CURRENT PRACTICES IN FORESTRY ARE ENCOURAGED BY THE USE OF language. On a phone-in radio show about the controversy over whether to log the Stein Valley in British Columbia, Pat Armstrong, the paid spokesperson for the logging interests, defended “multiple use” of the watershed. (Incidentally, all but one participant on the hour-long program opposed logging the valley.) When one caller referred to the “devastation” and “destruction” caused by clear-cut logging, Armstrong bristled and said he refused to enter a discussion involving language like that.
Armstrong had correctly recognized the power of language. The words we use reflect and shape our attitudes and values. But the forestry industry that Armstrong defends so vigorously is itself a perpetrator of illusions created by the use of words. Foresters refer to “decadent” forests, meaning the stage in the evolution of a forest at which many economically valuable trees are approaching the end of their lives and will die. The implication is that they should be “harvested” to avoid a “waste”; yet for millions of years, forests have matured and changed while supporting a multitude of organisms.
Our Forest Services apply herbicides to forests to kill “weed” species of trees. Again, the word suggests a type of tree that is a pest or has no use. We hear of “thinning” or “culling” trees, and the cutblocks are referred to as “tree farms.” Foresters talk about “plantations,” “crops,” “standard forestry practices,” and “managing” wilderness areas. All these words have their roots in agriculture and carry the implication that forestry is simply the farming of trees.
We should not forget that agriculture is a sophisticated activity that is over ten thousand years old. Even though it has a long history, we have instituted such devastating practices as the heavy application of chemical pesticides and herbicides (thereby poisoning workers, consumers, water, and the soil), planting of vast acreages of single crops of uniform genetic makeup (which are extremely vulnerable to disease and create dependence on artificial fertilizers and other chemicals), and exposing much of the topsoil to erosion. In contrast, modern forestry is in its infancy and has never received the kind of financial support to maintain a top-notch, productive scientific community. The “crops” that foresters manipulate are not domesticated plants, and they must grow in uncultivated areas for decades. So the words used to imply that forestry has a similar basis as agriculture perpetuate a delusion.
Constant repetition of words and ideas reinforces a belief in their validity until they are assumed to be factual. A letter (Globe and Mail, June 29, 1988) from Dave Parker, a forester, who is now B.C. minister of forests, provides an illustration. He defends destructive clear-cut logging as:
an accepted practice which follows the principle used by nature: clearing areas to regenerate forests. The difference is that nature uses insects, disease and wildfire. Nature’s technique of removing hazardous material, controlling insects and disease and preparing a site for new forests by fire is emulated in forest management through prescribed burning.…
In British Columbia, we manage our forests on the basis of integrated resource management—considering all demands for use of the forest, whether those demands are for timber harvesting, recreation, preservation, and/or wildlife habitat, to name a few. In every forest management plan, all aspects of the ecological makeup of an area are considered.
A forest is a complex ecosystem made up of numerous organisms, many of which have not yet been identified and whose behavior and biological characteristics have not been defined. We have only the most superficial description of the inhabitants of a forest and almost no understanding of their interaction. How, then, can we consider “all aspects of the ecological makeup”? One thing that we have learned is that a major characteristic of wilderness areas is diversity—great variation in species composition, numbers of organisms, and the genetic makeup of each species. “Natural” forests do not grow back the way we reforest by planting uniform seedlings at regular intervals. Nor do we emulate nature when we apply pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers to the soil, clear-cut huge tracts, and destroy the waste by burning. Communities of organisms coevolve over long periods and maintain a balance through natural selection. The immense machinery involved in clear-cut logging destructively churns up the soil. The operation drives wildlife from an area.
We often forget that soil is a living community of organisms, not just dirt. Each forest floor has its own distinctive accumulation of organic material from countless generations of plants and animals that have lived in an area. In British Columbia, much of the logged area is on steep slopes where the topsoil is thin and there is much rain. Much of the soil is quickly lost before a new group of trees can take hold and cling to the mountainsides. It is the height of self-delusion to believe that clear-cut logging imitates nature.
Of course, trees, plants, and animals can grow back where forests have been clear-cut. After all, about ten thousand years ago, all of Canada was buried under an immense sheet of ice and there were no forests. But it took all those ten millennia to create the natural treasures that we now enjoy, and it is a conceit to think that we know enough to act so wantonly and then re-create forests as if they are tomato or wheat fields. To suggest clear-cut areas are equivalent to parts of forests affected by natural fires, insects, and diseases reflects a failure to recognize the destructive nature of human practices. In the long-term interests of the forests that all of us want to share, we should stop misusing language to cover up our ignorance and inadequacies. This is not inconsequential: whole ecosystems are being destroyed under the impression that we can “manage” our resources.