Torrance Coste: conservation shouldn’t be the scapegoat for forest industry woes

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With the possibility of some conservation of primary forests in BC, a family chorus is denouncing any willful protection of endangered forests as an attack on jobs.

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The loss of jobs in the forestry industry is real. However, conservation is not driving it, and the scapegoat of environmentalism must stop.

The forest industry is bad; no one disputes this. Over the past two decades, dozens of factories have closed, contractors have gone under, and the industry has lost tens of thousands of jobs. But at the same time, the record in old growth at risk has continued unabated. Hard times for hunters and mill workers have not come in exchange for the safety of southern mountain caribou, spotted owls and other old-growth dependent species staring at the barrel of extinction.

So what is behind the job loss?

Well, tens of thousands of hectares of forest in the interior of British Columbia have been affected by the pine beetle epidemic and the worsening of wildfires. The three worst fire seasons on record have occurred since 2017.

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But like all industries, the forestry sector has also become mechanized and globalized. Logging operations that used to require teams of workers can now be carried out by one or two trained people and with modern and sophisticated equipment. Mills and manufacturing sites, where most of the forestry industry jobs are located, have become increasingly computerized or relocated from places like Tahsis and Mackenzie to South Carolina and Louisiana. In heavy industry, efficiency is paramount and forestry is no exception.

The problem arises when pursuing that efficiency includes reducing overhead costs, including person-hours. Forestry in British Columbia has gotten exceptionally good at this. According to Statistics Canada, only Alberta creates fewer jobs per cubic meter of lumber cut than BC. The same data shows that levels of logging and employment in the forestry sector have now decoupled after years of being linked. The rate of logging increases and decreases, but the number of jobs only decreases.

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Again, these trends do not play out in a conservation context. The amount of protected forest in British Columbia has not increased dramatically over the same period, and the province lags far behind other jurisdictions in terms of conservation.

Yet the jobs versus environment, loggers versus tree huggers tropes remain rock solid. These binaries are neither new nor organic.

The environmental movement has historically failed to align our positions with the solidarity of the working class. This failure has created the false impression that one can care about wild creatures and giant trees or rural family support jobs, not both. Timber industry leaders have also contributed to this, insisting that setting aside endangered forests will undoubtedly create difficulties.

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These messages have an impact. Hostility between people working in logging and those involved in campaigns to protect forests is increasing. Both parties are taught to see themselves as brutes who don’t care about nature or as gullible and disconnected urbanites. In my experience, none of the stereotypes is even remotely accurate.

As with most problems, this division disproportionately impacts indigenous communities. Within nations increasingly at the center of this conflict, disagreement over the right way forward divides not just communities, but families and even households. Centuries of land grabbing compound these broader challenges in ways most of us probably can’t imagine. For many reasons, solutions must focus on returning the land to indigenous peoples.

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The pain felt by those who worry about their future in the forestry industry and those who want mature vegetation to be protected is due to the same problem. We have felled too many trees, too fast, in too many places, for too long – a century of industrial logging has caught up with us.

It is time for the environmental movement to call for wartime investments in economic transition for forest communities. We must insist that plans to leave ancient trees standing include a path to other opportunities for workers.

The forest industry must accept the findings of the Old Growth Strategic Review panel and its ramifications. The panel did not recommend deferring cutting down at risk forests for fun. They did so because irreversible loss of biodiversity is likely if we don’t. Ancient forests cannot be replaced and soon one day we will only cut down trees that were planted by people.

Continuing to cut down the ones that were not planted by people for a little longer is not worth the sacrifice. The paradigm has to change.

Torrance Coste is the National Campaign Director for the Wilderness Committee.

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