Not so clearcut

Kananaskis logging ignites forestry methods debate
Originally published in FFWD January 31, 2008 by Drew Anderson in Environment


Generally a place for calm reflection and recreation, the woods also stir powerful emotions and conflicts between user groups with vastly different points of view. Locally and beyond, these emotions cloud debate about the proper use and place in our lives of these wooded lands.

In the hills and forests that mark the entrance to Kananaskis Country, the debate about clearcut logging is in full swing. As trees are removed in the southwest section of Kananaskis, in accordance with a long-standing lease with Spray Lake Sawmills, people who live in the forest and those who use it for recreation cry foul. Water, fire, esthetics, recreation and wildlife all factor into the debate. How should we treat our forests, and what is the best method, if any, of removing trees for the goods we all rely on? The frustrating answer according to those involved: it depends.

NATURAL DISTURBANCES

Dr. Edward Johnson, a biologist at the University of Calgary who specializes in natural disturbances on the landscape, says local geography and tree species must be taken into account before judging logging practices. “What you have to remember is when it comes to logging, you have to match the way you log to the life history strategies of the trees involved,” he says. “In the Boreal forest, and in conifer forests in general, in the mountains for example here, these trees are almost all adjusted to large holes.” The holes he refers to are the wide-open spaces provided by forest fires, as well as those left when trees are clear cut. The trees include pine, the most prolific tree species on the eastern slopes of the Rockies. Lodgepole pine requires direct sunlight and heat in order to germinate after a fire, or in the case of man-made disturbance, after logging. In wildfires, the cones disperse their seeds after breaking open in heat, and the exposed warm, nutrient-rich soil allows the seeds to germinate quickly.

“When foresters try to mimic this, they realized you have to clear cut everything,” says Johnson. “The other thing was you had to burn off the surface layer like fires would. That turned out to be quite an expensive and tricky issue to do. So they usually scarify with big chains or something, in an attempt to expose parts of mineral soil so you can get a regeneration.”

Growth of a different kind is what disturbs Nigel Douglas, a conservation specialist with the Alberta Wilderness Association (AWA). He says you could argue clear cutting is the best mimic of natural disturbance, but that fires don’t build hundreds of kilometres of roads through the forest, fragmenting the landscape and natural habitats.

DISPUTED HARVEST

Gord Lehn is the woodlands manager for Spray Lake Sawmills, the Cochrane-based company that holds the rights to log portions of Kananaskis, which the company has done for over 60 years. Rows of raw logs point the way along Griffin Road to the lumber yard, slowly giving way to neat stacks of timber, a fitting allegory to the business. The sign at the entrance to the lumberyard, carved out of wood of course, declares Jesus is Lord.

Lehn’s office — the Spray Lake Sawmills head office — is almost entirely wooden, something he claims unnerves some people, including former staff, but this fits the company’s belief in its product. The business almost always uses clearcut logging to extract its prized wood, he says, for the same reasons highlighted by Johnson.

“It’s a mixture. It’s mostly clear cutting. You have to ask the question: why? How do you choose the harvesting system that you do? In the eastern-slope foothills of Alberta, we’re about 70 per cent lodgepole pine. Lodgepole pine is a fire-origin species. That species was naturally adapted to come back after a fire,” he says.

Fire is used not only as a precedent for the use of clearcuts in our forests, but also as a reason. Many argue that our forests, due to successful fire suppression to save timber resources, homes and hikers, has resulted in forests that are over mature, that need removal in one form or another, either to help nature and its fickle cycles, or to prevent a major fire event.

Dave Ealey, a spokesperson with Sustainable Resource Development Alberta (SRD), the government department responsible for industrial activity in our forests, says that “we have ended up in a situation where we have a much older population of forests than we would have had before the fire suppression took hold in the ’40s.” He insists that government policy concerning logging and logging practices reflects the need for diverse-age forests and prevents forest fires from ravaging an area.

