An Inter Press Service Feature
By Pratap Chatterjee
EDMONTON, Aug 25 (IPS) - Forest scientists from around North
America gathering at a conference near Vancouver this weekend are
to be presented with a decision by a Canadian company to give up
logging on one of the largest tracts of pristine coastal temperate
rainforest in the world.
Ecotrust, a U.S. conservation group, is holding a three day
conference this weekend at Whistler near Vancouver, to discuss
temperate forest issues. The toast of the conference, they hope,
will be a deal they struck last week with the West Fraser Timber
company to give up plans to log 317,000 hectares of the territory
of indigenous Haisla people of the Kitlope valley.
Some 600 kilometres north of Vancouver city in a remote part of
the province of British Columbia, the Kitlope is bordered by
Pacific fiords and marked by high mountains, alpine meadows,
extensive floodplains and complex estuaries.
The valley covers some 400,000 hectares of rainforest--with
tree species ranging from Western Red cedar, Balsam and Douglas
fir, Sitka spruce to Western hemlock--much of which is over 800
years old. West Fraser has not cancelled plans to log the
remaining 83,000 hectares.
It is home to the Haisla people as well as a variety of
animals, birds and fish from black and grizzly bears, otters,
tailed frogs, bald eagles, marbled murrelets, peregrine falcons to
six salmon species.
The decision has been applauded by activists at the second
global meeting of the Taiga Rescue Network (TRN), a two year-old
coalition dedicated to protecting forests outside the tropics,
that is meeting in the city this week.
''I have just spent a few days with the Haisla in the Kitlope
and I think this is one of the most important decisions for
Canadian forests in the recent past,'' Paul Hawken, an
environmental writer and the author of the Ecology of Commerce,
told an audience of some 250 activists from 30 countries, on
Thursday.
The activists here say that logging in both temperate and
forests in colder climates like Siberia (known as boreal forests)
needs to either be stopped or slowed down considerably. They
believe that there are many other more sustainable activities like
fishing and medicine-plant collection that can replace logging and
preserve the forests.
Temperate forests cover central Europe, north America and occur
in countries around the Pacific like Australia, Chile and New
Zealand. They make up less than five percent of the world's
forests.
Coastal temperate forests like those in the Kitlope are even
rarer. Of the existing coastal temperate forest cover like the
redwoods of California, most of them have been logged at least
once. As a result they have not had the hundreds of years to
evolve hundreds of unique animal, bird, fish and plant species.
The deal to save the Kitlope was engineered by Spencer Beebe
and Ken Margolis, founders of Ecotrust, who is based in Portland,
Oregon. He has spent the last four years negotiating with the
Haisla, West Fraser and the provincial government of British
Columbia.
Beebe and Margolis worked with Cecil Paul and Charlie Shaw, two
elders of the Haisla tribe, and Gerald Amos, the elected chief of
the tribe and Hank Ketcham of West Fraser.
Initially West Fraser offered to protect about 60 percent of
the Kitlope and offer the Haisla people all the jobs in their
operations to log the rest but the Haisla refused. Although they
eventually agreed to give up 20 percent to sign the new deal, they
still hope to save the rest in future negotiations with the
provincial government.
''I don't think there is a more important place on the coast of
North America. This (agreement) is the first dramatic success of a
native/environmentalist coalition,'' said Margolis.
The Haisla are the original inhabitants of the Kitlope (which
means People of the Rocks). Some 90 percent of their number were
wiped out when European settlers first came to the region.
One of the primary activities of the settlers was to
''clearcut'' thousands of hectares of forests, wiping out many of
the unique species. Worse still they often replace them with
plantations of single species of quick growing Lodgepole pine that
are unable to support the diversity of natural forests.
Canada alone harvested 163.8 million cubic metres of temperate
and boreal wood in 1990 most of which was used for products from
paper to plywood, earning 13 billion dollars in export income.
Compared with the total value of experts, the West Fraser deal
is quite small--Ketcham puts it as 12 million dollars.
Environmental groups like Greenpeace point out that the public
relations value of the deal will outweigh the money they have
foregone.
Others like Maureen Fraser, owner of the Common Loaf bakery in
the town of Tofino on Vanocuver island and president of the local
chamber of commerce, hope that it will set a precedent for other
companies.
''This is the best thing that has happened for Canada's forests
to date. We hope it will help us and the native people here, the
Nuu-chah-nulth, as well as other groups like the Haida and the
Nisga who are negotiating to stop logging on their lands,'' she
told IPS.
Fraser is one of the leaders of the fight against MacMillan
Bloedel, one of Canada's biggest timber companies, which is
clearcutting Clayoquot Sound, the area surrounding Tofino, on the
western shore of the island.(ENDS/IPS/PC/94)