The Dominion - habitat

A Clearcut Answer?

hillarybain — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 01:23:33 +0000

A year after the Great Bear Rainforest deal was struck, some wonder if the political compromise was worth it

In February 2006, the “Big Greens” -- Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network and ForestEthics -- along with many of their supporters celebrated a historic agreement to bring an end to the “war in the woods” in the Great Bear Rainforest in coastal British Columbia, Canada. But a year later, observers say the Big Greens’ agreement -- made under the campaign umbrella of the Rainforest Solutions Project (RSP) -- may be unravelling. Timber companies have ratcheted up the rate of clear-cut logging to unprecedented levels and guidelines for sustainable logging are not being implemented.

Ian McAllister of the Raincoast Conservation Society says the sudden increase in logging on the Central Coast is “unprecedented in 15 years."

“It’s unbelievable,” McAllister says. “It’s still just cut and run."

“Talk and log,” says Qwatsinas (Ed Moody), hereditary chief of the Nuxalk Nation. “It is not a victory; everyone loses.”

What’s at stake is the largest intact coastal rainforest in North America -- home to thousand-year-old red cedars, wolves, moose, mountain goats, grizzly, black bears and the rare white spirit (Kermode) bears. Protected from logging and development by formidable mountains, this wild and mountainous coastline stretches hundreds of miles, from the tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaskan panhandle. Whales and orcas swim through the channels and inlets. Indigenous communities, who in Canada are known as First Nations, fish, hunt and gather berries, as they have done here for thousands of years.

The Great Bear Rainforest deal was trumpeted as a wilderness legacy for our children and our children’s children in 2006. But reports from the grassroots suggest this “success story” has already turned sour.

Twelve years of campaigning

It was members of the Nuxalk Nation who first invited non-native environmentalists to their traditional territory to witness large-scale clear-cut logging in 1994. The following year, Greenpeace teamed up with the Nuxalk and other environmental groups to launch the campaign to save the place they named “the Great Bear Rainforest.”

By 1997, Nuxalk members and their allies -- Greenpeace, Forest Action Network, Bear Watch and People’s Action for Threatened Habitat -- were blocking logging operations on Roderick Island, King Island and Ista, which is sacred to the Nuxalk as the place where the first woman came to earth.

At dawn on June 6, 1997, workers for International Forest Products (Interfor) arrived at Ista to cut trees as usual. Thirty protesters -- including Nuxalk chiefs in full regalia -- greeted the workers with a blockade and a huge tripod towering over the middle of the road. One protestor was locked down to a cement anchor buried in the road, while two more were perched at the apex of the tripod.

In total, 55 people took over the road and shut down Interfor’s logging operation for 19 days. Twenty-four people, including six members of the Nuxalk Nation, were arrested when police arrived to enforce a court injunction.

In the 1990s, massive industrial clear-cutting was already taking place -- without the permission of First Nations -- under the auspices of the province, which simultaneously hosted a process called the Central Coast Land and Resource Management Plan (CCLRMP). The process was widely condemned as a “talk and log” exercise, until Sierra Club and Greenpeace set their sights on the planning committee. The groups won a moratorium in 1998 to suspend logging in intact rainforest valleys in the Central Coast while they participated in the CCLRMP process.

Meanwhile, environmentalists organized an international boycott of B.C. wood products around the world. As the boycott campaign picked up steam, companies like Home Depot and Ikea dropped their B.C. wood contracts, and the pressure was on to find a compromise.

“Customers don’t want to buy their two-by-fours or their pulp with a protester attached to it. If we don’t end it, they will buy their products elsewhere,” Bill Dumont, chief forester at Western Forest Products, told the Vancouver Sun in May 2000.

Also in 2000, the Rainforest Solutions Project (RSP) made a decision that changed the course of the campaign. According to Qwatsinas and others close to the Great Bear Rainforest, it was a serious strategic error.