This over-mature forest argument doesn’t wash with some, including Ralph Cartar, a biologist at the University of Calgary, and president of the Bragg Creek Environmental Coalition. He says “SRD still uses this argument even though it’s false, that the effect of fire suppression on the landscape has caused an unnaturally old forest.” Cartar argues that it is only during the first 25 years of a tree’s life that the fire risk is reduced by its smaller stature — after that the threat of fire is identical over its lifespan. “So if they’re going to come through every 99 years to cut it, three quarters of the time that forest will provide a risk to the community, you’ve only removed the risk for a quarter of the time, so that can’t be the reason you’re logging.”

Something that Parker Hogan, spokesperson for the Alberta Forest Products Association grudgingly admits, may be true. “Well, I guess it would make sense if all you’re doing is running numbers and hypotheticals,” he says. “But if I’m in that community and there is a fire, I’d rather that it be half as big as it was before it hit that break, because maybe my house, my belongings might be saved.”

One of the most prominent, or often-cited, concerns associated with clearcut logging, and something that again draws parallels to the effects of fire, is water quality. This is particularly relevant for Calgarians when you realize our water supply slowly meanders through the logging areas of Kananaskis.

One of the men responsible for the quality of Calgary’s water is John Jagorinec, senior water quality and regulatory analyst for the city. He has concerns about logging in our watershed, but downplays doomsday scenarios. “Theoretically, when you cut down large areas of forest, you can have a quicker runoff, and you can have more erosion and more sediment entering streams,” he says. “So, from a water-quality perspective, you have to deal with the potential of increased sediment-loading, you might have to deal with increased nutrients and things that are dissolved in the water from a water treatment perspective as well.”

He also says that without adequate vegetation, water rushes into the rivers, meaning there is too much during the wet season, and less water during drier times.

At issue is the cleansing process that water goes through as it drips and trickles through forest growth, as well as the slow seeping of rainwater into the rivers, as opposed to its rushing down bare slopes. These processes no longer exist when areas of the forest are removed.

“So this big sponge is sort of cleaning and soaking up the water and then slowly releasing it in dry periods,” says Douglas. “So if you get a big area of clearcut forestry, that water, when it rains, it hits the ground and rushes straight off into the rivers. It’s not getting cleansed, it’s not getting filtered, it’s taking all sorts of silt and muck with it.”

For the health of the water supply, Jagorinec thinks there may be better methods of logging, but relies on the expertise of the SRD in these matters and is in close contact with the department to address any concerns. For the time being, he is satisfied that increased monitoring will prevent any irreversible harm to the water supply. Those on the industry side argue that a fire is far more destructive to aquatic environments, particularly because a fire doesn’t leave a buffer zone of vegetation around lakes, creeks and rivers, while industry does.

Johnson, however, says there has to be more research into the effects on watersheds, of fires and man-made disturbances alike. “In the mountains here, our biggest problem… is that we know very little,” he says. “We do know from other places that logging in general doesn’t have that much of an impact if it’s carried out in a normal way. The biggest problem is the logging roads.”

According to Johnson, it is the roads that cause the most runoff into streams, runoff that carries with it contaminants from vehicles as well as increased silt and gravel. In addition to threatening the water, roads also increase human access to wild places, and the resulting impact on the natural environment is central to arguments against logging.

“When it comes to grizzly bears, to woodland caribou, to a whole lot of things like that, it comes down to access,” says Douglas. “We’re fragmenting landscapes, and it’s been really conclusively proven, certainly with grizzly bears, that that’s the main factor in the mortality of grizzly bears, is access.”

Others think that clearcuts are actually beneficial to wildlife, though this remains a contentious point. The government position is that “wildlife can do very well, and in fact, rely on some of these very early stage forest habitats to provide food… it opens up the forest,” according to Ealey.

