Speaking Out for Ancient Forests

On October 20 I spoke at the rally for Ancient Forests and BC forestry jobs. Here is what I said.

Thank you to the Ancient Forest Alliance and thank you to all of you for being here, on Coast Salish territory, and making a difference. Together, we are making change. I know it starts to sound strange. Here we are, 2011, 7 billion people on the planet and the world’s ancient forests and other wild places continue to be destroyed.

What we have to remind ourselves of is, that change, small and big, happens all the time. Often very slow, but sometimes change can come very sudden.

For example, I lived most of my life in Germany and for as long as I remember it was always clear that some powerful political parties were 100% committed to nuclear energy. Then the accident in Fukushima happened, people rose up and over night all of these parties started competing with each other to see who will phase out nuclear power stations faster than the other. In the near future, nuclear energy will be phased out in Germany.

The challenge is that we are running out of time and we need change now.

Jens speaking at the rally. Photo: TJ Watt

One of the most impressive illustrations of the decline of the world’s forests can be found in the book "How much is enough". The author, Alan Durning, is asking us to imagine the last 10,000 years of earth as a 10 minute video. For about nine minutes large parts of our planet’s land mass is covered by thick forests and not much is changing except the loss of some small forest areas in the Mediterranean.

Twelve seconds before the end, the thinning spreads and leaves parts of Europe and China bare.

Six seconds before the end, eastern North America gets deforested.

In the last three seconds, after 1950, the change explodes. Vast tracts of intact forest vanish from parts of Asia, Africa, Central America and South America, and western North America.

On a smaller scale the same happened here on Vancouver Island. For nine minutes and 54 seconds most of the island was covered by old growth forest. In the last six seconds three quarters of the island and 90 percent of the rich valley bottom forest get logged. Even in Clayoquot Sound, with the largest remaining tracts of intact old growth rainforest valleys of Vancouver Island, 60,000 hectares remain without legal protection, despite the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, almost twenty years ago.

If we needed one more reason to protect our ancient forests now it’s global warming.

The planet is warming, emissions continue to rise and here in B.C. we are losing our best ally in the fight against global warming. Because of a combination of destructive logging, the Mountain Pine Beetle and increasing number of forest fires our forests are now no longer a carbon sink. Increasingly, our forests are a source of carbon emissions. In fact the latest data shows that emissions from B.C.’s forests doubled from 2008 to 2009 and are now almost as high as the entire official emissions of BC which don’t include emissions from forests.

This information is buried in data tables on the B.C. government website. It appears that nobody in the provincial government feels compelled to pay attention. For every tonne of official greenhouse gas emissions there is now another uncounted tonne of carbon released from our forests, mainly due to poor forest management.

This is a shocking example of a lost opportunity. The contribution of the earth‘s vegetation to a stable atmosphere is nothing short of a miracle. One quarter of human caused emissions are being absorbed by forests and this amount could be even higher if we would do a better job protecting our forests.

B.C.'s rainforest is one of the best carbon banks of the planet, with some of the highest carbon storage per hectare. Protecting old growth forest is one of the best short term actions we can take to immediately reduce emissions.

On the positive side, there is one place in the province where progress to protect coastal rainforest is underway. After years of protests and campaigns large parts of the Great Bear Rainforest are now protected and the Province committed to fully implement a new system called Ecosystem-based Management. Under this approach several hundreds of thousands of hectares of rainforest will be off limits to logging, in addition to Protected Areas. It is critical to let the B.C. government know that the conservation model needs to be fully implemented and that we can’t afford to leave other coastal forest without sufficient protection.

Unfortunately it appears that the B.C. government‘s current priorities are all about resource extraction. Just this month Premier Christy Clark complained in northern B.C. about nay-sayers. She said, "I'm tired of hearing people say, 'No, I don't want that development. No, I don't want those trees cut down. No, I don't want that mine. No, I don't want that well drilled.'"... "We need to move to yes.“

I like the part about yes. Hopefully the Premier will listen if we can send a loud and clear Yes across Victoria.

Do you want the B.C. government to protect endangered old growth forest?

Do you want Clayoquot Sound and the Great Bear Rainforest safe for our children?

Do you want strong action to fight global warming?

Do you want Ancient forests forever?

Thank you very much. Please let the B.C. government know what you think, support the Ancient Forest Alliance and Sierra Club BC. Check our State of the Coastal Forest report and visit our website for more information.