While negotiating the Great Bear Rainforest agreement, the RSP formally agreed to end their protests, blockades and marketing campaigns. For the duration of the agreement, there would be no more high-profile blockades of logging operations on the B.C. coast, no lobbying international wood buyers and no hardball criticism of the process to the media.

Qwatsinas believes environmentalists gave up their only bargaining chip.

“They made the Central Coast an environmental-protest-free zone,” Qwatsinas says. “They’ve given away too much. It takes time to get the market campaign, the boycott campaign going again. Think about those strengths that were given up -- the power that they had in making demands, but it’s gone now. What else can they use?”

The Science of Compromise

RSP forged ahead with negotiations about how much land to protect and how to log the rest. With the Joint Solutions Project, the eco-groups collaborated with industry, government, communities, labour groups and First Nations to establish interim agreements, logging moratoriums and other small victories.

In 2006, the final agreement was announced with fanfare by a provincial government eager to paint itself Green after years of cutting park budgets and opening wilderness areas to development and logging. However, the Great Bear Rainforest agreement only commits to a "conservancy" designation for 32 per cent of the land -- part of which is open for mining and all of which may be open to roads, hydroelectric projects, tourism and other uses.

The parties pledged to base the agreement on the best independent science available and the province requisitioned a scientific review of the Central and North Coast flora and fauna to make recommendations about habitat protection. In 2005, the Coast Information Team found that a minimum of 44 to 50 per cent of the land area would have to be set aside to save ecosystems and wildlife. The decision to protect only 32 per cent may end up sacrificing the survival of the spirit bear.

Sierra Club campaigner Lisa Matthaus admits, “The protected areas alone are not sufficient, but this is a political compromise. You need to have a lot of parties in agreement. We wanted to meet the recommendations of the scientists [on the Coast Information Team], but we couldn’t.”

According to the deal, if one-third of the land base of the Great Bear Rainforest is protected, two-thirds will be logged. How it will be logged is still the subject of debate.

The logging industry agreed to phase-in new ecosystem-based management (EBM) logging practices by 2009. The RSP website describes "lighter touch practices" that would "protect old growth, wildlife habitat, sensitive watersheds and salmon streams."

Instead of starting to adopt gentler practices, it appears that some -- if not most -- timber companies are stripping the land as fast as possible before the 2009 deadline.

Even spokespeople for the RSP are expressing concern. An RSP press release in September noted that “some forest companies” still have not begun the eco-logging practices they promised three years ago.

Merran Smith of ForestEthics says, “These agreements are now at risk because a cornerstone of the agreement, ecosystem-based management, is faltering. We are tired of big talk with no action."

Division in the ranks

Qwatsinas calls the Great Bear agreement an “empty box.” Essentially, he says, the deal is only a framework. Ecosystem-based management is one of the details left undefined. Even when a set of practices is eventually spelled out, the definition will be subject to change.

The David Suzuki Foundation, one of Canada’s largest and most respected environmental groups, wouldn’t endorse the Great Bear agreement for this reason. “There are no guarantees that acceptable EBM practices will be adopted,” the foundation’s Bill Wareham said.

Other groups dedicated to the Great Bear Rainforest have walked away from the table, including the Forest Action Network (FAN), the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition, Valhalla Wilderness Society (VWS) and Raincoast.

Valhalla Wilderness Society has been collecting scientific data and working to protect the coast for 18 years. In a 2004 memo, society Chair Anne Sherrod blasted the RSP:

“In the future, while logging the unprotected ecosystems, timber corporations on the mid-coast will enjoy the signed agreement of two of B.C.’s largest groups, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, as well as the U.S.-based ForestEthics and Rainforest Action Network. The groups that will continue working on additional protection on the coast -- such as VWS, Raincoast, Forest Action Network and David Suzuki Foundation -- will be blocked by the B.C. government and timber industry, using the agreement signed by the RSP groups as a ’done deal.’

"In the last few years, some environmental groups and activists have lost patience with this. After 15 years of seeing this happen, there should have been more learning, more awakeness to the crisis of what we are losing and how we are losing it. Instead we have the rhetoric and delusion of ’win – win’ agreements.”