Some animals like the open spaces and the easy-access vegetation they provide. Moose, elk, deer and bear all come to the clearings to feed, particularly when food is scarce, but Douglas argues that, at least in the case of the grizzly, there are some serious setbacks to this. He says that although some, like Ealey, will argue wildlife can thrive in these open spaces, that doesn’t take into account the risks associated with them. Though a grizzly bear may more easily find food and space in a clearcut, it’s “completely outweighed by the fact that they’re likely to be killed there because of the access.”

Access is a funny component to the debate about logging. Proponents of intensive logging argue that without its tree harvesting, public access to the sights and sounds of the deep woods would be limited. Many trails are carved by logging companies, and many areas enjoyed by Calgarians were logged in the not-so-distant past. Kananaskis is rife with recreational opportunities created by past logging.

Opponents of logging operations also point to increased access as a reason to stop logging, either to stop removing forests valued for reasons apart from the price of timber, like recreation, or paradoxically, to keep humans and their bad habits from penetrating deeper into the wilderness.

‘CLEARCUTS AREN’T SEXY’

Separated by Highway 1, but ideologically miles apart, Doug Sephton, Alvise Majer of the group Save Kananaskis, and Cartar, represent the foil to Lehn and the wooden office and lumber trucks of the Spray Lake Sawmills. In the Bragg Creek community centre, the three men sit on borrowed chairs in the front entrance as a Christmas craft sale is in full swing. Calgarians swarm to the centre to buy carved wooden goods and other small-town specialties, part of the charm of this far-flung pseudo-suburb. These men represent the nucleus of opposition to logging in the area and symbolize where the true nature of pro versus con comes into play: emotions.

“I think a little emotion is really good, because if you’re not emotionally invested in something then you’re just having a debate. But at the same time, you need to have some kind of a rational viewpoint on it,” says Hogan. Unfortunately, that rational viewpoint has no centre when it comes down to differing values.

Sephton is an unlikely environmentalist — in fact, he really isn’t one. He is a businessman concerned about the effects of logging on the quality of life in his cherished hometown and surrounding forest. He argues those who come to the area for weekends and day trips will be robbed of the beauty his neighbourhood offers. “That experience is going to be taken away from them when they look out over the landscape and see a bunch of clearcut patches off into the horizon,” he says. “We’re forced by the government to discuss these kinds of complex technical issues…. The point is, they shouldn’t be there at all. It’s not about whether there’s contaminants in the creek, it’s that this is more valuable to people than it is to [Spray Lake Sawmills] and they just shouldn’t be there.”

According to Cartar, this is definitely a case of NIMBY, but a justified one. With a city of a million people just a half-hour away, this is the playground for those surrounded on a daily basis by concrete and cars.

The problem is that forestry is ugly. Even if industry were able to mimic natural disturbances, and ensure ecological integrity in all aspects, which it can’t, the use of logging would nag at those who prefer a pristine environment. “It has been given a bad name over time, predominantly by environmental groups because it frankly takes large swaths of forested lands and cuts them all down,” says Hogan. “A colleague of mine presented a paper at a conference recently, and it was entitled ‘Clear Cuts Aren’t Sexy,’ and they’re not. You can even talk to foresters, they’re not really pretty things to look at a year or two after the harvesting has been done.” Hogan still believes, regardless of poor optics, that intensive logging is an appropriate activity in Alberta’s forests, and will continue to improve.

Despite appearances, the logging industry in Alberta has come a long way in the last 40 years, adding buffer zones to protect water, reducing the size of clearcuts, replanting trees and attempting to mimic natural disturbances. However, that doesn’t mean the industry is perfect, even according to those who vehemently support it. “The thing about forestry is it’s as much an art as it is a science,” says Hogan. “The only way you really know if anything you try to do is right is by doing it to the best of your ability and then waiting to see the results.”

This large-scale experimentation with the forest is what angers opponents to logging, locally and globally. When there is an emotional attachment to the woods that surround us, trying to get it right and missing the mark from time to time is unacceptable to some. “We see that as inappropriate because the forest that they are removing is valuable for other reasons,” says Cartar. “So there is, in a sense, a clash of values.”