the soil.

We need to elect someone with guts who will say, "Let's get on with it!"

As an alternative in tree-planting, I wonder if consideration has been given to poplar which is a fast growing tree. It makes an excellent plywood and I've seen great things done with it, since it takes finishes very well.

scylla - your comments made are hard to ignore. Undoubtably someone will raise their index finger to the heavens and exclaim that 1+1 realy does eaqual 17 - the idea that truth is relative is a verse in an anthem that will lead us all down the path to loss; regardless of songs intension.

Perhaps the use of hemp as a fibre source to replace wood pulp is economical, I can't say. But turning all our forests into single-use hemp farms is just too bizarre a concept for me. What would happen to our rivers?

But there's another angle to farming to consider, and it is that the immense wealth our forests have produced has been gotten for free, if one compares it to the costs of actually growing the same volumes on a genuine farm.

Consider the capital costs of a real farm in terms of buying or clearing the land, purchasing the machinery needed, the many monetary inputs for for food and so on, not to mention the high inputs of labour.

Another capitalisation is hidden, and it's one the farmer takes for granted. That's the enormous effort countless past generations have put into domestication of our animals, vegetables and fruit, and learning how to care for them. Except in relatively ideal conditions, few of thses species can succeed in the wild, untended.

So along come these industrial foresters who are going to grow undomesticated species on a "Tree Farm Licence" in unnatural conditions such as monocultures, rapid growth, even ages, etc, and who expect this at basically no cost to the licence holder and with no risk to us, the owners of the resourve.

Maybe somebody's sold us a bill of goods?

These British Columbian scenes of forest devastation are like the battlegrounds of a real war which is accelerating and intensifying, over the planetary resources.

Cash profits are the highest priority of our economic system. This means we will always be willing to wage war over the priceless common assets of trees, plants, arable land, clean water, clean air. We conduct business as if there's an endless supply.

Easter Island stands as the guilty reminder of what is gained (abandoned monuments) vs what is lost (all the trees, soil productivity, and all the people).

But we too will die out -- as the Easter Islanders did -- if we can't control the modern, mechanized, accelerated rush for spoils.

What must have been going through the mind of the person who cut down the last tree on Easter Island? Did he/she ever get it?

No, BC Mary, he/she didn't get it, any more than all the rest didn't, haven't, won't get it until they/we've dealt with the core problem which clouds our vision.

That core problem is self-interest - and enlightened self-interest, aka Wise Use, is what the forest companies are now doing on our behalf.

Read The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, and you'll see how both the enviros and the Corporations have led you into a blind alley.

Paradoxically, both are near-right, since we have to use resources such as our forests, and conservation of biodiversity is just as necessary. However, in the first case gross mismanagement is at fault, and in the second, a blind eye has been turned to this in trade for set-asides.

In the end, the inescapable fact is that much less than 10% of the Working Forest is set aside to protect biodiversity, while the 90% is being harvested unsustainably, one example of which we are now seeing.

Until we recognise that uncontrolled self-interest is at fault in both cases, and that we'd better take a close look at the principles of Deep Ecology - which Lefties will quickly recognise as consistent with a proper attitude to humans too - we will never, ever, have a sustainable society.

I want to congratulate Ben on an excellent article. The outbreak of Dothistroma needle blight in monocultures of lodgepole pine trees, inappropriately planted in wetter forests, has been greatly overshadowed by the pine beetle outbreak. I'm glad to hear that plantations can now have a maximum of 20% lodgepole, but the article is unclear what is being planted in its place. Have the monocultures of pine been replaced with monocultures of spruce? Or have managers started planting the mixed-species crops that would naturally regenerate after a stand-destroying disturbance in that area? This is my first post on the Tyee and I don't know if authors ever respond to messages on these boards but if you read this Ben, could you expand on this point?

I enjoyed the interesting and informative article, but want to correct some statements in the comments.

The MPB is NOT caused by logging and replanting monocultures. In fact the infestation began in Tweedsmuir park, where there has been no logging at all. Manning Park is another hotbed of beetle activity.

MPB kills only mature pine trees, not young trees. Also very cold temperatures kill the beetles.

The infestation is caused by:
1) fire suppression over the last 100 years means there is FAR MORE mature pine than there ever was berfore logging. This fire suppression has not just occurred in logging areas, but also in natural parks.
2) We have not had a cold winter to kill them off.

Replanting monocultures may not be a good idea, but it has not caused this problem. Its also a stretch to blame the forest companies. The only policy that might have slowed but not avoided the outbreak is allowing fires to burn unchecked, or ironically, to allow more logging of the mature trees so there was more second growth.