First Nations people are also divided in their response to the agreement. Even within the Nuxalk Nation, the band council supports the process, while traditionalists like Qwatsinas and the House of Smayusta vehemently oppose it. Their dissent is further fuelled by the fact that the agreement fails to respect a protocol with the Nuxalk members who first invited Greenpeace to their territory in 1994. The protocol between Greenpeace and the House of Smayusta stated that no deals would be made without the approval of the First Nations partners.

“It was a bold move for Greenpeace Canada to ignore the protocol and make the [Great Bear] agreement without our approval,” Qwatsinas notes. “The sovereignty of Nuxalk lands and rights in our sense took a back seat.”

Elsewhere on the coast, the Kitasoo Nation has signed the deal and now plans to reap the benefits by logging Green Inlet, part of its traditional territory. Although almost half of Kitasoo land is protected, and Kitasoo Forest Products is cutting trees selectively instead of clear-cutting, the project has brought the wrath of Simon Jackson, founder of the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition.

The coalition says that the agreement has protected only two-thirds of the spirit bear’s crucial habitat and that the province is back-pedaling on its commitment to protect the rest. Jackson says the deal fails to protect the small spirit bear population, estimated at about 200 animals.

“Everybody thought the white bears were protected with that announcement,” he says. “A lot of great steps were taken . . . but it didn’t protect the spirit bear.”

Buying Silence?

Observers report that one of the conditions imposed on the negotiations was a ban on any public complaints or criticisms aimed at the process or any of the participants. The parties involved are not disclosing details about any such restrictions.

Qwatsinas suggests that more groups should be speaking out about the agreement’s shortcomings, but, “I don’t think they can. Some of their hands are tied, and the gag order is in place,” he says.

Besides the health and survival of the ecosystem, a substantial financial package is at stake for the Great Bear Rainforest agreement participants. The government and various foundations have pledged $120 million for First Nations sustainable economic development and conservation projects. Judging by the amount of glossy, self-serving literature generated by their offices, the RSP’s high-profile campaign, with the spirit bear as its mascot, appears to be serving the groups well.

Forest campaigner Ingmar Lee says that a cost-benefit analysis of the money spent on the Great Bear agreement comes up short.

“We’ve found organized, institutional environmentalism [in B.C.] has failed over the last four years to accomplish anything,” he says. “The successes have come from individual grassroots efforts that have basically bypassed the entrenched, bureaucratic, environmental institutions that have been sucking up the enviro-buck and just not getting the kind of accomplishments we need.”

Lee is not surprised that the RSP groups are getting “stabbed in the back” by government and industry apparently reneging on the spirit of the agreement.

“I just believe that we should be working together against these incorrigible forces of destruction rather than working together with them,” he says. “I have always advocated a broad spectrum of environmentalist effort, but the grassroots activist community has been excluded from the project from the start.”

Qwatsinas also makes a distinction between the grassroots groups and the “Big Greens”: “I’m glad there are some out there -- groups like Raincoast -- trying to make an honest effort, protecting the environment, who are not handcuffed by the process.”

Spirit Bear

Where Have All The Fishes Gone?

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 22:38:57 +0000

Newfoundland losing lakes to mining waste

The reclassification of the two lakes in Newfoundland marks the first time that Schedule 2 was used to allow a known fish-bearing water body to be used as a tailings impoundment area. photo: Maretarium

The death knell of Trout Pond and an unnamed lake in central Newfoundland's Exploits River headwaters sounded quietly on October 18. The two lakes became the first casualties of Environment Canada's amendment to the Metal Mining Effluent Regulations (MMER)--a regulation under the Fisheries Act--that adds these water bodies to the list under 'Schedule 2.' Schedule 2 allows the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and Environment Canada to exempt the companies from the law that protects fish habitat, notably Section 35 and Section 36(3) of the Fisheries Act, which prohibit the harmful alteration or destruction of fish habitat and the deposit of deleterious (toxic or harmful) substances into waters inhabited by fish. Mining companies need only get water bodies added to the Schedule 2 list to legalize the use of natural water bodies as 'tailings impoundment areas' or mine waste disposal sites.

