Chopping down forest myths at Bon Echo

Jul 21, 2011

Photo: Laurentian University associate professor and graduate coordinator, Dr. Mark Kuhlberg

This being the International Year of Forests, the Friends of Bon Echo Provincial Park presented a talk at the outdoor amphitheater by Laurentian University associate professor and graduate coordinator, Dr. Mark Kuhlberg, last Saturday.

The talk was called “Myths and Realities in the Woods: A provocative perspective on the International Year of the Forest,” and it was jam-packed with everything you didn’t know but thought you knew about Ontario forests.

Kuhlberg’s talk not only demonstrated his passion for Ontario forests and forestry, but also an in depth understanding that was honed during his 20-year tree planting career in northern Ontario and Alberta, and as a forest historian. In 2009 he published a book called “100 Rings and Counting.”

He began his talk by focusing on the not so black and white story about Canada’s forests and he highlighted many of the unsubstantiated forest myths that many of us, for a number of reasons, have come to hold as true. First on his myth chopping block was the one about Canada’s old growth, pre-contact forests. Those old grainy black and white photos of giant trees showed forests that in fact were not the norm but did make for dramatic photos. In actual fact many of the oldest trees were often no bigger than a foot in diameter.

Next he spoke of the common misconception that monoculture forestry is bad practice when in fact it mimics natural forest growth. There are vast tracts of Black Spruce and Jack Pine that exist naturally in Canadian boreal forests.

He also refuted the idea that before European contact our forests were all natural and not controlled in any way. The Huron used burning practices to clear and manage fields and history shows that at any one time 15,000 acres in crops were planted where once forests stood. Other Aboriginal groups like the Ojibway used fire to replenish growth in their blueberry crops and used fire to open up sections of forest for better hunting. Similarly the idea of untouched, uniformly healthy, pre-contact forests is a false one.

Kuhlberg highlighted this by comparing pre-contact forests to patch work quilts. “Some areas were healthy; others, not so much. Some areas were in states of decay or dying. This is how nature works.”

Next, Kuhlberg covered the history of the early lumber industry in Canada and stressed, “We often forget how much of our current bounty is owed to the forest industry.” It began with the British need for red and white pine for their navy and domestic lumber needs. That demand moved the lumber industry across the country beginning in the east coast, which was closest to Britain, and eventually it moved west up the St. Lawrence into Ontario.

By the 1820s canals were being constructed in Upper Canada at a time when lumber supplies in the States began to run dry, opening up the American market to the Canadian lumber industry. This had a huge impact and by the 1840s there were no less than 525 major saw mills processing major tracts of pine forests located on the North Shore of Lake Erie, and in Georgian Bay. This industry brought the railway about.

“It can be argued that at this time our country’s prosperity was built on the foundation of pine,” Kuhlberg said.

As pine receded, the industry moved inland to Owen Sound and Collingwood, Bracebridge, Huntsville and communities further north and was responsible for founding the communities there.

Kuhlberg pointed to a chart demonstrating that at the turn of the century the pine industry made up 30-40% of the country’s overall government revenue.

“The key here is to think how this money was used to build up infrastructure in the country and how it also delayed the necessity of the government to create income tax.”

On the topic of Early Stewardship and Forest Management, Kuhlberg pointed to Benjamin Franklin Avery who was responsible for putting the first forestry stewardship practices into place. This was at a time in the 1920s when the pine industry was on the decline and was replaced by a growing pulp and paper industry. A graduate of Yale, Avery moved to Sault Ste. Marie to work for the Spanish River Company and he convinced them to manage their forests based on sustainable yield.

In the 1920s the company hired one of Orville Wright’s planes to do aerial surveys to study the forests and to come up with a sustainable management plan. Avery's plan was to protect advanced growth and he began tree planting in some areas and used natural monoculture practices in others.

He began a management system known to day as CLAAG- Careful Logging Around Advanced Growth. Kuhlberg's point was to “demonstrate how the Canadian Forestry companies were prudent managers of the woodlands long before Greenpeace or any other organizations arrived on the scene.”

He spoke next of what he terms as Heart over Head Forestry Policy, which addressed the idea that emotion instead of logic has shaped forest policy.

“Unfortunately we generally tend to favour things in the woods that we appreciate aesthetically even though no component of the forest or the woods is more important than any other.” In the '70s and ’80s this idea led to huge plantings of Red and White Pine trees, which Kuhlberg stressed are “inherently no more valuable than any other species.”

Regarding clear cuts, he stated that photos were often used to “manipulate viewers emotionally by making them believe that clear cuts represent all that's wrong with forestry.” Similarly, historic attitudes towards fire were and still are emotionally charged.

When tracts of forest in Toronto's High Park were slated to be burned, residents were up in arms. Similarly cottage owners living in wall-to-wall pine cottages complain about the destruction of forests.

Kuhlberg's conclusions are that “We need to keep an open mind regarding those who work in the forest industry and remember the bounty their work has given us over the years. If you love your maple covered doors, your Globe and Mail, or sitting on your deck at the cottage, remember that there are stumps out there that represent the other end of that economy,” he said.

He also stressed that it is important to use forest products wisely, to recycle and salvage wood product whenever possible and to “rest assured that Ontario is doing a very good job managing its forests. We must use logic, not emotion when it comes to managing our woods.”

Kuhlberg closed by recalling a memorable bumper sticker he once saw on the car of a union worker up north that read: “If you don't like the forest industry, try wiping your behind with plastic.”