BdNower's, In beautiful B.C. (British Columbia, Canada), nature is still a dominant force. The forest entity is very strong, powerful, and everywhere. This is why people many want to come live here. The forest industry is also very strong, powerful, and everywhere. The combination is the environmental movement is also strong, powerful, and everywhere. Relatively speaking, of course.
Historically, forestry has gone through many management paradigm shifts. A while back, the administrative tendency shifted to an unbelievably complex, rigid and lengthy legislative model. This resulted in the BC Forest Practice Code. I call this the 'cook book' approach, since foresters must follow guidelines for everything. I sometimes joke about foresters having rules telling them how to chew gum, or piss in the bush. Anyway, a new shift is occurring thanks to our liberal government. It's called 'Results-Based' forestry; a gift from our Liberal government to the big corporations at the expense of long hard social and environment progress. At this point no-one knows what the hell this means, except that known management rules and environmental guidelines will be going down the tube, and replaced by 'good will and results'. In other words, the industry have more freedom to do what they deem necessary so long as they obtain 'good' results. What exactly 'good' means, no-one knows since forest ecosystems are complex and scientific knowledge is incomplete. As such, the government, industry, and/or some other entity, will have the mandate to monitor the forest industries progress, or 'results'. What results? 'No-one' knows. And what will happen when the 'unknown results' fail to occur? Again 'no-one' knows? F... me for being cynical, but it smells really bad up here! Indeed, our wonderful Liberal government has cut 1/3 of the forest government workers (... those supposed to monitor forest industry practices...), handicapped health care, education sectors, and treated our first nations with such disrespect that I'm ashamed to be Canadian. Lets turn our attention to forest genetics. In the past, a long time ago, forests used to regenerate themselves through natural reproduction processes. Then, government gave industry the mandate to both, produce seeds in seed orchards (... very unnatural and heading towards GMO's real fast...in fact by 2015, 70% of our plantation will be GMO forests...), and grow seedlings in industrial greenhouses (... very unnatural... NPK... fake seasons, and other nasty chemicals). As this was not enough IT IS THE LAW to use these seeds and seedlings! Yes, our wonder government forces forest industries to use 'class A' seeds (those coming from seed orchards, 'class B' seeds come from nature). What this means is that all those poor workers that head up north to 'plant trees' to help reforestation, are actually 'enforcing bad policy', rather then helping nature, or being environmentally friendly. Yes tree planters might may have intentions, but unfortunately the results suck. I write this post to vent my frustration, and to demonstrate why it is urgent for us to develop alternative environmental management techniques and healing methods. The first to prepare and equip society with holistic tools and spiritual thought patterns so that we are prepared to offer solutions when the time comes, and the second to 'fix' all the environmental (soil, genetics,...) fuck-ups. If you have trees in you neighborhood, collect seeds, and help them reproduce; disperse them... Natural reproduction is the essence of 'sustainable forest management', don't believe the industrial rhetoric that promote anything otherwise. For every 'FrankenTree' they plant,, or seed, a 'real' one. If you can, start a biodynamic tree greenhouse, use natural forest humus as tree-food, and let them grow with the rhythms of the cosmos (...no fake lights and seasons...). Sure your seedling won't be as 'big' as the industrially grown, but yours will be real. Even if people laugh at your vision, keep on going because someday they will understand that you are sitting on a spiritual gold mine. I feel better now. Thanks, Rbn
