Touch Wood: BC Forests at the Crossroads

Ken A. Armson, a former executive co-ordinator of the Ontario Ministry
of Natural Resources’ Forest Resources Group, is currently a forestry
consultant.

This compendium of seven papers about forest policy in British Columbia
is, with two exceptions (a paper on forest tenure and another on wood in
the global marketplace), too focused on that province to be of general
interest.

The paper on forest tenure examines the effectiveness of public
ownership of forest lands and concludes that the time has come for
government to begin a major transfer of ownership to the private sector,
with a balance of small, corporate, and some public ownership.

The remaining six papers are very uneven. Those on public participation
and aboriginal forestry conclude that until there is some progress in
the settlement of disputes about ownership and designations of land use,
the confrontations provoked by forestry practices will continue. The
paper on wood in the global marketplace and its impact on British
Columbia (the only chapter without any references) contains a number of
inaccuracies (e.g., estimating the plantation area of the Aracruz
project in Brazil to be 1.6 million acres, when in fact it is 131,000
acres).

The paper on environmental assessment is so superficial as to be
irrelevant, while that on forest practices is a mix of fact and
fiction—indeed, largely a polemic for “wholistic” forestry.
Finally, the paper on forest policy argues that the “large” forest
industry’s contribution to the province’s economy is much less than
the industry claims; strangely, no data on balance of trade due to
forest products are included.