“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

Ask a typical Cranbrook resident about the “Big Tree” and you’re likely to get an answer, “somewhere up in the Community Forest.” And it’s true.

There’s a gnarled, old Ponderosa Pine on the east side of the popular hiking area that looks like it has been there forever. It even has the battered remains of a tree house about halfway up its lofty branches.

But that’s not the Big Tree I’m talking about; far from it. The vertiginous giant I’m talking about is located right in town in the Mt. Baker RV Park near Joseph Creek which babbles by a few feet away and that’s no accident.

The tree, you see, is a Black Cottonwood or “Populus trichocarpa” as tree experts call them and Black Cottonwoods like to have their feet wet, hence the close proximity to Joseph Creek.

The next time you’re near Baker Park take a closer look at this friendly giant (pictured above). It towers over the lower, northwest corner of the park near the intersection of 14th Avenue and 1st Street South with its hefty, deeply fissured trunk and soaring branches, some as big as some of the smaller trees below.

I got out my tape measure and wound it around the tree and was amazed to find it just over 16 feet or 4.8 metres in circumference. Not a Redwood, but a pretty damn big tree in this neck of the woods and standing on municipal property at that.

I’ll wager, until somebody proves me wrong, that it’s the biggest single tree in all of Cranbrook, at least in girth if not in height. And I can’t help but wonder how many Cranbrookians even take notice of it.

So why am I bothering you with all this tree trivia? Well, I won’t deny that I’ve been an unrepentant tree hugger all my life and I’ve watched with horror over the years as the magnificent, sylvan forests of B.C. have been decimated by industrial logging and clear cutting that’s a fundamental feature of that wasteful and exploitive way that we harvest trees.

So, when I see a tree that hasn’t been chain-sawed to death yet, I take note of it especially when it’s near to the heart of our fair city.

But don’t get me wrong. Logging is a legitimate activity and has been the heart of the B.C. economy for many years and will probably remain that way for years to come. Logging is hard and dangerous work and done properly can even benefit a forest through thinning the undergrowth and opening up the forest canopy to allow more moisture and sunshine through.

Fertilization and genetic engineering of new plantations helps too. So, does specially controlled clear cutting when dealing with diseases like the pine beetle.

But these positive practices are only a small part of the way we log today. Most of industrial logging today is highly mechanized with heavy machinery like feller-bunchers chewing through the forest like a giant lawn mower cutting a lawn. These huge machines basically liquidate the forest, taking it down to bare ground to be replaced by artificial tree “plantations” that will produce even-aged, small diameter tree stands perfect to be mowed down again in 50 or 100 years. Or so the theory goes.

Plantations certainly produce wood fiber and they do so relatively quickly and are great for industry. But in no way are they a “forest” in the sense that nature makes a forest with a diversity of species and plants where wildlife thrives and people experience with awe.

Sadly, it doesn’t have to be this way. If we logged with smaller equipment and more selectively we could essentially prune the forest taking only the surplus that nature produces and leaving enough behind for more logging (pruning) and all the other benefits forests provide in the future.

Impossible, you say. My response? Only because it hasn’t been tried.

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who supports logging and conservation too.

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