How Does Forestry Operate in Forest Dependent Communities?

We return this week to our conversation with Executive Director Katie Morrison and Conservation Science & Programs Manager Josh Killeen of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s (CPAWS) Southern Alberta Chapter.
Last week they painted the landscape of Alberta’s headwaters for us. We learned about the incredible value of this region to the wildlife, species, and many communities (across the continent!) who depend on them. This week we explore some of the challenges these lands are facing in greater depth. How does the underlying approach to forest management make it difficult for protection? What is the government’s role? And what are the opportunities, particularly unique to this landscape, that could result in better outcomes for all?

Learn more about Josh and Katie's work on the CPAWS Southern Alberta Chapter's website and support a future for the Highwood here.

Make sure to check out the show notes on the podcast webpage for more links and helpful resources.

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Transcript

Jan Sumner: 0:00

Welcome to the Clear Cut. Hi, I'm Janet Sumner, Executive Director at Wildlands League.

Kaya Adleman: 0:08

And I'm Kaya Adelman, Carbon Manager at Wildlands League.

Jan Sumner: 0:14

Wildlands League is a Canadian conservation organization working on protecting the natural world.

Kaya Adleman: 0:21

The Clear Cut is bringing to you the much needed conversation on Canadian forest management and how we can better protect one of Canada's most important ecosystems, as our forests are reaching a tipping point. Okay, jan, we're back with the second part of our conversation with Katie Morrison and Josh Killeen of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society's Southern Alberta chapter. I really enjoyed last week's episode. It was great to be out in Alberta, at least virtually or through a story and through conversation. So if you're just tuning into this episode, last week we had a conversation about the headwaters in Southern Alberta, some of the issues with forestry and the endangered species, specifically the endangered trout species that they're working to conserve, and some of the challenges that this particular 50-kilometer stretch of forest is facing from industrial land use, and this week's episode gets a little bit more into the meat and potatoes of those challenges. I don't want to give too much away, but definitely some very illuminating thoughts and ideas that come from this conversation and I'm excited to get into it.

Jan Sumner: 1:49

Yes, one of the things I like about this episode is we're not focusing on caribou. Caribou is a wide-ranging species that goes from the Yukon to Newfoundland and it overlaps with much of the forestry in the boreal. This is south of that and this is trout country. And I really love how they have to think about conservation in a different context, because it is about how the human activities are interacting or intersecting with the natural world and then what we think we know, and then we create policies and then those policies aren't actually reacting in the natural world in the way that we thought we knew.

Jan Sumner: 2:34

And so katie and josh really lay this out, and it's an important reminder that we have to be humble, that we don't necessarily know as much as we think we do. I mean that's evidenced by the fact that we don't necessarily know as much as we think we do. I mean that's evidenced by the fact that we had 100 years of fire suppression in forestry and we did that because we thought, oh well, we're going to suppress the fire so that we can go in and cut what didn't burn, and that only built up the actual fuel for the megafires that are happening now. So sometimes we just don't know what we don't know, actual fuel for the mega fires that are happening now. So it's sometimes our. We just don't know what we don't know, and so this is a cautionary approach.

Jan Sumner: 3:11

Yeah, yeah, exactly, and I like your reference to the meat and potatoes, because this is meat and potatoes country.

Josh Killeen: 3:17

Oh, yeah, definitely 100%.

Jan Sumner: 3:22

Lots of cattle grazing, all right, here we go to maximize the available supply of timber. The cubic meters is the unit that's used often. It's something that's guaranteed and the company has a right to go after that. And then what happens is we sit down at a table and say, oh well, we've got these other requirements and you have to plan for that. Sit down at a table and say, oh well, we've got these other requirements and you have to plan for that, and you have to kind of adjust.

Jan Sumner: 4:07

Maybe you know, move your harvest blocks this way or that way or sequence them differently or various other things. And that's how governments and industry try to make up for this fiber first approach and try to incorporate or integrate some of it. What are some of the things that get argued for here or that have to be addressed in this landscape? And not necessarily fully, because you're starting with a fiber first mentality. But once you start to sit down and plan and you're going in and you're going to clear cut is it full tree harvesting? Do they do anything different in terms of the amount? Has it decreased? You know what are some of the ingredients that would make up a plan that might incorporate some of these things.

Josh Killeen: 4:58

Yeah, that's a great and complex question, I think.

Jan Sumner: 5:01

Yeah, of course it is.

Josh Killeen: 5:05

I think one thing is that we have to kind of recognize that sometimes our goals for timber supply are too ambitious for the ecosystem that we're taking our timber from and that we simply can't take as much timber as we are and maintain these ecosystems.

Josh Killeen: 5:24

I think that always has to be a starting point in these conversations, but it's often not, for the reasons that I think you've described a little bit there, that there's this assumption that the timber supply must be obtained, the mill must be fed and that must increase over time, time we must increase shareholder value and so on, and that puts us in a very difficult position when that conversation isn't even really on the table often and we end up in the place that you're describing, where we're negotiating over small changes to the boundaries of a clear cut or moving a clear cut from one year to five years from now, but that isn't enough to change what's happening to these ecosystems.

Josh Killeen: 6:15

So you know, in some cases I think that there is value in making those changes to certain cuts and they can be beneficial and we can see some incremental progress. But I think when we look at somewhere like the highway, that just doesn't make sense. Its value is so high from these other perspectives and honestly, its timber value is quite low that I think we make a mistake to start having discussions like that when the one we should be having is is this even a sensible idea to be doing clear-cut harvesting there, or should we not be doing that at all?

Jan Sumner: 6:53

How accessible is it? Is it something that you talked about highway access? Is this something I know? The road network in Alberta is really quite extensive, both the official roads and the unofficial roads.

