....We who live in British Columbia have a forest around us and this forest of trees is the garden that puts food on our dinner plates.
....The forest quietly grows every year like a garden, and we the people who work in that forest or derive our living from its product must continually be searching for newer and better methods to make sure this garden will sustain us for the future. The trees were here before man and they grew without his help. Man came and saw a way of utilizing them for his benefit. Now it’s up to man to make sure he tends them well.
....This forest of ours on this speck of

immune in our thinking to the world ahead of us that we cannot see around the corner.
....And yet, if we are to individually leave something for the people ahead of us — including our children and grandchildren — then we must, be-cause of the rapidity of change, understand better what we can now do to affect the future.
....When we in the forest industry talk of the forest around us we automatically think of pulp mills, log-ging camps, saw mills, and the next stand of timber to be opened up to production. We are oriented this way by the nature of the work we do.

a planet in space is in constant jeopardy. We have created laws to replenish the trees as we cut them. We have discovered ways of making them grow faster by thinning them and treating them.
....We have also found substitutes for trees and their products. There are those who would say that a hundred years from now we will not need trees for their wood or their fiber because we will have discovered new materials from chemicals and replace them. Who would argue this case in this century of scientific discovery? The point is that now, as far as we can see ahead, we need a continual growth of trees for our way of life here in BC.
....I can’t help but wonder, everytime I see a planting crew at work in the log- ged off areas, just what kind of world of those seedlings will grow into. I think we sometimes tend to forget that it will be about eighty years before they will be cut down for their product. That puts us in the year 2051 — a date that just does not click in our minds when we think of ourselves.
Look back eighty years to 1891 and you will understand what I mean. The world has undergone a complete change in those eighty years. It is logical to believe that by 2051 there will again be as much change. So much happens to us as people in a short ten year period now, that I believe we sometimes tend to become

....Yet there is a growing concept of thinking by people who do not necessarily live by forest products that
the forest is for other things too. For parklands, for environmental protec-tion of the animal life that man is slowly but surely crowding back.
....Also as our great cities of the west coast of North America double and redouble with people there is a twofold demand on the forest by those cities — one for flooding timbered valleys for power dams and another for the recreational comfort for the hordes of people who need to escape the city and return to nature.
....This latter need is very real, for as the city’s grow larger, noisier and more automated, it is essential that people be able to find the quiet and solitude that a forest can offer. We spoke a moment ago of the new seedling the will only mature by 2051. Now envisage the size of a Seattle, Los Angeles or a Vancouver in that year and you can appreciate the problem caused by the people-growth by that year.
....I mentioned that changes have taken place in the past eighty years and that they will continue to take place. However, changes in the past eighty years were not that easily imple-mented.
....More often than not there was great resistance to change. And if that resistance was by a power group the

change could be and was held up for long periods of time. Only a broader education has brought us to the point where the common man can now speak out and be heard. When com-mon man bands together he forms his own power group. And I’m sure we all agree that there are plenty of power groups around us today.
....There are gradually forming in our western society two distinct areas of thought about our forests.
....One group — the largest by stan-dards of power — government, indus-try and established organizations, is still mostly in favor of the forest as a productive entity. The other, the new smaller power group of conserva-tionists, environmentalists and long thinkers of a balanced nature, is growing in strength. And although their cries of warning are not too well headed, they’re finding footholds.
....It’s not a case of picking sides, for there really is not a side that is totally correct. But for the present it would appear that until the emotions of the two sides are subdued and a more factual basis can be found, we will all have to listen to both and determine the strong points of each. I read recently where the so-called great issues of the 80’s will be the environment versus production. I believe this, for we must be ready for another great change in our world, and barring all out nuclear holocaust, ...............................Continued page 10

we will have to make great changes in our outlook on how much production we can afford against keeping our lands and waters environmentally clean and in a compatible state for that pro-duction.
....We say and think we are more accep-table to change today than people were eighty years ago. Possibly we are, but not to the degree to we will go out and vote for a new order just on some-one’s say-so. More and more, when the emotions are cooled away, people today want facts.
....The new emphasis on environmental education is certainly going to bring about factual changes. Children all over North America are learning for the first time of the pollution of their lands and waters. Teachers of these students are among the leaders of new socialist change.

....It must be recognized that these new teachings of the environment will bring forth a whole new concept of the world around young people. These teachings are not a passing phase or fad. It will be driven home by the sights and sounds of smog-filled industrial areas, unclean waters, and the over-crowding of cities.
....When the students of today become the leaders of tomorrow their ideas of production versus environment will be drastically different from those of today’s leaders. So perhaps it would be very sound thinking on our part, in this forest industry particularly, to take another look at what we’re doing.
....Pride of achievement can be a wonderful thing for us all, but we are no longer islands unto ourselves. We are, instead, becoming an industry dependent on the events of our time and the people

of our time. If we can thread our way through the emotions of this new environmental move and see beyond to that seedling planted today to be reaped in 2051, possibly we can reach out and blend reduction with the environment — instead of, as we have been doing, ignoring the environment for production.
....It’s a time for deep thinking. Not emotional outbursts of “long live logging” or “down with logging,” but a time to tune our minds in on the future – at the very least the eighty year future of today’s seedling. The forest around us will protect that seedling. Can we protect that forest?