DFO and Environment Canada officials are justifying the amendments by altering nearby areas to create new fish habitat as part of an 'environmental compensation plan.'

The threats of this amendment to Newfoundland's largest watershed, the Exploits River system--one of the most visited natural destinations in the province--has many concerned, including Dr. John Gibson, a former DFO biologist who lives in Newfoundland. Gibson knows the two lakes that have recently been added to Schedule 2 to be used by Aur Resources' Duck Pond copper and zinc mining operation. He notes that, "The two lakes have populations of Atlantic salmon and trout, and associated wildlife, such as beavers, otters, and waterfowl, all of which will be poisoned. The life of the mine is expected to be six years, but the ponds will become toxic waste sites in perpetuity. Over that time, there is a possibility that there will be leakage of copper and zinc, which are toxic to fish, and if the retaining dam breaks there will be massive mortality of salmon down the Exploits River."

Gibson reviewed the mining company's environmental compensation plan and calls it, "totally inadequate and merely an excuse to allow the mine to pollute the two lakes. Trout Pond has effectively been privatized for the mining company to use as a toxic waste dump. The Fisheries Act, previously held in esteem, has been considerably weakened."

The Trout Pond Action Group, a local coalition of concerned individuals and environmental groups from across Newfoundland, contends that Aur Resources, the local Environment Canada Environmental Protection Branch, the Newfoundland Department of Environment and Labour, and the DFO did not fulfill their legal obligations to examine properly alternative mine waste disposal options. The group does not believe that the best option is sacrificing Trout Pond and putting the Exploits River at risk. Exploits River has had $30 million of federal money invested in it to enhance salmon habitat.

Previously, artificial impoundments were the accepted method of disposing of mine waste; critics of the plan worry that mining companies are finding the practice too expensive and have chosen to go back to the old days of dumping waste in natural water bodies. At the Louvicourt copper-zinc mine in Quebec, where Aur Resources is a 30 per cent owner as well as the mine manager, man-made structures hold the mine waste. Aur Resources and Canadian regulatory authorities have called it a viable alternative to the destruction of fresh water bodies.

But Maggie Paquet, a biologist in British Columbia who participated in the revision process of the MMER, says, "We reviewed all the public documents made available to us and could find no evidence that Environment Canada provided any advice to Aur Resources about less-damaging waste disposal technologies at this mine."

Pages 23 to 25 of the project's 2001 Environmental Impact Statement contains 11 lines of text, one map, and one chart based on a Multiple Account Analysis that concludes that the destruction of Trout Pond is the best alternative for mine waste disposal. This conclusion appears not to have been challenged by any of the provincial or federal government reviews of the project's environmental assessment.

Aur Resources bought the majority of the mine property in 2002 and mulled over ways to minimize costs to exploit their small but rich deposit. Aur finally made the decision to go ahead with the current plan in December 2004. What is not known is whether a bond has been posted that is adequate to cover costs of perpetual monitoring of ground and surface waters around the mine and perpetual maintenance of the dams to keep the highly acidic and toxic mine waste from contaminating the Exploits River watershed.

These are just some of the issues that The Trout Pond Action Group say should have been addressed in public consultations. Meagre public consultations regarding this project occurred several years ago and reached few people. They were conducted before mining regulations and standards were amended in 2002. Many affected parties, including residents, recreational fishermen, tourism industry workers and aboriginal groups, were not informed about the potential environmental impacts of this project. Aur Resources did not have to hold new consultations when it took over the mine. Environment Canada employees Chris Doiron and Patrick Finlay of the Mines and Minerals Branch claim they did not become aware of the project's intention to use Trout Pond as a mine waste disposal site until February 2005. There are concerns that the amendment revision process to include Trout Pond and the other lake on Schedule 2 was hastened to accommodate Aur Resources' desire to start operations in 2006.