Josh Killeen: 7:08

Yeah, this is a particularly accessible place because it's on a major, very close to a major paved highway, and so it's somewhere that a lot of people recreate, that a lot of people see when they're driving, and that has kind of made it very high profile. And it's actually, you know, there's many areas across the region which have these kinds of issues, but this is a particularly high profile one which makes it really important from the perspective of raising awareness of these issues and trying to make changes.

Katie Morrison: 7:43

And I was going to add as well and it's kind of lost me for a moment now I'll come back, I can jump in because I think you know it's one of one of the other sort of unique or different things about forestry in in the region that we work in is that, um, it is very accessible um and very highly used by many of the communities you. You know not just Calgary, this city of 1.3 million people or whatever we're at now, but a lot of you know small communities that live and work and play in this region. So it's, I think, less easy for forestry companies to get away with things, or it's much more obvious to people what the impact of forestry on this landscape is, because they're out there all the time and you know, in contrast to many communities in the north, a lot of these communities are forest dependent communities are forest dependent. They rely on the forest, for you know the ecosystem services for um, you know air, water, recreation, livelihood, um, but they're not forestry dependent communities. They're not. They're not working for the mill or working um in in the forest sector. So they're, they're feeling the impacts but but not seeing or not getting the benefits.

Katie Morrison: 9:07

So I think it creates a different dynamic but also a real opportunity for these communities to get quite engaged. And so you know, I think when you asked the work that we do earlier and I kind of just described all the problems do earlier and I kind of just described all the problems. One of the key roles that we play in all of those pieces is, you know, providing that science and landscape knowledge and, you know, being able to and policy, being able to look at all these complexities in detail, but also supporting these grassroots communities that you know up and down the slopes want to be engaged in forestry because they're seeing the impacts and so they often come to us for support, and in both getting that sort of landscape knowledge, but also in how to mobilize and how to push back you know on government policy and on forest operating plans.

Jan Sumner: 10:11

So if these species some of them are endangered or threatened, we have a federal law, we have the Species at Risk Act. Is there not something and you know, I say this with an abundance of experience of having worked in Alberta to say that the federal government should use its laws to intervene in Alberta is like a huge I know on caribou, and we've talked at great length about how the species at risk act is not being enforced. It does apply, but it's not being applied in a way that will protect caribou. So what's the state of play here with these various fish species that and I'm assuming there are other species that are threatened because of these actions as well? So it's like what the heck?

Katie Morrison: 11:04

I mean as well. So it's like what the heck I've been waiting to jump into this rant, janet. So you know we talked about these being aquatic species. They're living in, you know, sometimes relatively small streams and up to you know, slightly bigger rivers, but it's this really large network of network of the entire hydrological system in these eastern slopes. So there are these tiny rivulets of water that, as they're seeping out of that forest floor that has been stored through that snow melt, and that seep keeps dripping into these little rivulets and they start to get bigger and bigger and they drip into, you know, a slightly bigger stream and it's that whole system of water in that landscape that creates that habitat. It creates the clean water because it's being filtered. You know, in that forest floor it's cold because it's been underground, it's coming off at the right times. So that is what creates that, that that habitat, so that whole system is, is small c critical habitat. Um, for for these species it is essential that that entire system is functioning to support these species at risk.

Katie Morrison: 12:25

When the species, species were listed and the government got around to, the federal government got around to identifying big C critical habitat, so critical habitat that is defined in legislation as the habitat that is essential for these species to survive and legally protected. They did it in a way that is almost impossible to enforce, rather than you know for many species. They sort of draw lines on the map and say you know, this area is critical habitat. Here's the restrictions that you know. You cannot destroy critical habitat within this area, which you know is much easier to enforce, much easier to grasp With these native trout species. What they've done is described a series of habitat characteristics that could make up the critical habitat within this network of streams. So they call the entire network potential critical habitat and then the legally protected critical habitat are areas where some of these habitat characteristics exist. It's not a defined list. It could be one of them, it could be all 12 of them or anywhere in between, and there's not really a good way of defining that.

Katie Morrison: 13:48

I always say it's like kind of just a gut check. You go and look and be like I think that feels like critical habitat, um, and and that's, and not only that. But it is then up to a development proponent, a forest company company, mining company, pipeline company, to do that assessment themselves, determine whether, based on this vague list of criteria, critical habitat exists in the area that they are going to be working in? And if they think it exists, they then tell DFO that they think critical habitat exists and they will apply for a permit to destroy critical habitat. So, if these characteristics exist, it's the water course with those characteristics, plus a 30 meter buffer on the riparian, because the riparian is what you know, produces food, it controls runoff, it controls temperature, but it's this like super complex, like almost like unidentifiable, vague description of critical habitat. And so we see, you know, time and again, um, that it is not being identified as critical habitat.

Katie Morrison: 15:10

And actually I'll tell you a story.

Katie Morrison: 15:12

You know, this highwood place which, um, we talked about, is right on this, right next to a highway in kananaskis country, which is a high recreational use area.

Katie Morrison: 15:25

I was out last summer fishing the Highwood River, driving back past this area which we had already identified that was planned to be cut, and driving along and, you know, took a look over because you know we'd be paying attention to it, and there was a bridge over the river and I was, like you know, slam on the brakes, stop and look, because they didn't have a permit to build a bridge over the Highwood River and destroy that critical habitat on either side of the stream.

Katie Morrison: 15:57

We knew that they didn't have a permit We'd been checking yet the bridge went ahead and was built and I think that's just one of those examples of because of the location of some of these things. You know, if that had been far in the back country, in an area that no one went, no one would have seen that, no one would have reported it, it never would have come to attention. But because it's an area that people can actually see and pay attention to, you know there was a few other people around that time that brought that to us. There was my rant, josh. Anything I missed on that.

