The Vancouver Sun has launched a series of articles. They began Dec 2 2011 and can be found at:
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/environmental+costs+logging+pine+beetles/5798233/story.html#ixzz1faeFo02F
The environmental costs of B.C.'s logging war on pine beetles
FIRST IN A SERIES: The plan was simple: Log and sell as much dead pine as possible before it decayed or burned. But the environmental costs of the large-scale salvaging of Interior forests are still being tallied
By LARRY PYNN, Vancouver Sun
THE INTERIOR PLATEAU -- The province sold the epidemic as unprecedented in North American history.
Biblical plagues of mountain pine beetles sweeping across the Interior landscape in dark clouds, leaving a dead zone more than five times the size of Vancouver Island in their wake.
This was war. And the government fought back with an equally aggressive salvage-logging strategy, initially to try to stop the beetle’s spread, and then to harvest as much dead wood as possible before it decayed or burned.
The result? Massive clearcuts with no upper limits, faster approvals for cutting permits, more logging companies taking ever more timber, with industry in charge of conducting its own affairs.
It’s been a full decade since the B.C. government started increasing the annual allowable cut of lodgepole pine stands by an average 80 per cent — in some areas, much higher.
The province promised that salvage logging of Interior pine forests would respect “other forest values” — the environment — but is that what happened?
A lengthy investigation by The Vancouver Sun shows that large-scale salvage logging has had wide-ranging negative environmental impacts that extend well beyond the death of pine trees due to beetle attack.
Salvage logging has hammered biodiversity on the landscape, affecting everything from smaller predators such as fishers and marten to plants such as mosses, liverworts and mycorrhiza fungus, which lives underground in the root system and plays a critical role in transferring nutrients to trees.
The removal of vast stands of forest has also increased the risk of flooding, leading to more erosion and sedimentation, which can affect everything from roads, bridges and culverts to fish and other aquatic life and even to dyking systems in the lower Fraser River.
The landscape has been so radically altered that provincial forests officials have provided maps to Emergency Management BC and others showing where dead pine and salvage logging are most heavily concentrated — and where the potential for flooding is greatest.
Salvage logging also increases hunting pressure both by humans and wild predators — due to a proliferation of logging roads — while increasing greenhouse gas emissions by opening up the forest to rot and by removing the green trees that absorb carbon dioxide.
All this during a decade of provincial cutbacks that included a dramatic decline in funding for forest research — $2.5 million in 2010, down from $38.8 million in 1997.
From Vancouver to Prince George, researchers are decrying B.C.’s failure to address the cumulative impact of salvage logging and fearing there is insufficient oversight of a deregulated, “results-based” system that puts the onus on forest companies to meet government objectives.
Looking at the big picture, these researchers say the mountain pine beetle represents a unique opportunity for the province to rethink the management of B.C.’s forests in the face of climate change — a key reason behind the epidemic.
Revisit the way logging and reforestation is done, they say, and strike a better balance between biological and commercial values.
“We have to value it differently,” said Suzanne Simard, a professor of forest sciences at the University of B.C. “Right now, we value two-by-fours. We don’t put a market value on the other things.”
B.C. and its beetle-killed forests are part of a global community grappling with issues of deforestation, climate change and biodiversity.
“The whole picture has to transform, not just here but around the world,” said Simard, who supports maintaining a greater natural diversity in B.C.’s forests.
And if we don’t address the issue?
Kathy Lewis, a professor of ecosystem science and management at the University of Northern B.C., confirms that a diverse forest is the best way for B.C. to meet the uncertainties of climate change, and fears the public doesn’t realize their importance to clean water and their ability to store carbon.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/environmental+costs+logging+pine+beetles/5798233/story.html#ixzz1fadiw4V3
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