The crowd stretched from the doors of City Hall to the Ward Street sidewalk in Nelson to hear guest speaker David Suzuki and other forest ecology advocates at a rally held Nov. 18 in Nelson.
Suzuki opened by stating he had never been to a rally with so many seniors and children.
“The important thing about the elders and the children is that we don’t have a vested interest in the status quo. And so I believe that with the experience and knowledge of elders and the energy and the understanding of youth – that it’s their future that’s at stake – we’ve got a very powerful force.”
The Broken Promises rally was held simultaneously in Nelson, Victoria, Vernon, Revelstoke, Smithers, Courtenay, Parksville, and Powell River to protest what is seen as provincial government backtracking on the protection of old growth forests, biodiversity and watersheds, and continuing with timber volume as the only priority. The Nelson rally was organized by the Save What’s Left Conservation Society.
Suzuki began his talk with a reference to the evolution of the human brain, which was “the secret of our success, this kilogram-and-a-half organ buried deep in our skulls.”
He said our brain made us “observant, inventive and creative. It allowed us to learn from our actions and pass on that learning. It allowed us to exploit opportunities and avoid dangers.
“You’re walking along a trail that branches, and you go, oh yeah, I remember Dad went to the left and he almost got eaten by a saber-toothed tiger, but Mom went right, and she found some good things to eat. So let’s go right.”
Now we have the added the foresight of scientists and computers, he said, which have, for 50 years, “been telling us we’re heading down a very dangerous path … in relationship to all other living creatures on earth.
“And for over 50 years, we have stopped listening. We have stopped using the survival tactic of our species, which is to look ahead and act accordingly.”
Speaker Suzanne Simard said failure to use that foresight, and failure to respect all life and give back more than we receive, has resulted in climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation.
“What is the government doing? They actually logged our forest at four times the rate than when the old-growth deferrals were set in place (in 2021.)”
Simard, who lives in Nelson, is a forestry professor and researcher at the University of British Columbia and the author of Finding the Mother Tree.
She said old-growth trees should be left standing (“It’s not hard. We know where they are.”) and the province should stop clearcutting and creating tree plantations that are flammable and subject to erosion.
“The current law is: you can cut down the forest. We need to change the law. … Economies based on timber are dinosaurs. We can do better than this.”
She cited other countries giving more protective legal rights to nature such as Finland, Sweden and New Zealand.
She said in terms of carbon, forests are worth seven times more standing than lying down, and when you add in the value of photosynthesis, they are priceless. It is the carbon that should have the dominant economic dollar value, not fallen trees, she said.
“Just imagine how that will change the economy, just like that.”
Society could go further, she said, and base an economy on the value of air, water and biodiversity.
Hammond and Holt
Slocan Valley ecologist and forester Herb Hammond spoke about secondary forests – those that have already been logged. That’s where we should get our wood and our employment, he said.
“How do we fund that? Well, the timber industry today, or what we call forestry, is subsidized to the tune of a million dollars a day … How much restoration and good use of secondary forests will $365 million buy? We need to divert those subsidies from extraction and exploitation to restoration and protection.”
He said this can only be done by abolishing the timber tenure system, by which “the government has given away the control of our forests to private industry” and has led to loss of jobs over several decades, loss of biodiversity and “loss of options to do it right.”
Hammond said he was worked as a consultant for decades “for Indigenous people from the Innu in Labrador all the way across to Haida Gwaii. I owe them a huge debt of thanks. Without them to to hold me up and remind me that you have to start from your heart and not from your brain, I would have headed down a road that wouldn’t have worked.”
Speakers at the rally also included Ramona Faust of the West Kootenay Watershed Collaborative, and Joe Karthein of Save What’s Left.
Rachel Holt of Nelson is a professional biologist with a PhD in landscape ecology who has worked on forest policy issues in B.C. for 30 years. She has served as vice-chair of the Forest Practice Board and as a member of the province’s technical advisory panel on old growth.
Holt told the rally that she went to NDP convention over the weekend where she talked with Forest Minister Ravi Parmar, who told her that there are no broken promises and that the government has implemented the old growth strategic review published by the government in 2020.
“And I said, no, we haven’t implemented it. And he said, yes, we have. And I said, no, we haven’t.”
In an interview prior to the rally, Holt summarized what is meant by “broken promises.”
The province has not implemented its old growth strategic review entitled A New Future for Old Forests, she said. Nor has it proceeded with its Draft B.C. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework, which called for management to preserve the biodiversity on land and water in B.C. that is under threat.
It has not developed the promised forest management plan that was to follow a report and maps that she co-authored for the province entitled Priority Deferrals: An Ecological Approach.
She said the province promised to involve First Nations in decisions about old growth on their territory. Holt says the province supports First Nations who want to log their old growth, but if the First Nation wants to leave it standing, the province does not support them.
At the rally, she said, “We are living in an interesting world of disinformation, misinformation, and confusion. I know that there are well-educated people in Victoria who think we do not log old growth any more.
“So you have to tell them, this week and next week and the week after that … And tell them you are a regular person, you have a job, you have education, you know about what is happening, and you are not fooled.”