Jan Sumner: 16:32

That's a great rant and I'll let Josh go, but I am going to have a follow-up question on that, and then I'm going to let Kaya go on something I want her to explore.

Josh Killeen: 16:42

Well, I just wanted to add about all those critical habitat definitions that Katie was describing. It kind of boggles the mind when you try to understand them. It just seems so overly complex. And when I started sort of learning about this and increasing my understanding of this issue, I spent many days reading through all of these documents trying to understand what it was that was different about the way this definition had been made. And it was so strange to me and I kept going back to Katie and I was like Katie, are you sure it's like this? Because it just doesn't make sense, like it can't be like this. But no, it absolutely was. And it's just this set of definitions which has created so much ambiguity and so much of a lack of clarity around what needs to be protected by the Species at Risk Act that it's become almost unenforceable and that's leading to so many of these issues that Katie was describing that Katie was describing.

Jan Sumner: 17:44

Yeah, so I want to just put in Katie used the acronym DFO, that's Department of Fisheries and Oceans. It's the federal department that enforces the Species at Risk Act in the water. So, since it's so difficult to define where a critical habitat is and I think Katie said it's the proponent, it's the industry user of that landscape who has to say, hey, this area here where I was going to harvest, is critical habitat, so I need a permit to be able to go ahead and harvest. Permit to be able to go ahead and harvest. Um, that, and I I don't want to say that I'm cynical, but let's just say how many industries put up their hand and say I've got critical habitat here, you need to come and work with me because, um, it's, it's actually, you know, I need to stay out of it, or or I'm going to need a permit or something like. Like, if it's, if this is so complex and difficult to navigate, have they defined anywhere in Southern Alberta as critical habitat? Like, is it? Does it exist even?

Katie Morrison: 18:54

Yeah, Good question I'm trying to think of, you know, like, because it's not, it's not proactively defined, and so when you say, have they defined anywhere, you know, we might not even know. You know, one of the things that we've been trying to figure out is is and I'll get Josh in a second to talk about how many permits are issued to forestry companies. Issued to forestry companies, um, but unless a permit is issued, then we don't know if it existed or if, if someone applied for a permit and was rejected, um, we, we don't know that there's. There's no way of us knowing that, because it's only the approved permits that are posted um, and and it is then up to if it's, you know, if the industry doesn't bring it forward, it is up to citizens or you know other um folks sort of watchdogging uh to to bring these forward and generally retro, retroactively, which I think is the other piece that's really um, difficult and concerning in this, which I think is the other piece that's really difficult and concerning in this If critical habitat is damaged and the company hasn't got a permit, that can be reported and DFO can investigate, but I can't proactively tell DFO.

Katie Morrison: 21:00

I think this area that I think is critical habitat is threatened. When I say I can't do that, I do all the time. We send letters to DFO all the time saying we've looked at this forest plan, this exploration plan, this, you know, whatever development plan, and we think this area, which we believe is critical habitat, is going to be destroyed or damaged. What DFO comes back with to that response is we haven't heard from the proponent, so we're going to assume it's not, until they come to us and tell us that it is. If they don't and it's destroyed, they'll investigate after, but by then it's too late, by then the damage is done. If they don't and it's destroyed, they'll investigate after, but by then it's too late, by then the damage is done.

Josh Killeen: 21:47

So it's this, you know, like broken system upon broken system of actually getting that critical habitat protected, and so maybe I'll let Josh talk about, you know how many permits forestry is getting in this region and maybe why that is happening or not, as the case may be.

Josh Killeen: 22:04

Yeah, so you kind of mentioned at the start China, that I'm a little bit of a computer geek sometimes, so one thing that I have been working on is trying to look at how often some of the places where we believe there to be critical habitat have been impacted by forestry in the past few years since the recovery strategies were produced for these species, and what we are seeing from that is that it's quite regular.

Josh Killeen: 22:29

There's a lot of road building, a lot of crossings built over streams and creeks, which are almost certainly critical habitat, and there are also harvest blocks coming very close and sometimes even over some of the very small streams that also have a big influence, and so it definitely seems like there's a consistent pattern of loss of critical habitat across the region, and for the most part, there aren't many permits out there on the registry, on the public registry, where species at risk permits are supposed to be made public, and so that's a real difficult open question for us is wow, why is that happening and what's going wrong in this system system, and so that's one of the things that we're trying really hard to to push to get to the bottom of, to say you know what isn't working here? That we're seeing that, even though this, this, these species have been listed under the species at risk actor, they're still losing their habitat and and why is that happening?

Katie Morrison: 23:33

and that's really tricky but I'll I just, you know chime in on why I think it's happening. You know a partner that we work with who's a fisheries biologist but retired, just a citizen did a lobby record search of what the Forest Products Association, the Alberta Forest Products Association here in Alberta, which represents the forest industry their lobby records towards DFO and in a 12-month period before he did that search, afpa, the Forest Products Association, had met with DFO 25 times. Afpa, the Forest Products Association, had met with DFO 25 times and in the you know sort of three-year period before that, another 40 times. And so, and what they are, what the lobby records are stating is that they're advocating for implementation of the Species at Risk Act that recognizes the value of forestry on the land base and balances conservation goals and socioeconomic impacts. So you know there is not, you know, as you mentioned, jan, there's not incentive for the forest industry to be identifying critical habitat.

