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Viewpoint: Don’t convert Powell River forests into toxic tree plantations

Western Forest Products proposes to spray toxic herbicides mainly on native forest plants in several watersheds throughout public forest lands around Powell River for the next several years.
Powell River viewpoint
Getty image.

Western Forest Products proposes to spray toxic herbicides mainly on native forest plants in several watersheds throughout public forest lands around Powell River for the next several years.

Members of Pesticide-Free Powell River are concerned about problems with this “pest management plan,” but spraying is set to commence after July 1 unless citizens insist on a moratorium while other options are explored.

Why would anyone want to kill such local natives as bigleaf maple, salmonberry, thimbleberry, red elderberry, bracken fern, fireweed, and several others? These plants aren’t pests, they’re vital to the forest ecosystem, including to soil health and insect pollinators such as wild bees.

Yet the companies consider these native plants competition to their newly-planted tree seedlings. Thus, many native plants are purposely destroyed in a tree plantation, which is one reason why such plantations are not forests.

They are, in fact, vast seas of nearly identical seedlings consisting of only a few tree species deemed commercially viable. Thus, tree plantations are industrial monocultures, exactly as you would see in agribusiness field crops of corn, potatoes or broccoli.

Specific flaws in Western Forest Products’ draft “Pest Management Plan” in our region for 2020 to 2025 include:

The draft plan provides no information on how many hundreds or even thousands of litres of herbicides are to be used in total or in a given watershed. Also missing: exactly where the company intends to spray these toxic herbicides;

If you regularly hike on a trail where spraying is planned, you’ll likely find out about it from signs posted in the area during a two-week period only after spraying has taken place;

The 48-page plan has only two full pages devoted to environmental protection. Aside from mentioning that spraying will not occur in officially established community watersheds, the environmental protection language is mostly generic boilerplate;

In contrast, six full pages are devoted to reporting (not preventing) spills of toxic chemicals, and up to five litres of herbicide may legally be spilled without any reporting, as long as the spill isn’t likely to directly affect a waterway.

The real issue, however, is the unquestioned assumption that much of our coastal rainforest should be turned into tree plantations mainly for the benefit of corporate shareholders.  This assumption has been normal practice since the 1980s.

Before that, the operating rule was “clear-cut and run,” so tree plantations (or “farms”) were a considerable improvement.

But times have changed, and now tree plantations are every bit as backward as “clear-cut and run” was before. Richly-diverse forests have far more value to society - economically, socially and ecologically - than massive clear-cuts followed by tree plantations.

Let’s use our limited opportunity for comment on this “pest management plan” to tell our elected representatives that we support ecologically-managed forests rather than toxic tree plantations.

Tom Read lives on Texada Island in a forest remnant surrounded by tree plantations.