Here's an American slant on bug control through "harvesting" (2nd article)

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2005/2005-10-06-09.asp#anchor2

Whatever else I or anyone else might think of the American system, their attitude to the "environment", and in particular their knowledge of forest practice and science, is light-years ahead of ours.

However, their politics at present has effectively shoved this into the closet. But then, their enviros consistently take the politicians to task, and often as not, win.

Note also the near the end of the article it says "....the selective removal of large trees has upset the ecological balance....." and so goes down in flames yet another popular BC quasi-enviro/COFI myth - selection logging.

Wrong, Matthew, all your points have been previously dealt with in prior postings on these three threads dealing with the MPB. Go read them.

Nobody has accused the Industry of creating the epidemic, merely that it inherited the monocultural cause, which I noted was human-caused long before the loggers came on the scene. The industry has merely perpetuated this insult to nature with its momocultural Pine plantations.

If you've new information, lets hear it.

scylla,

Well, you could have a lot of happy fish - those that are left, that is.

Seriously, I recall nowhere anyone advocating for all logged areas to be turned over to hemp production.

The thinking is, as part-solution to the bug problem, that certain logged and burned areas might be used to reinstate an industry that existed for hundreds of years - one that does not require prime farmland to grow the resource.

Scylla: isn't it time you let us in on who you are, and what's your authority for the sweeping statements you slap on this discussion table defying anyone to disagree?

Oh. And just in passing, pls explain the "blind alley" you have decided I've been led into. Just curious. No big deal.

Can anyone explain how hemp will replace 2x4s, 2x6s and other construction lumber? Hemp makes sense for pulp, but as an industry-wide solution, it reminds me of the "lint rollers" that a GM exec in Michael Moore's film, "Roger & Me" suggests cld replace cars as an engine of the economy.

Skep, for environmental protection to be successful in our forests, it has to be sustainable from both an environmental and an economic standpoint. Thus, we have to find ways to log our forests without destroying them.

Turning enough forest acreage into hemp farms to satisfy even one pulp mill will put a lot of forest out of business, and could spell the end of huge tracts if all the other uses of hemp were to become economical. Keep your hemp farms for worked-out farms and other spent land, please.

My comment re rivers referred to the pollution large farming operations contribute to rivers and streams in the form of dissolved fertilisers, pesticides, animal waste and so on.

BC Mary, my response to Matthew was because he was merely repeating issues brought up previously, which are the industrial/MoF Party Line, and which will continue to be rephrased ad nauseum. As with the trolls who harass the teachers on Tyee threads, information-sharing is not the goal, though it is probable I misjudged Matthew.

If you've read the book I recommended, you'd know what blind alley I refer to. Don't be mislead by its title. :-)

My authority for the "sweeping statements" is experience and a lot of reading. Like anyone else I can be wrong, but please understand that I think its a cheap trick to deliberately lie or mislead - and stupid, too - because it inevitably rebounds upon one's self.

If you think I'm wrong tell me so. I'm not afraid to change my mind or to accept new info.

First Congrats to Ben on an excellent article. I guess it all depends on how you look at these things, I just came back from south of Vanderhoof ( the heart of the pine beetle infestation) and my take, was that the forest is very much alive, just all the trees are dead. The Pine beetle now has nothing left to eat except the juvenile trees, which it’s attacking with vigor. Believe me I don’t want to sound pro-logging but could anybody have predicted this natural disaster? My feeling is that it is the fire suppression that should take most of the blame. Anyway that brings us to the issue of hemp forests, If you pro hemp folks can engineer a strain that grows in that climate then count me in I want to come back in the next life time as a moose.

Thanks
Arctos

I grew up near Tweedsmuir and to my knowledge the mpb did not start there, the last time I worked in the logging industry was on the northern border of Tweedsmuir, I was skidding bug killed spruce in 83.

We used to hear rumours that the mpb was imported from the south eastern states, don't know about that but I certainly have heard it enough times. Hauling bugwood 80 miles one way to mills helps spread the beetles so I think it is a no brainer logging infested wood does help spread the infestation a lot faster.

I would place about 80% of the blame on forest practices and forest companies who have lobbied very successfully to have changes made in the act which benefit them directly.

I haven't been out there for awhile but I have heard that it is really bad along the Nechako river from the dam north, Cheslatta Lake the Reach down the Blackwater into the area west of Quesnel. Take a look at this area on

http://maps.google.com/

Click Hybrid then double click in the middle of B.C. and zoom in until you fill the browser with the area from Quesnel to Prince George and west to Vanderhoof, have a look at the cut blocks, if you really want to see cut blocks go up east of Fort St James north of Prince George.