Katie Morrison: 24:53

And I think they are working really hard to make the case that the federal government and DFO in particular also should not be identifying critical habitat and protecting critical habitat because of the impacts, the potential impacts it would have on the forest industry, which are not insignificant If we actually put 30 meter buffers on all the critical habitat, which is actually what needs to be done to protect these species at risk. It would change how we do forestry in this region. But we can't have both things. We can't keep going business as usual, pretending that we're not having these impacts. If we are actually going to protect these species, we are going to need to change how we manage that landscape, and particularly from a forestry perspective so if the forest industry, uh, representatives, are going to dfo and lobbying you know that many times what are the?

Kaya Adleman: 26:11

what are the arguments that they're bringing to government? And, um, maybe, why, in your opinion, do they not hold any water? Pardon my pun.

Josh Killeen: 26:21

Yeah, that's a great question. One of the key ones that we've seen being argued extensively is that the industry often says there's no need for the federal government and the Species at Risk Act to be involved in this, because Alberta's regulations already do a good enough job involved in this. Because Alberta's regulations already do a good enough job and we have what's called operating ground rules in Alberta. So those are regulations that the Alberta government has for the forest industry and they require certain things, like they sometimes require some riparian buffers on some of these watercourses in some cases. And what we often see the industry arguing is well, what we have there is good enough, we don't need to do anything extra.

Josh Killeen: 27:07

And that is just not true. There's a number of reasons why. One is very simple that the requirements in those Alberta regulations don't match the requirements under the Species at Risk Act for critical habitat as simple as that. They're simply not the same and they provide lesser protection. One of the other key ones is that they are highly discretionary. The operating ground rules in Alberta are ultimately discretionary. The companies are sort of held to meeting the requirements within them wherever possible, but it's very straightforward for them to apply for exceptions from those, and that means that we often see these exceptions happen and that means even less protection for these species. So that's one of the arguments that we hear, and you can understand why that makes us really, really concerned, because there's just clearly no comparison between the strength of the regulations that Alberta is using versus what is required under the species at risk end.

Jan Sumner: 28:53

Yeah. So I'm just going to draw an analogy because this is a very similar argument that we hear in Ontario and in fact I think, around Canada. But I'm going to draw a similar comparison to Ontario. So we have an Endangered Species Act in Ontario I don't believe Alberta has one, but we have one. So then there's this federal species at risk legislation. So then there's this federal species at risk legislation and every province actually back when I think it was in 96, when the nature accord was signed said you know what Federal government, we don't want you imposing the species at risk act, we want you to respect our right to govern. So we're going to create our basically mirror that legislation in provincial law. And so provinces said committed to that. They said we're going to go do that. I don't know how many did, I don't think there were very many, I think it was. Maybe it's even only restricted to Ontario.

Jan Sumner: 29:43

But Ontario did an Endangered Species Act and then exempted forestry, mining and development. So the Provincial Species at Risk or Endangered Species Act in Ontario does not. Those two big provisions of the Act protecting habitat and prohibiting harm to species don't are not covered for forestry. So basically, you're not required to do this at a provincial scale and what happens is industry has all these requirements on them. They have, you know, we have to have set-asides, we have to, you know, make sure that we manage for certain species. We have to kind of maybe draw an area where we don't do this or we don't do that.

Jan Sumner: 30:31

But these are all requirements. They aren't legal mechanisms that you could have a repercussion if you didn't do kind of thing. They're sort of like make your forestry plan and then plan for Pine Martin, for example, in Ontario. And I get the sense, having worked in Alberta. And what you just said, josh, is that there are a bunch of things that they say well, we need you to fill out these forms and make sure you do a few of these things, but there's no legal framework that says you're going to lose your license if you don't do this. And this Species at Risk Act, because it's not being enforced, it's not being implemented, is also not holding accountability. And then the other thing that I was just going to comment on is if it was working so well, if balance which is what industry always argues is we have to balance the needs of nature against the needs of industry, if it actually was working. These species wouldn't be in trouble if balance worked.

Josh Killeen: 31:37

I think you've hit the nail on the head there, exactly. Yeah, we always talk about this idea of balance, but the balance has not been there for so long that it's absurd to claim that we're balancing ecological values and timber supply values. So I think you're exactly right there timber supply values. So I think you're exactly right there. And it's um, it's a big problem, like you say, that, um, the, the regulations that the industry has to follow in alberta are ultimately they don't have the same legal standing that the species at risk act has. So that makes it really difficult to to hold industry to account, to do, you know, as good a job as they should be doing.

Josh Killeen: 32:23

Um, and I did also want to add that you know you're right that of course in the, in the planning process, companies do a huge amount of work to just kind of try and incorporate various different values, and often those, like you said, they're different species values and other things. And you know a huge amount of effort goes into doing that. And I know, because I've worked on those plans and I've been through that process, but they don't have that weight, that legal standing, that you know toughness, to be able to actually be effective. They're always nibbling away at the edges, doing a little bit here and a little bit there that might have some marginal incremental gain, but they're not doing enough to really hold the industry to account and to make sure that we're actually protecting what we're setting out to protect.

Jan Sumner: 33:16

Yeah, I would agree with you. There's a huge amount of work. I know that producing forest management plans can sometimes run in the neighborhood of costing a million or more to get done. They hire they might have internal biologists, they might hire experts externally and they're always trying to weave that in. And some of the best forest management planners in the industry are really trying to make the best effort they can but at the end of the day their company is still going to ask them how did we reach our timber supply and were we able to get to it? And I can't agree to X or Y that you might want to put in here, because we need that timber supply. So at the end of the day they're still held accountable by their own companies to meet their timber supply and it's very, very difficult.