Trout Pond is not the first natural water body in Canada to be used as a tailings impoundment area. For decades, mining companies dumped waste in a number of water bodies across Canada. But in 2002, changes under the Fisheries Act aimed at restricting the practice were passed.

Schedule 2 was also added to the MMER in 2002. This happened without any wide public consultation. Schedule 2 legalized historic mines' use of lakes--ostensibly, those lakes were non-fish-bearing arctic and alpine lakes--and also allowed new mines to dump waste into fish-bearing waters. The reclassification of the two lakes in Newfoundland marks the first time that Schedule 2 was used to allow a known fish-bearing water body to be used as a tailings impoundment area.

Environment Canada confirms that at least nine other mine projects in British Columbia, Nunavut, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories are seeking similar amendments to use lakes for waste disposal.

Environmental organizations and some First Nations are currently considering legal interventions to do away with Schedule 2 before more mining companies sacrifice freshwater lakes and fish-bearing water bodies.

Activists hope the loss of two lakes in Newfoundland to mining waste isn't the beginning of a new trend. Tracy Glynn learns

Question Park

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 13:45:17 +0000

Will one of Canada's most endangered ecosystems receive National Park status?

The South Okanagan Valley contains more ecological diversity than any other in British Columbia. photo: Dick Canning

When driving along Highway 3 in southern British Columbia, you'll find yourself looking out over the South Okanagan Valley; a landscape made up of a mosaic of green, yellow and brown shades, each a different ecosystem. From the bunchgrass ecosystem in the lower elevations to the alpine tundra in the mountaintops, this region contains more ecological diversity than any other in British Columbia. The valley bottoms support more than just ecological diversity; they also support a booming tourist economy, cattle ranching, agriculture and vineyards. The opposing interest groups in the region have made the proposal for a national park reserve controversial and the region's future uncertain.

In accordance with the federal government's commitment to create 10 new national parks by 2008, a national park reserve in the South Okanagan-Similkameen Valley region of B.C. is currently undergoing a feasibility study. This commitment is part of Parks Canada's mandate to represent all 39 of Canada's major terrestrial natural regions in the national park system. The South Okanagan-Similkameen National Park Reserve would represent B.C.'s 'interior dry plateau' natural region.

As a result of its mountainous terrain and warm, dry climate, the South Okanagan-Similkameen valleys contain a myriad of diverse and rare ecosystems. Today, it is under heavy threat from vineyards, cattle ranching and urban sprawl. The local population is expected to increase by 12,000 over the next 15 years. This immense pressure has degraded the South Okanagan-Similkameen grasslands and ultimately led to its recognition as one of Canada's four most endangered ecosystems. Today, the valleys are home to more than one third of B.C.'s species at risk.

The proposal for a national park reserve is drawing passionate debate from both sides. Some argue that due to the dramatic degradation of the environment that has already occurred, a national park reserve in the region is the best possible designation for the protection of the landscape. Others say that a national park reserve is not necessary at all.

A small local group, the Grasslands Park Review Coalition (GPRC), has been vocal about its opposition to the establishment of this national park reserve. They say that the 2001 provincial Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP) is adequate environmental protection and has support from local hunting groups, such as Ducks Unlimited. "These groups and initiatives continue to protect and conserve this great area while still allowing residents and the public to enjoy it," the GPRC states in a pamphlet distributed May 30, 2006. Others, such as local wildlife ecologists Dr. John and Mary Theberge, disagree.

Today, the valleys are home to more than one third of B.C.'s species at risk. photo: Dick Canning

They point out that the region is currently spotted with various provincial parks and protected areas that provide protection from logging and mineral extraction, but not from hunting or cattle grazing. A national park reserve would legislate against these activities. According to ecologists like the Theberges, the region has never naturally experienced heavy grazing by large mammals, like bison or elk. The cattle, they say, have grazed over much of the native bunchgrasses and thus facilitated the establishment of invasive species such as cheatgrass and enabled the domination of the ecosystem by woody shrubs, like sage.