The area south of Vanderhoof is really cut up.

I've been forwarded the site below, which is now being widely referenced.

Even if you're not interested in the MPB, it's a great read for those interested in ecology, even if not particularly forest rcology.

< http://www.xerces.org/Forest_Pest_Myths/Logging_to_Control_Insects.pdf

Scylla: clarity ... I guess that's what a tired brain was looking for. Yes it is/no it isn/t is like a rising decibel-level of background noise.

It's Thanksgiving Weekend and I hope you'll forgive a yearn which really is related.

Three times, I have been to New Zealand and although I expected to love the country, 3 times I was almost overwhelmed by a sense of panic and entrapment there.

The last time, I stayed on a sheep farm near Masterton (North Island) for 2 months and had to fight that terror each day. I'd even wake up at night, struggling against it. Couldn't understand it. I wasn't trapped at all, I was on a farm in an undulating grassland albeit a sallow, yellowish grassland, creek running through, nice people, no tigers, no snakes.

Then one day, my friends (who owned the farm) told me about their retirement plan. They were going to rid themselves of all the sheep and replant their landscape to the native trees, "the trees which we cleared off, to create the farm," they told me.

They showed me historic photos of magnificent, lush woodlands. And just like that! the mystery of the terrors became clear. Don't laugh. Puh-leeze don't laugh. But as I pictured, in my mind's eye, the mixed forest shielding and nourishing the landscape, a kind of serenity came into my mind. While I never doubted that there are atrocities committed against forests, and that a tree screams when it dies, I hadn't understood that the human soul can feel the damage, too.

Knowing damwell that you're looking sideways and slitty-eyed at these words, may I recommend a book to YOU (I've tried to obtain your "Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation" without success so far) ...

Arboretum America by Diana Beresford-Kroeger.

BC Mary, what you've just written is consistent with what I've already learned, that you are a caring, deeply feeling person who tries to be truthdful. I have not, and would not attack those qualities in anyone, and as well as I can recall, have not attacked you for anything.

OTOH, I consider yours, mine, or anyone else's ideas fair game, and open to criticism. Ad hominum attacks I reserve for the trolls who deserve and ask for them.

I care as deeply for the forest as yourself. I cruised timber as a youth, and have ever since had an interest in how a forest works, a love for the many living things in it, and a deep hatred for those in the boardrooms who've manipulated so many others - esp forestry professionals - in bringing our forests to the sorry pass we see today.

The financiers KNOW they're being greedy. In fact they promote a philosophy of greed, Fascism, holding it to be a virtue. The ordinary logger is led down that primrose path by a seductive appeal to self-interest called Wise Use, which is now flourishing among pro resource-development groups in the US.

In Canada, our environmental groups have fallen prey to a variant of Wise Use, "the end justifies the means" a business like "bottom line uber alles" ethic which holds that any lie is OK as long as it promotes a good end. The outright lies and half-truths re oil exploration/drilling being a prime example of this.

The problem is that this self-righteous self-interest leads to ethical debacles like the GBR, Suzuki-ist cultural relativity re First Nations, and a self-defeating attitude that all "progress" is bad, which then generates a pervasive "chicken little" alarmist attitude which fogs judgement.

There is no polite way to say any of the latter above, BC Mary, since the simple fact is that until now, as things are both gelling and unravelling at the same time, Political Correctness has justified deaf ears.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Scylla, tell us what you believe to be the ideal strategy -- not just for woodland conservation -- but also, to be sure, for the restoration of the planet.

Take a chance. Yes, it's uncomfortable but you have friends in this crowd ... so take a deep breath and tell us about the woodland concept you hope for and the basic tactics for reaching the goal.

How else will we ever find our way out of this mess?

Well, the very first thing is local empowerment, as both Ed and I have discussed elsewhere on these threads. People will not try to effect change until they feel there is a possibility of doing so. Only then will they put their brains in gear, since helpless contemplation of the things that are going down now is too hard to take.

The second thing is scrupulous attention to democratic process. Fairness, esp when it comes to propaganda, is extremely important if we are to win uncommitted people over. If we can learn how to take off the ideological blinders, we can become adept at constructive self-criticism, and choose our leaders more wisely.

The best attack on one's enemies, as Saul Alinsky demonstrated, is with humour, and the prime requirement for that is "Know thine enemy"

If you're an old-time Lefty, as I am, you'll recognise that I've stolen all that directly from Tommy Douglas' playbook, which the NDP seems to have lost.