Jan Sumner: 34:01

Can I just go back to something you said, katie, about riparian zones, and the reason I want to ask this is again using Ontario as an example. But in conversations with the federal government they've talked about under the 30 by 30 program, the federal government they've talked about under the 30 by 30 program recognizing these riparian zones as that companies are required to set aside. They can't harvest in that riparian zone in some areas of the country and they want to recognize that as almost like a default protection. So we can sort of recognize that the companies have set these riparian zones aside and we're going to recognize it as protection, even though technically it's not protected, because they might not be harvesting. But they could drive on it or they could use it for access or various other things, or you can have a mine there. So technically it's not really protected. But I just wondered if that issue is also playing out in Alberta, or do you have that on your radar? How does that work?

Katie Morrison: 35:04

Yeah, I mean I think, as you mentioned, as the federal government and some of the provinces are trying to move towards this goal of 30 by 30, trying to move towards this goal of 30 by 30, there's a lot of creative exploration of how we get numbers, even if it's not real protection. And I think those riparian zones are a good example. I mean, do we need to be having those setbacks and protecting riparian zones? Absolutely, but you know that doesn't mean, as you say, that they're fully protected. Where you know roads are going in there, bridges are going over streams, that requires, you know, access and and clearing of those zones. On either side there could be other uses, incompatible uses, within them. As Josh mentioned, it's it's fairly common to get exemptions to buffer distances so that there could actually be forestry within them. So we do need more protection and we do need to recognize the value of the riparian zones.

Katie Morrison: 36:15

Second piece of that is what we've been talking about this whole time is that the riparian zone itself is also not enough to fully protect the ecosystem and even these aquatic ecosystems.

Katie Morrison: 36:24

It's a landscape dynamic and so even with these riparian zones and 30 meters is the legal critical habitat on these, a lot of the literature says that it should be more like 100.

Katie Morrison: 36:40

And in fact the draft provincial recovery plan for these species that came from the province, the draft plan had this really great literature view that looked at that 100 meters as a more appropriate buffer distance. Somewhere between that draft and it becoming provincial strategy and now federal law we went from 100 down to 30 already. So even that 30 is not sufficient, but really it's that whole landscape I mean we talk about, you know, the 30, which is not even respected, needs to be respected, like they need to be meeting that bare minimum of following critical habitat and species at risk legislation to protect that. Ideally it would be, or you know, really it should be more like 100. But ideally from the beginning of their discussions around identifying critical habitat we were talking watershed level or sub-watershed level, because it is that sub-watershed that defines the conditions and that defines the functioning of that system that keeps those aquatic systems healthy and supporting species at risk and supporting us. So we already sort of went from what we really need to be protecting down to like this absolutely bare minimum.

Kaya Adleman: 38:12

I mean for those boundaries. That's a 70% loss after going through all the bureaucratic tunnels.

Jan Sumner: 38:20

It's crazy or water crossings or you know various other things that, oh well, we actually really need this. So it doesn't start from a fundamental basis of we're trying to sustain the ecological services of this area. It's kind of they're seen as a cost to the industrial access as we talk, um, you know a little bit more.

Katie Morrison: 39:04

Um, I'm going to introduce it and then pass it back to josh to talk about. Actually, about you know some of the other work we're doing um around this. Um josh mentioned looking at, you know, trying to assess how much critical habitat is being lost and unknown to anyone. Really no one, no one is is tracking that because of this, this broken system. Um, but josh maybe don't want to talk about some of the studies that we've done in the loomis creek watershed particularly, and what we're doing going forward, um to try and build, uh, build the case for, for that particular cut yeah, yeah for sure.

Josh Killeen: 39:34

So that Loomis Creek is within that highwood area that I was describing earlier, where this large harvest is planned but currently paused, and one of the first things that we did is to work with an aquatic biologist to actually map these watersheds that are within this area and to assess the potential risk of carrying out this glick or harvest to those watersheds, and that's risk in the context of some of the things we've been describing, like erosion and sedimentation and, in general, the integrity of those watersheds. So we did a bunch of work on that to try and get a handle on what that risk might be, because it was really only assessed at a very high level during the planning stage, during the forest management planning stage. So we felt there was a big gap there between what had actually been done and what was needed to be done, and so that was our starting point been done and what was needed to be done, and so that was our starting point and we found that there's really significant areas of that watershed that have a very high risk, and the reasons for that are because it's very rugged terrain, it's very steep, it's hard to access and putting in really large clear cuts would be really, really challenging and would almost certainly create some huge erosion issues, and particularly the case with roads going in there as well. And then since then, we've really wanted to follow up on that, to kind of make that link between that watershed assessment and the native trout species that we've been describing, that are in so much trouble, and so we're at the moment fundraising and planning for a much larger scale project, which will involve lots of field work in the area and going out and doing things like mapping populations, doing eDNA testing, which we've already done a little bit of, but doing further eDNA testing to assess where in these streams and creeks trout are actually occupying, and also to do a wider assessment of the watershed itself in much more detail to understand how it might change and be impacted by this planned harvest. So that's more of a geomorphology aspect of the project.

Josh Killeen: 41:53

So, yeah, we think this is really important because it will help us to demonstrate and to show, I think, what many of the people who spend time in this area already have a very good idea of in their minds that this is a really key place for these species and that this scale of industrial activity is almost certain to have a major impact on them, and so we're working through that process, we're doing fundraising, as I mentioned, and we have a part of our website set up kind of describing this area and all the work that we're doing, and we are really hopeful that by doing this we can really put pressure on the regulator, on the provincial government and also on the industry working in the area to say you know, we really need to do better. In this case, we need to make some changes.

Josh Killeen: 42:45

So, if anybody wants to support that work.

