War for the woods   (Page 1 of 5)

Environmentalists on one side, the forestry industry on the other. How did two groups with different aims call a truce and sign the historic Boreal Forest Agreement?

By Rick Boychuk with photography by Tobin Grimshaw

The historic Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement signed on May 21, 2010, brought together environmental activists and the forestry industry for the first time. (Photo: Tobin Grimshaw)

PHOTO ESSAY MAP FEATURE STORY AND EXTRAS War for the woods Map See the range of the boreal forest’s caribou Sidebar What are the details of the boreal agreement? Video See the lifecycle of forestry products

We’re sailing over a sea of green that rolls and heaves as far as the eye can see. Gusts of wind buffet our little airship as we circle lakes and dip into river valleys, following caribou trails and meandering moose deep in the boreal woods north of Cochrane, Ont. A late-August sun has burned off the morning mists and is spotlighting a rainbow of green, from the heathery colour of lichen to the emerald of new growth and the fire-black greens of Jack pine.

See the range of the boreal forest’s caribou (Map: Steven Fick/Canadian Geographic)

In the front seat, beside the pilot of our Bell LongRanger helicopter, is Janet Sumner, who looks like a hip, middle-aged schoolteacher. The daughter of a plumber from London, Ont., she has a degree in physics from the University of Western Ontario and an abiding affection for urban life. Sumner is the executive director of one of the big players in environmental politics in Ontario, the Wildlands League, which is the provincial chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.

Accompanying her is Al Thorne, in jeans, workboots and checkered shirt, who stands at the butt end of the millions of trees that his company plucks from Canada’s boreal forest every year. Thorne is chief forester in Ontario for Tembec Inc., an integrated multi-mill forestry company with more than 6,000 employees. He’s a Newfoundlander with a degree in forest engineering from the University of New Brunswick and forestry in his blood. His father and grandfather both worked in the once giant newsprint mill in Grand Falls-Windsor, N.L., which shut down in 2009 after operating for nearly a century.

They’re a study in contrasts, these two. She’s a Torontonian, a big-city girl who admits she’s never really been a “nature nut.” He’s based in Timmins, a mining and forestry town in Northern Ontario, and has lived and worked in forestindustry towns from British Columbia to Newfoundland. She sees the forests. He sees the trees. She thinks like a physicist and talks about environmental problems from “a planetary perspective.” He’s the engineer, all process and problem solving. Her job is to help conserve Ontario’s boreal forest. His is to turn it into lumber and pulp. Yet here they are, sitting together, exchanging notes, learning about each other’s job.

Sumner and Thorne and their counterparts across the country are putting into action the grand principles of the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement. That’s the historic accord signed last May by 21 major forestry companies and nine of the biggest players in the environment movement, from Greenpeace and the David Suzuki Foundation to The Nature Conservancy and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. Under the terms of that 66-page agreement (see sidebar), the environmental partners agreed to stop their campaigns against buyers of Canadian forest products, such as The Home Depot and the Victoria’s Secret catalogue. For their part, the 21 signatory companies committed to ensuring their operations contribute to “a better protected, more sustainably managed Boreal Forest.” That forest extends from the Yukon to Newfoundland and Labrador, directly and indirectly employs more than 600,000 Canadians and is the economic engine of almost 200 communities.

Watch the lifecycle of a log from the woods to your house.

So, for the moment, we have a suspension of hostilities between the two major combatants in Canada’s long-running war in the woods. There are other players, other battles, under way in those same woods between and among governments, First Nations, resource-dependent communities, mining companies, fishing-lodge owners, berry-pickers, mushroom harvesters — the list goes on. But the hope is that if the environmentalists and forestry companies can agree on the wise use of the boreal’s resources, then other territorial, resource and environmental concerns can be addressed by governments in a broader and equally inspiring agreement. That’s the grand hope. In the meantime, though, we have a truce, and both sides are now busy in the woods trying to turn the Boreal Agreement’s lofty principles into an enduring peace. Will they succeed? To answer that, we need to understand what brought both sides to the table in the first place.

“Moose at two o’clock,” shouts the helicopter pilot. Thorne, who has been studying a satellite map of the forest we are cruising over, turns to scan the landscape, and Sumner trains her video camera in the direction of the big ungulate. This Northern Ontario boreal forest, a mix of black and white spruce, Jack pine, tamarack, balsam fir and balsam poplar, is ideal habitat for moose. It’s the boggy southern edge of the Hudson Bay Lowlands, where the granite of the Canadian Shield gives way to the vast wetlands that cover almost 25 percent of the province.

It’s also ideal habitat for woodland caribou, and soon we see their ancient trails skirting lakes, edging along hillsides. What we don’t see is caribou. They’re skittish, and their mottled brown and beige colouring is ideal camouflage in the boreal forest. Woodland caribou inhabit a range that stretches from the Northwest Territories to British Columbia, across the northern Prairies all the way to Labrador, but they are listed by the federal government as a threatened species. Environment Canada scientists who have studied woodland caribou say they thrive in “large tracts of relatively undisturbed, older forest habitat.” Their extensive ranges allow them “to spread out so that they are harder for predators and hunters to find.” Pierce the forest with a logging road or a cutline for power pylons, and the caribou disappear. Those lines of access become predator highways that wolves — and humans — range along to hunt. But that may be only one of the reasons caribou flee forest that has been disturbed by humans. Scientists just don’t know. What they do know is that caribou are good indicators of the ecosystem health of the boreal forest. Their absence is a sign that something’s out of balance.