The Western Canada Wilderness Committee's (WCWC) Ken Wu agrees, adding that the most effective protection will come in a sizeable national park reserve. Parks Canada is currently looking at the feasibility of including approximately 350 km2 of core land for the park, consisting largely of current provincial protected areas. "Over time on a willing buyer/willing seller basis, Parks Canada would seek to acquire lands adjacent to the protected areas," says National Park Reserve project manager Tom Hurd. The total area could be up to 600 km2; a figure still criticised by environmentalists for not being large enough.

Wu hopes that the final park boundaries will encompass at least 1000 km2, in order for the park to support larger populations of species, and include more ecologically significant areas. Conservationists are calling on Parks Canada to include the most endangered ecosystems, such as the pocket desert unique to this region and the deciduous forests/shrub wetlands along the Okanagan River. These ecosystems are mainly found on private lands and, as such, were not included in the provincial LRMP and in the 200 km2 Vaseux/White Lakes area, a mix of Crown lands, provincial protected areas, and private holdings.

But even if the park encompasses a substantial amount of highly diverse lands, can a national park truly mitigate the pressures of development and allow some of this ecosystem to return to its natural state? Yes, says Wu, as long as the park upholds the standards of the National Parks Act and does not allow cattle ranching or hunting on park lands. The GPRC strongly opposes the removal of these activities from the land base.

The GPRC is concerned that if a park is established, a loss of income, recreational activities, ranching tenures and land will soon follow. A section from the group's pamphlet reads, "Commercial ranching and logging, hunting, helicopter training, motorized vehicle recreation, trapping, mining, firewood cutting, will be extinguished." Wu disagrees, saying that the concerns are unfounded as only a small portion of the Okanagan-Similkameen region will be included in the park, and there are huge tracts of land outside the proposed boundaries for these activities. The National Parks Act, Wu adds, operates on a willing buyer/willing seller basis and, as such, no one will be forced from their land.

Both those working for the park and those who oppose it are actively seeking public support for their position. WCWC is running a petition drive and letter-writing campaign in support of the park, while the GPRC has been leafleting local residences. Without significant support from the public during the current feasibility process, a sizeable national park reserve is unlikely to materialize in this region.

Heather English is a member of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee

Heather English wonders if one of Canada's most endangered ecosystems will receive National Park status.

Polar bears added to endangered list

Tue, 16 May 2006 15:52:51 +0000

Long understood to be struggling under the pressure of changes in its habitat, the polar bear, a fierce symbol of the untamed North, has had its plight officially recognized. The animal was one of 530 species added to the World Conservation Union's "Red List" of endangered species.

The Union, or IUCN, is a multicultural, multilingual organization based in Gland, Switzerland, that has been documenting the conservation status of species and subspecies on a global scale. Their "Red List," which was released on May 2, had not been updated for two years.

The inclusion of the polar bear does not come as a surprise to many. Because they rely on sea ice for hunting, traveling and mating, the polar bears' existence is directly tied to the ongoing climate change. Studies on a population in Hudson Bay have shown that the population has declined by 15 per cent in the last 10 years and that polar bears in the region are skinnier than they used to be.

The World Conservation Union also predicts that polar bear populations will decline by more than 30 per cent in the next 45 years, unless the current global warming trend is halted, an event that seems unlikely given the increased energy demands worldwide.

The bleakness of the animals' plight is reflected in their new branding on the conservation list. Previously, the polar bear had been listed in the less-severe "Conservation Dependent" category. The 2006 list, however, has them listed as "Vulnerable." This is one level down from the "Endangered" ranking.

There has been talk of the polar bear being added to the U.S. Endangered List, a nomination that would force all federal decisions to consider the effects of their actions on the animal. So far, however, the mighty northern bear can only hope to remain "Vulnerable."