Jan Sumner: 42:47

They can go to your website and be part of it, be part of something that's looking at geomorphology. I mean, that's just cool to say, right. So it's like I support geomorphology work, that I can't say it, but you could support it so they can go and do that. That would be pretty cool.

Josh Killeen: 43:05

Absolutely.

Katie Morrison: 43:05

I mean, so far we've got a really great.

Katie Morrison: 43:07

You know, the community down here has really come together for this Highwood-Lumas Creek, both as far as showing up for taking action and writing letters to government and some of the grassroots community action that's happening as well, as you know, showing up for this fundraiser.

Katie Morrison: 43:24

So that's been really amazing to see.

Katie Morrison: 43:27

But I also think there's a point to be made that this type of work should not need to be done by public interest groups or citizen fundraising initiatives. You know, when there's an area that has been identified as potentially being high risk to watershed integrity by the government and by the forest management plans, this sort of follow up work of let's understand what that really means in more detail both, you know, on desktop type exercises and field-based exercises before we cut, should be part of this process and, whether it is cut or not, dependent on the outcome of that, rather than sort of being this business as usual. You know that cut would have gone ahead, you know, as per plan, had there not been such a big citizen pushback, and so it's only because of that are we at the stage that we have the opportunity to do this, further studies and research. But it boggles my mind sometimes that we are the ones that need to step up and do that, that we are the ones that need to step up and do that and our partners and collaborators.

Jan Sumner: 44:52

Not that this is part of the system to things that we've talked about in other regions, like in British Columbia and Ontario, is maybe we've structured industry, maybe the structure of industry and what we're requiring of the landscape is too much. I mean, we spoke with Francois Dufresne, who's the head of FSC Canada, and he said we really need to be looking at what the forest can provide and then designing our economics around that, as opposed to saying, well, the to feed my mill, I need this much, and then we have to squeeze in the other values around that. Have either you or Josh thought anything about that? Has this been part of your work? I know we've thought about it in terms of making more long-lived, value-added products. So there are more jobs in the creation of making things and therefore less need for us, because people who live in communities need jobs, and so what do those jobs look like?

Jan Sumner: 45:53

And obviously, if you just cut all the forest down and we damage the headwaters and we're ruining the native species that we rely on, that doesn't get us very far either. It's maybe a delayed cost that we don't appreciate until we rethink. If it is forestry, is it forestry plantations? Is it a different structure. What does that look like?

Josh Killeen: 46:24

Or have you done any thinking on that you want to?

Katie Morrison: 46:26

start us off, katie. Sure, I mean, when you were setting that up, Jen, I was thinking about something that one of my mentors and partners often say, because we, you know, we hear as we have these conversations with government and industry that you know well, it's a working landscape, it's a working forest. You know, what do you expect from us? And he always says like, yeah, it's working, and I think it's working over time and it's going to burn out any day now. So I think we need to look at it from that sense, similar to you know, if you were working too hard and going to burn out that this landscape, um is on that, on that same path, um, but that's, that's exactly. You know, what we've been trying to look at, um, you know, for at least a decade or more, um, and others for longer than that in this region, I would say, is not that we need to eliminate all forestry from this landscape.

Katie Morrison: 47:21

There could be opportunity for some timber extraction, but its purpose, and therefore how and what it looks like, needs to look really different. So if the purpose is maximizing timber, as Josh was saying, the system is set up for now. It's going to look like what it looks like now. If the purpose is, you know, watershed, the purpose is biodiversity management, if the purpose is fire management, which is what we are not doing right now, but there are ways of doing timber extraction that actually manage fire around communities. You know timber is still coming off that landscape, but it's going to look really different and so it might not be the same type of jobs that exist.

Katie Morrison: 48:08

There could be some, you know, regular type timber jobs. There could be some, you know, restoration jobs. We often talk about a restoration economy because of the already historical impacts to this landscape. There are also those other sustainable economies in that region that are bringing in arguably much more than forestry. There's also those trade-offs, costs of water supply, as we've been talking about. Calgary is looking at investing a billion dollars upstream of Calgary to manage flood risk while at the same time increasing flood risk by managing our headwaters for timber. So I don't think there's one simple answer of we just need to do it this way instead of what we're doing now. I think it is very complex, which makes it difficult, but it's going to be, as you said, looking at what the real value of this landscape is and how do we manage for those values and where does timber fit into that?

Josh Killeen: 49:16

Josh, do you want to add to that? Yeah, I think that's a really great answer. I maybe just take a little bit of a different tack because I think you've covered the main points there. But one thing that I really saw in the forest industry is it's full of people who really care about forests and most people who get into forestry do so because they love being outside, they love spending time outside and they love these places. And then they end up working in this industry, as you were describing, which doesn't really do a very good job of actually protecting and looking after those places and instead is kind of maximizing that timber, as we've been discussing.

Josh Killeen: 49:52

So I do agree with you that I think there's an issue with the way in which the industry is structured, in that we have all these amazing folk who really care about the environment, but they're within a system which is ultimately beholden to corporate shareholder profit, and the trend over time in Alberta and across Canada has been this agglomeration, you know this steadily increasing the size of companies and the companies becoming more international, larger scale and more driven by that large scale profit motive and less able to respond to local needs.

Josh Killeen: 50:39

Less able to respond to local needs. And that's really, I think, partly at the heart of this issue is that we've moved in that direction and I think, as Katie was describing, we really need to move back to something where we're thinking more locally and we're thinking about well, what does this place provide to us in terms of all these other values, and how can we make sure that we continue to have those things provided to us while also having an industry which is thriving? And so I think that's the way we need to think and the way we need to move and, as Katie said, there's no easy answers to that, but I think that shift in our frame of thinking is the starting point for making those kind of changes.

