“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

Blah, blah, blah, says the world’s most infamous environmentalist and that is the most appropriate comment to make about the COP 26 conference now underway in Glasgow, Scotland often described as the “last, best chance” to save the Earth from climate change Armageddon.

Given the above, I have no doubt whatsoever if Greta Thunberg was asked about the B.C. government’s recently announced plan to save the province’s rapidly declining old growth forests she would respond in a similar vein.

Blah, blah, blah!

And who could blame her? In the mountain of verbiage released by the government’s best spin doctors in Victoria Tuesday the best thing they could say about our precious renewable forests is they will temporarily “defer” the cutting of more old growth.

Defer? Here’s how the Webster’s New World Dictionary defines defer. “To put off to a future time, postpone, delay, yield.” Do you see any reference to reducing logging in that definition? Or to cease and desist?

You damn well don’t because the government has no intention to halt the carnage in the forest and neither does industry. But both are running scared now because pictures of kids and seniors being roughed up, hand-cuffed and thrown into the back of police wagons at the Fairy Creek protest look terrible on TV and reveal the cruelty with which the government and industry are prepared to fight the old growth issue.

What B.C. Premier John Horgan’s government is cynically doing of course is playing politics and punting the issue down the road while the chainsaws continue to rip through the tragically few old growth stands we have left and profits flow to industry and taxes fill government coffers. But now they’re running scared, because under the pressure of environmental groups and a public outcry against their tactics, they’ve been forced to give an estimate of the amount of old growth left in the province – 2.6 million hectares – and that’s the hill government and industry are prepared to die on. That’s why they always say “defer” and won’t issue an order to cease logging the last of the old growth left in “Beautiful” B.C.

Such an order would no doubt be music to the ears of renowned B.C. scientist and forest ecologist Suzanne Simard author of the best-selling book “Finding the Mother Tree,” which through relentless research and sound science shows that old growth forests are connected communities of trees that communicate with each other, feed each other and even protect each other by sharing nutrients and moisture through an underground network of mycorrhizal fungi that amounts to a “wood-wide web” not unlike the Internet.

Simard’s discoveries are a devastating denunciation of B.C. logging practices for over a century which consist largely of clear-cutting, slash burning and spraying poisonous herbicides on trees and other vegetation supposedly competing with fir, cedar and spruce, the species most coveted by loggers. Far from competing, Simard and her dedicated group of researchers discovered that the so-called “competing” species were actually helping the industrial species to grow better without the moonscapes left by clear-cuts.

Simard’s book, which has seen her make appearances on CBC, Ted Talks and other major media outlets, is having a major impact on destructive forest practices similar  to what Rachel Carson’s monumental book “Silent Spring” had on harmful agriculture methods and has confounded the shibboleths of industrial forestry which are revealed in many cases to be harmful to good forest stewardship.

Trees don’t compete with each other in the forest, Simard says. They primarily cooperate with each other and a myriad of other plant and animal species that produce highly productive ecosystems like old growth forests.

Paramount in these diverse living communities is the role of the Mother Trees that nurture the entire forest community she says, adding aboriginal people have long understood this but industrial foresters haven’t and often destroy the biodiversity of the forests they cut. In her book, Simard comments, “I have come full circle to stumble onto some of the indigenous ideals: Diversity matters and everything in the universe is connected.”

Pity our politicians aren’t listening to her as they blah, blah blah . . .

Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who recommends reading “Finding the Mother Tree” to anyone who wants to see better forestry practices in B.C.

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