CBC North

National Geographic

The Life of A Clearcut

Sun, 26 Mar 2006 22:52:19 +0000

John Haney collaborates with his environment

Ice Formation in Skidder Track, November 2005. copyright John Haney

It was "an especially obscene clearcut, one which came right up to the road," remembers John Haney. "I figured that I could either get mad or deal with it somehow - and there was one way I knew [how to deal with it]. So I started making trips out to this clearcut with my camera."

John Haney, a photographer currently living in St. John's, Newfoundland, has been working on a photographic series whose process is as noteworthy as its images. The process of the project has required a give-and-take between the artist and the life and agency of the project's subject: a New Brunswick clearcut.

"I knew that there had been countless pictures made of clearcutting, but I'm pretty sure nobody else has been stupid enough to haul around a 25-pound camera to do it with." Haney's camera is an Eastman Kodak 11" x 14" view camera dating back to around 1928, complete with focusing cloth.

"My first intention was simple: to document the devastation as blatantly as possible. I wanted to show something sublime — in the original sense of the word — displaying something both gorgeous and terrifying."

Haney was inspired by images he'd seen of the devastated landscape around Mount St. Helens in Washington State after it erupted; images in which all the trees were blown down in the same direction. He quickly realized, however, that his approach would have to be different. "First of all, there weren't any trees." The objects signifying the devastation, "which I had imagined might be lying around, were probably two-by-fours being used to build houses in Mississauga. Secondly, I was immediately attracted to something far less obvious. I kept getting drawn to subtle things, to the evidence of life growing back."

Haney decided to go back to the clearcut three months later to continue to document this process. "I wanted to see if there was some sign that beauty and life were returning. I realized that if I didn't find this, the project would be one-dimensional and would fall flat."

There have been thousands of documentary-style photographs depicting clearcuts and the devastation they cause, and this familiar mode of depiction was Haney's original intention. But the landscape began to show him something else.

Birch Suckers, November 2005. copyright John Haney

"Returning to the clearcut in November was interesting. Many of the leaves of the living trees had yellowed and fallen off, the ferns were brown and dying, and there was ice on the water that filled the skidder tracks. I felt that the place had changed — it was coming back slowly. So if there's an underlying motive to the work, it is to show how fortunate this is. Also humbling. It points to the poignant fact that all the environmental/ecological issues that we are concerned about in regards to the earth ultimately point to us.

"The truth of the matter is that we will only kill ourselves off, and take a handful of species with us. In time, this place is going to keep on going — and, in fact, it will come tothrive — without us. As I thought about this I realized that my original intent had actually been turned on its head. That my pictures weren't an epitaph for a forest, but rather for humans – for us."

It wasn't that Haney's images had become less political – Jacqueline Rose, a feminist film critic, states that all images are political. These images of a clearcut landscape go beyond the already familiar political images of outrage that have no relation to its opposite: the equally ubiquitous and romanticized painterly landscapes of rebirth and salvation. Haney's interaction with this place and an audience's interaction with the images push careful observation into a more nuanced political-geographical-cultural-natural space. This space has an integrity — not borrowed from moralizing "nature," but from a narrative of observation. This space is more complex but also more simple in its decay, growth, re-growth, shift and pull. The space is hybridized by the passage of machines, not destroyed by them or triumphant over them. The space is a collaboration of events that have taken place within it, including Haney's photographing of it. This multiple collaboration is the subject of Haney's work.

Ice Formation in Skidder Track, November 2005. copyright John Haney

"I made a photograph of a skidder track [a skidder is huge, log-hauling machine], whose tires had made a pair of deep trenches in the ground. It was one of the first pictures I made that looks, in some way, like a completely natural landscape. There's even a slight degree of abstraction in the way the ground is divided by a wedge of sky reflected in the water of the trench. " The image achieves a sense of dichotomy that Haney was aiming for. " It looks like a natural landscape, and it doesn't seem to bear any traces of humanity, except for the fact that, in actuality, the whole landscape is a human landscape; it was made that way by machines, and is now left to its own devices. There is no obvious evidence that one is looking at a ruined landscape, except that the entire subject of the picture is a product of that ruining."

