| Forestry,
2,000 A.D.
....In less than sixteen years
we will enter the new century. The one with the funny Numbers
that have a ring of space |
| and moon travel.
It’s an exciting thought. Are you ready for it?
....Is anybody in the forest
industry ready for it? I suppose the trees will be because
they’ll just add on another ring, same as they did back
in 1900 or 1800. That is, the trees that are growing.
....For you see, there will be
a lot more space that doesn’t have trees growing –
maybe just bush – because of the present political decisions
across Canada concerning silviculture and planting practices.
....We have been given warnings
by the eminent men of forestry in our country that we cannot
continue to intensively cut – as we are doing –
without sub-stantial increases to our forest hus-bandry practices.
....In spite of the warnings
and clear facts put before provincial and federal governments,
answers come back from our political people that there are
other priorities more needing and the recession is the culprit.
....We know we are on dangerous
ground with our lack of forestry research and our lack of
silviculture and planting. Anyone who would argue the case
is simply refusing to look at the facts.
....But do we know that we are
on far more dangerous ground regarding the forest education
of our people, parti-cularly our young?
....For years there has been
a hue and cry across the land from the leaders of our forestry
schools and forest research institutions that not enough money
and talent is being put into all phases of forest education
and forest research.
....Forests and forest products
have been a dominant force in our Canadian |
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....The reason for the above
would lie somewhere between people in govern-ment not really
realizing the importance
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| of our forests
and their resources – to an apathy that the resource
is unlimited.
....Provincial governments are
the land-
lords to most of the forest growing land in Canada. They set
their standards and they are responsible for overseeing of
the crop. In the United States, privatiz-ation of forest land
is common and therefore the private companies hold a different
outlook on what is theirs, against what the companies in Canada
simply lease. There is a difference, Charlie!
....The recession has hurt and
no one makes light of that fact. And in order to stay in business,
West Coast companies are exporting more and more logs to foreign
countries. The shame here is that research in the golden years
awhile back might have given us more secondary industries
today so we could get better value for our trees.
....My point in all this is that
we have never taught the public who live outside the realm
of forests and forestry that this great renewable resource
has to be cared for with intelligence and deter-mination.
This is a huge subject spread across 5,000 miles of land and
it has variable regions, variable problems and many variable
critics.
....We can’t reach that
public when school teachers don’t understand that renewable
resource. And few do.
....We can’t reach that
public when the media don’t take the time to tell the
complete forest story. And often they don’t.
....We can’t reach the
public when our own large forest companies don’t understand
how to get their own message across. There is a long way to
go for most of these companies to gain
..............................continued
on p. 17
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