My Rx for our forest practices is controversial, though it seems there are some who agree with it. Ideally, we would first at least acknowledge Arne Naess' seven principles of Deep Ecology, and try to make them work.

We should recognise there are two very different forest systems in BC, the Coastal and the Interior, and thus what works for one may not for the other. Second, we should recognise that in order to achieve true environmental and economic sustainability, we must maintain a wild system (not a plantation or a farm)

On the Coast then, we would implement a 250 yr rotation period in order to maintain the diversity and log values an Old Growth forest yields. We would harvest with small clearcuts placed widely in space and time, mimicking the blowdown patches which are the prime cause of mortality on at least the Central and Northern Coast. Reseeding would originate from the surrounding forest, in whatever successional order Nature determines.

The central road system would be paved, since public use of the forest is necessary to have the public value it, and yarding would done with labour long-reach intensive multiple spar systems or other innovative means and not helicopters.

The relatively higher short-term cost of doing so would be financed by the very valuable OG logs harvested, and subsequent processing in mills tailored to recover that value, in contradistinction to the wood butchering dinosaurs the (Coastal) industry has used to date.

And by the way BC Mary, if that was intended to be sarcasm, I chose to ignore it.

Local empowerment: I remember the days when, in north-central B.C., many families had one small Timber Sale each, their own small sawmill, and a truck to haul the rough-cut timber to the nearest big lumber mill. It made them self-sufficient.

Those were the days when B.C. Forest Service had Rangers who spent their days in these woods and/or visiting the sawmill operators. There was rapport between the loggers and the government.

I can't recall how ecologically effective that harvesting system was. What I do recall is the time circa 1958 when the proud old B.C. Forest Service seemed to split down the middle, with born bureaucrats on one side, born woodsmen on the other.

The bureaucrats loved Ray Williston's decision to eliminate small sawmills because of what he called ineffiency.

But many woodsmen quit, rather than carry out the official harrassment, designed to drive the small operators out of the woods. Fire suppression equipment costing more than the entire sawmill, was one new government demand.

The Socred Govt.'s idea was to consolidate, creating larger Timber Sales, larger machinery, larger mills, to process the "more efficient" clear-cut log harvest.

Many people thought that Williston, then Minister of Forests, was bringing a brilliant new concept into British Columbia's northwoods. The idea went over well in Vancouver and Victoria (as did Alcan's flooding of standing forests in Ootsa Lake and the Whitesails). But I think it disrupted a productive way of life which probably, in the long run, was bad for northern woodland conservation. One of its causes, as you say, Scylla, arose from the different values of the northern and coastal forests.

How to control the damage and promote forest health?

The only answer I can think of, seems to lie not in a democratic form of socialism (which is where I'm most comfortable) but in a more decisive, research-based administration. The perils of which are extreme ...

which brings me, more and more, back to the necessity of a free and ethical press as the underpinning of a democratic society. I do still believe that people will do the right thing if they have all the information.

But if it were not for The Tyee and a few other independent news sources, I would have given up on British Columbia's hopes for a free, unbiased, informative press.

What a horror it is, that trees get fed into the green-chains of pulp mills so as to create the newsprint upon which these very woodlands are betrayed.

You bring back memories, BC Mary, as I worked for close to ten years in "Gyppo" sawmills. IMHO, it is possible with modern technology and high-grade recovery, to make them economical again - a trade-off of skilled labour for todays extremely hi-cost machinery.

The gyppo mills were wasteful and and inefficient then, but again - on the Coast, not the Interior - the constantly upgraded, efficient mills, both sawmill and pulpmill, which the Corporations had promised Wacky for the assured timber supply enabled from his gifting of the TFls, never materialised. Thus it was that being unaware the promise had been broken, in the Eighties I was shocked to see to see the incredible waste of high-grade logs in the downcoast dinosaurs.

In 2001 I found out how they got away with it by reading Pearse's report of Nov that year.
The many subsidies of log costs such as very low stumpage, rigged log markets and a complaisant union, allowed the mill to turn half the log into chips for pulp, recovering dollar values equal in chips as for lumber. There's a rat hiding in that lumber-pile, but I don't have the resources to figure it out!!!

There's an upside to newsprint, BC Mary. Without the tireless efforts of Paul George (WCWC), his wife Adrianne Carr and as many dragooned friends as they could find in putting together the hundreds of thousands of broadsheets promoting South Moresby (now Gwaii Hanaas), and the contacts Colleen McCrory provided for getting them distributed across BC and Canada, today's Park/reserve would never have gotten the widespread attention the stand-off at Lyell Island capitalised on.

