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Premier Gordon Campbell recently told the Union of B.C. Municipalities that his government would consider logging in parks to control the pine bark beetles. He said he will convene a symposium later this year, probably in Quesnel, to get the "best science" on how to deal with the infestation. Implicit in this message is that we don't know how to deal with the outbreak, that parks are the problem and that we can control the beetle outbreak by logging. Ignoring the explosive, high risk nature of this messaging, Premier Campbell suggests that all we have to do is get the "best science" together, make a plan, log the parks and the issue will go away. This seems like a nice, simple solution until the other side of the story is investigated.

When it comes to "the science", we literally have more that we need to know about pine bark beetles at our fingertips. Life history, habitat requirements, climate controls, rate of spread, severity of attack - in fact, there is a web site with a section just on beetles. It has maps going back to the mid-fifties, showing the rise and fall of three major outbreaks. What those maps show is a trend of the beetles moving north and east across the interior; just as temperatures have risen from south to north and from west to east across the interior plateau. This is to be expected, as the water temperatures have risen in the same pattern and the warmer winters also show the same spatial distribution. The beetles are responding to the changes in climate. When all maps are looked at together you can see that most of the interior dry pine forest has been attacked in the last fifty years.

Beetles increase through two mechanisms. One is to fly to nearby trees, as much as several kilometres from the infected tree. The other is when the local, always-present populations explode to epidemic proportions, attacking not just the mature trees but younger ones as well. It is ridiculous to say that the beetles in the McBride area flew there from the backside of the coast mountains, several hundred kilometers away, in one or two seasons. Instead, local populations exploded in literally hundreds of areas across the plateau as a response to the favourable climate and forest characteristics. That is why the Ministry of Forests talks of "epicentres", places where local populations have gone wild and spread out from there. All the science, whether it is from industry, government or the environmental community, agrees that the only thing that will stop this outbreak is an early, cold winter (minus 40 in November). No amount of logging, even assuming it is possible to log ahead of the beetle everwhere, which it isn't, will stop the beetles at this stage.

The vast majority of the beetle problem is in the so called "working forest". It always has been. Logging parks will not solve the beetle problem. However, it will create a host of very real problems for this government and the industry that tries to carry it off.

Even if Tweedsmuir Park had been clear-cut in 1998 there would still be an epidemic in the central plateau today. Did you know that less than six percent of the total forest and less than three percent of the interior lowland pine forest in ther Cariboo Chilcotin (SBPS) is inside protected areas? Because protection of this ecosystem type is so sparse in B.C., the public will be very concerned when it is suggested that these rare fragments of forest be put to the feller buncher, especially when most of these areas were created by lengthy public process and agreed to by consensus.

Super Natural B.C. is a brand name known world wide. Our burgeoning tourism industry depends on the image and "feel" that people have for our great province. The mindset of the international tourist is fickle at best. Just look at the effect the SARS outbreak had on the tourism industry. Imagine the cost to the B.C. economy when the word gets out the government is actively promoting logging the rare and endangered forests in our parks system - the very parks that are a huge draw for tourists. It is all about image. Can you imagine the impact of videos showing Mt. Robson park being clearcut? We cannot afford to have our precious brand name destroyed by shortsighted actions, especially when those actions will not help solve the problem they were claimed to address.

The logging industry is in enough trouble, what with softwood, diminishing market demand, a high dollar, high labour costs, impending stumpage increases, take-backs and the new working forest legislation. The last thing COFI needs is further bad press and market pressure when it comes to light that they are logging parks and ignoring the vast majority of the problem in the 94 percent of the forest available to them.

The risk here is very high. Imagine what would happen to the forest industry and the economies of interior towns in the heartland if these contemplated actions were to become the focus of international boycott campaigns like the ones that have created chaos in the coastal industry.

This ill-advised, ineffectual scheme to satisfy narrow local interests will not serve the people of B.C, the logging industry or the economy of the heartland. It is time for government to reconsider this course of action and get on with the real issues facing it. We already have enough on our plates in the interior and we don't need international boycotts to drag us further down.

- Dave Neads

More articles in the series, The Other Side of The Story

Cariboo Chilcotin Conservation Society
Unit 201, 197 2nd Ave North Williams Lake, B.C., V2G 1Z5
Phone/Fax: 250 398-7929 • ccentre@ccconserv.org • Coordinator: Marg Evans

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