Jan Sumner: 51:18

That is a great summary, thinking about what the purpose is and then starting from there, I think that's really important. Well, this has been, for me, a great conversation, and we haven't even talked about wildfires. I mean, katie, you basically touched on that very briefly, but I think unpacking that one might be an entire episode. So I think we're going to have to draw a line under this and hopefully people have learned a great deal about Alberta forestry, certainly in the southern context.

Kaya Adleman: 51:50

Especially because we have listeners who live in the United States and other areas who are affected by the impact of these watersheds. I think this is definitely a good, very enlightening conversation for me, but hopefully for those folks as well.

Jan Sumner: 52:08

Yeah.

Katie Morrison: 52:08

Thanks so much for having us and we'll put some links and reports and more information in the summary notes that folks can go on and learn more about where we are, what we're doing, the issues we're facing and some of the solutions we're proposing.

Jan Sumner: 52:27

Yeah, thanks so much.

Josh Killeen: 52:29

Yeah, thanks so much. That was great. That was great guys Really been enjoying it.

Jan Sumner: 52:33

Yeah, yeah, me too. There's so much, and I think so many people know the iconic images of Alberta, and that's the other thing. Is that Albertans you mentioned this, josh, that people who work in forestry, but Albertans in general love nature. They love it.

Josh Killeen: 52:49

Yeah.

Jan Sumner: 52:50

And so it's yeah, I'm very connected to nature.

Kaya Adleman: 53:02

So that was a very interesting conversation that we had with josh and katie, and one thing that I learned is that in dealing with government officials in the efforts to protect these incredible trout species, they're dealing with not not Natural Resources Canada or Environment and Climate Change Canada, as we usually hear about on the podcast, but they're dealing with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. So that was new for me, yeah.

Jan Sumner: 53:32

I think it depends on all the different overlapping laws and regulatory frameworks. So, for example, forestry is by and large looked at from a provincial scale and the province will regulate forestry. But then, in terms of the Species at Risk Act, it's a federal law and that gets administered or thought through in terms of its enforcement from a federal level. Then you go, okay, well, which species is it? And then that becomes where it's situated within the federal body or constitution of different ministries, and so it's a department of fisheries, hence the trout and oceans. So that's why they end up having a say in terms of what's happening on the landscape with regards to forestry.

Jan Sumner: 54:19

But it's also interesting that and I guess this is the kicker for me is that that process almost doesn't begin until the proponent sort of flags something and says there's critical habitat here. And that's because the nature of critical habitat is so. It's essentially a number of ingredients that come together to be deemed critical habitat, as opposed to having it spatially defined by a federal process or a federal science. And so it's this, basically these ingredients that come together, and then a proponent would say oh, by the way, we've got these ingredients and therefore it's critical habitat here.

Kaya Adleman: 55:00

Is that the same with caribou?

Jan Sumner: 55:03

No, not at all. Oh, okay, so it's different.

Jan Sumner: 55:05

Okay, no, it's completely different. So with caribou, I mean, there's federal science, people can go look that up, but essentially what it says is that where you've got critical habitat, you can't have more than 35% disturbance. The critical habitat has to be protected. So that's how that runs and we can include in the show notes and things like that so you can see how critical habitat is determined. You can also go back to our episode with Anna Baggio, who does a really great job in terms of walking us through that, and I think we've got several episodes Talk about caribou. So feel free to go back and scroll through that.

Jan Sumner: 55:41

But it is very different than that. And I think and Katie also talks about these ephemeral lakes and rivers that come about when you've got the right conditions. So, for example, they might only be there at certain times of the year. So that's the other difference. I mean they, when you draw a caribou range, for the most part you can draw the ranges, not necessarily, true, in places, but in this case the habitat for the trout may change based on where the rivers appear, because they are seasonally changing protection or conservation policies.

Kaya Adleman: 56:25

When dealing with different government agencies, there are small differences, but the underlying frame, the frame that values resource extraction, timber harvesting, feeding the mill these kinds of ideas that we've seen on the podcast over and over again. I'm thinking of Peter Wood in one of our early episodes, saying that in his work he feels that the onus is often on the environmental groups and people who care about protecting these forests and other natural areas to show government why they need to be protecting, and he would like to see the onus flipped on the people who are working in the business of natural resource extraction to prove that what they're doing is moving in with a light footprint, is moving in with ecological values in mind. Do you think that would be off base to say?

Jan Sumner: 57:28

Well, I may want to unpack that a little bit. So I think that we've been logging for a long time and we have a set of rules. And these are public forests right, they belong. I mean, we do have forestry that happens on private lands. But these rules have been they almost have like an inertia and a system of civil servants and bureaucracy that have been managing these lands on behalf of Canadians and those tenures. They lease them out to these different companies.

Jan Sumner: 58:00

And in Alberta it's also very, very different because oil and gas is all over the place. Now, I don't think it's as much in the southern Alberta context, but when they say they're leasing it to oil and gas, that actually is a very complex landscape because, for example, you might have five or six or more leases underground on the same plot of land, and it's because different kinds of oil and gases will be at different levels and so different companies could have a lease based on whether or not they're going down so many meters or X number of meters. So you've got the complexity of having essentially multiple land users. You know the forestry company at the top, above ground oil and gas sector below ground having leases there, and all of those have different rules and regulations on how they have to manage the land, and there's even competition or issues that emerge between forestry and oil and gas. So, for example, when we've done caribou planting in northern Alberta, it's like, well, forestry Company X might be trying to do a really good job and do restoration, but Oil and Gas Company comes along and they have almost a right-of-way sometimes and so they'll come in and do an activity and it won't be consistent with where the forestry company might be trying to amalgamate all the roads and the seismic exploration might be expanding the industrial footprint. So you've got all of these competitions going on between different ministries and rules and regulations that get written in different ways and an inertia of 100 years of moving forward.