Anybody or any dedicated group could do the same again, without the grants, without sucking up to Gov't/Corporations, and definitely without an autocratic structure.

Paul did it then with honesty, endless hours of his own and Adriennes time, and a printer who trusted him. He won, and left a working template behind him..

Damn inability to review copy in its final form, where previously unseen errors stand out like sore thumbs.

Paul's efforts were not finished with South Moresby, of course, and WCWC went on to fight many more battles. He's retired now, and very much undead :-)

scylla:

Ouch. At present, in British Columbia, there's only the distant possibility of an upside to newsprint.

B.C. languishes in the grip of a captive news media pumping out a single message -- and it's not a worker-friendly message.

Whether the topic of public concern is woodland conservation, or Basi, Virk & Basi, the B.C.T.F., or electoral fairness ... all CanWest "news" is shaped, skewed, withheld, to convey the Oligarchy as both beautiful and triumphant, and the workers as wrongheaded and threatening.

As Exhibit "A", check a big Vancouver Sun story (16 July 05, P. C5) which says "... the B.C. Liberals allowed their opponents to falsely define them as right-wing monsters ... [!]" All the errors of the Campbell government, it says, were lies told by the New Democrats. Like, who would have published them?

Since a free press is the foundation of a just society, the issues of conservation or justice will continue to be profoundly difficult until the CanWest monopoly is broken up. Broadsheets, you say? Sheesh.
But yes, day by day, Tyee seems the more valuable.

E.g., I've learned more about the elusive Justice Patrick Dohm from The Tyee than from any other source.

I must have been overseas during the Paul/Carr crusade as I remember nothing of it, can't even imagine that it was reported in the West Coast daily newspapers, and wondered again why in 2005 CanWest displayed such a fondness for Adrienne Carr's Green Party (which won no seats). It surely wasn't for the work they did on South Moresby. It was, I still believe, CanWest's way of trying to lure intelligent voters away from the New Democrats.

Thanks for your additions to general knowledge, scylla. Isn't it time for you to write a serious article for Tyee: "The World According to scylla".

Back in the early Eigties, the press media and TV was full of South Moresby stories - across Canada and all over the world.

The question to ask is "Why is the environmental movement in Canada now nearly moribund?" Sure, there's people working hard in the movement, but howcome they've failed to catch the imagination of today's general public?

Howcome they're very strong in Europe and can mount powerful campaigns in the very unfavourable US political scene?

Putting the total blame on the likes of CanWest is too convenient an escape hatch. That's no different than the trolls blaming all our problems on previous Socialistic "mismanagement".

And don't forget that prior to the 70-80's the Forest Industry had spent millions in propagandising their "stewardship" of the forests.

Do you remember all those full-page ads showing the "healthy, vigorous forests" after "greenup"? How about all the years of guitar-strumming Tommy Tompkins visiting classrooms promoting "Sustained Yield"?

Do you remember the Sun consistently running front-page stories, complete with pictures of Industry execs, promoting the latest Corporate pronouncement?

I do, BC Mary, and well, both long before and during the "War in the Woods", which, incidentally, we won. So how did we subsequently lose it?

Don't throw that question back at me, since I won't answer it until you're willing to ask that question of yourself.

A bit tetchy, are we? I don't recall throwing anything at you, scylla. Be silent if you wish. Your call.

Me, I thought we were working out ideas related to stopping the sowing of devastation in B.C. forests.

Since I don't remember (not having been a subscriber to Vancouver Sun) the incidents you describe above, I don't know what to make of them. Who is Tommy Tompkins?

Oh, right. You aren't speaking to me until I do some homework you've assigned. [Sigh. Not another one of those "My way or the highway" debaters, surely?]

scylla: through the hurt and the tears, I just re-read your 9-hours-ago message and nearly fell off my chair laughing.

You say

And then you tell me that CanWest "is too convenient an escape hatch" to be blamed? Oh, hahahahahahaha ...

And if you think any Canadian news is sent around the world on a daily basis, no, it definitely isn't. Nothing but Margaret Trudeau and "the Quebec problem" was mentioned in U.K., Australia, N.Z., during my time in those countries.

As for CanWest, it owns just about everything in B.C. media, and a whole lot beyond B.C. CanWest is business-oriented. You know that, scylla. Conrad Black's National Post was quite open about their intention to push Canadian politics farther right; the Aspers didn't change that, either.

So how the hell else, except through the media, does any story reach the public? Oops. Forgot you're not speaking to me. Pity.

In addition:

- from "A Question to journalists" by Bill Moyers, in Vive le Canada.