Jan Sumner: 59:46

And so when environmental issues start to emerge and don't forget, some of these environmental issues are very new, like caribou the caribou science came out I don't know, it's like just over a dozen years ago, right, so it's 2010 or 2012, somewhere around there. Yet we were unknowingly pushing caribou to the brink and we were in some cases just you know pushing those ranges past the point of no return in some cases. Right, we're dealing with this range. That's the part of the new emergency order that's just been declared in Quebec around caribou, which was recently done by Minister Goubeau and the cabinet at the federal government, and that was one of the ranges with the Val d'Or, and that range, I think, is they're down to six or eight animals now. So these are complex issues that are playing out in real time, out in real time and you're right, it's.

Jan Sumner: 1:00:46

It's not like industry is going along. They're trying to get the mill fed, they're trying to do what they need to do, they're writing their forest management plans. They're getting that. You know everybody's on a timeline because they've got to put that in front of government. It does go out for consultation. Even the public may not necessarily know all of these nuances and it's one of the reasons that I actually think that environmental groups and academics are really, really needed. And my perspective is at some point we're going to need to have a reckoning and I think it is getting into a very complex series of questions around how we operate different land uses and forestry is one of those and trying to manage and I'm not even going to say the B word, which is the balance word, because it's not about balance, it's about actually making sure that we have an ecological system that thrives, because that's the very foundation for a good life for everybody that's the very foundation for a good life for everybody.

Kaya Adleman: 1:01:43

Yeah, that brings me back to what Josh was saying in this episode. When they're at meetings for various permits etc. It seems that they're starting with we should protect around this area 100 meters, and then that area just continually shrinks and shrinks and shrinks, or this issue gets kicked down the line for another three, four or five years. So our approach, by which we're basing these decisions on, is definitely, as he was saying, not taking the ecologically thriving system as a top priority, which is also brings me also back to our episode with Amy Westland and talking about joint resource management planning with indigenous nations and how you know that could look a lot better than in its, than the way it is in its current form.

Jan Sumner: 1:02:32

Yeah, yeah, that's a good reminder. I thought you were going to go back to the Harvey episode where he says nature is the foundation for everything. Right, and that's true, right. So that B word often gets oh, we're going to balance everything, right, but balance. The system that we're working in is actually supposed to balance all these interests and it's proving that it's not working when you've got fish that are, as Katie was saying, it's catch and release, because those species are endangered so you can't actually even catch them for eating. So it's a catch and release, because those species are endangered so they think you can't actually even catch them for for eating.

Kaya Adleman: 1:03:05

So it's um yeah, what I do like about this episode is what katie was saying about this particular uh stretch of forest being used and um enjoyed and needed by, not forestry dependent communities, but forest dependent communities, people who rely on the ecosystem services from this forest for clean air, clean water, and not necessarily the benefits that come with having a mill in this forest, for instance, the benefits that come with having a mill in this forest, for instance and that puts us in a very unique position that I think we I mean what do I know? I'm in my 20s, but just I think, from where I'm sitting it could put us in an interesting position to be able to develop a framework by which we can do these management planning decisions with people who care about the ecological integrity of the land and be able to work with industry in such a way that we could all learn from for and could be applicable in other areas across the country.

Jan Sumner: 1:04:19

Yeah, absolutely. I mean we go back to that episode that we did with Stand I think it was with Tegan and I remember her saying, in terms of the forest dependent communities, some of these places are where they're now logging for taking biomass so they could turn it into wood pellets and the people who are living near that forest or in that area are kind of like, hang on a second, that's not what I want my forest to be used for. I mean, I get it, we need some products, we need to make things, we need tables and chairs, we need floorboards, we need long-lived products that would maybe help with housing, that kind of thing. But I never really signed up to start cutting my forest down so that we could ship wood pellets to Japan or to Ireland or the European Union. That's not what I think of as a great use of this beautiful standing forest use of this beautiful standing for us, in my mind, it's always been what? The transition that we need right now.

Jan Sumner: 1:05:26

If we think that we needed an electric vehicle transition, I think we need to have a transition of how we create fiber and what fiber we're going to use, and then the products that we're going to make, and then what does that economic system look like? And is it all about just feeding the mill? And I think the answer is no. And is it all about just feeding the mill? And I think the answer is no. It's not about just feeding the mill. It's got to be about more than that, and certainly more long-term jobs for forest dependent communities.

Kaya Adleman: 1:05:55

Yes.

Jan Sumner: 1:05:56

Yeah.

Kaya Adleman: 1:05:57

Cheers to that. That was a silver lining in this episode for sure.

Jan Sumner: 1:06:03

Well, I mean, it's a system in transition. We're hitting up against some of these hard lines, and that's one of the things that's come back to us time and time again. As we've talked about this forestry across Canada and we're starting to see it emerge, and other people are getting this thought in their head too, whether it's local communities, local land users, etc. It's like, hang on a second. Maybe the system that we've been using for a long time is not going to be the system that we need going into the future. If you like listening to the Clear Cut and want to keep the content coming, support the show. It would mean a lot to Kai and I. The link to do so will be in the episode description below.

Kaya Adleman: 1:06:42

You can also become a supporter by going to our website at wwwwildlandsleagueorg. Slash the clear cut and also make sure to leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming platform. It would really help the podcast and stay tuned for new episodes by following us on social media.

Jan Sumner: 1:07:03

That's at Wildlands League on Instagram, twitter and Facebook or LinkedIn, of course.

Kaya Adleman: 1:07:10

See you next time.