Haney hopes these photos will provide a space for studied inspection of a place that usually doesn't get a second look. " I don't necessarily expect people looking at the pictures to go through the same stages of thought that I did, which is to say, to begin with anger, then come to wonder, then arrive at epiphany. However, I do hope that viewers will be able to get a sense of the slow and considered approach of photographing the clearcut with a view camera, and that they will afford the pictures the same consideration, paying attention to the small and interesting details in a huge, chaotic mess of a landscape. I think that there is a quality about the pictures that speaks of process — both the processes of method and thought, and the slow process of renewal."

The first public showing of the work, currently with the working title Clearcut, will be at the Emerson Gallery in Berlin from July 12 to 22, 2006. Images are currently available at www.johnhaney.ca/clearcut.

Max Liboiron speaks to photographer John Haney about the process of art. Slow down and take a second look.

Masala and the Rainforest

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:44:47 +0000

Future of Kermode bear and rainforest "uncertain"

The Kermode bear's distinctive white coloring appears in roughly 30 per cent of the bears in the Spirit Bear Rainforest. photo: ronthiele.com

The spectacular northwest coast of colonially designated British Columbia contains one of the world's great temperate rainforests. Here, the open Pacific Ocean and meandering fjords lap at the shore of the ancient rainforest where millennia-old cedar trees and towering Sitka spruce grow amid the glaciated Coastal Mountain chain. The rich ecosystem is intersected by streams that host salmon, upon which apex predators such as killer whales, black bears, grizzlies, wolves, and eagles feed. The salmon are also a nutritional mainstay for First Nations people.

The region is named the Spirit Bear Rainforest because it is home to masala, a rare white-colored bear also referred to as the spirit bear or Kermode bear. Masala -- the original designation from Sm'algyax (the Tsimshian language) -- is a genetic variation of the black bear whose distinctive coloration is the result of a single recessive gene expressed phenotypically in as many as one in ten of these bears.

Biologists estimate a population of 1,200 black and white spirit bears -- 400 of the white coloration. The spirit bear lives in greatest numbers on the islands in the territory of the Gitga'at (people of the cane) First Nation: Gribbell Island (up to 30 percent are white) and Princess Royal Island (up to 10 percent are white).

This ursine rainforest denizen and other forest-dwelling wildlife have been threatened by clearcut logging practices. According to the BC environmentalist organization Valhalla Wilderness Society, the long-term prospect for masala's survival is "Uncertain, at best." Particularly disconcerting is the felling of old-growth trees whose hollowed-out trunks provide winter dens for bears on the BC coast.

Logging and road-building also mean the loss of critical food sources and protective cover from poachers. Denudation of the rain-soaked mountain slopes causes landslides and erosion. Salmon habitat will be smothered, killing the salmon and decimating an important food source of masala.

A 1996 investigation by the Sierra Legal Defense Fund revealed that clearcutting accounted for a startling 97 per cent of logging in the temperate rainforest. Pressure from First Nations, environmental organizations, and public concern led the BC provincial government, in April 2001, to announce a "Spirit Bear Protection Area" of approximately 135,000 hectares.

However, this sanctuary remains unprotected until the BC government passes legislation that accords with First Nations priorities for the Spirit Bear Protection Area which falls within the traditional and unceded territories of four First Nations: the Kitasoo/Xais-xais, Gitga'at, Heilstuk, and Haisla/Hainaksula. Treaty negotiations over territorial claims are ongoing with the BC government and federal government.

photo: ronthiele.com

A 2005 status report called into question the protection of the Spirit Bear Rainforest from clearcutting. The status report, authored by the David Suzuki Foundation, concluded that 80 percent of crucial spirit bear habitat is still at risk.

According to some observers, however, the report's conclusions are a
tad alarmist. Art Sterritt, a former chief treaty negotiator for the Gitga'at First Nation, is now the executive director of the Coastal First Nations, a grouping of First Nations working together to forge an ecologically sustainable economy. Sterritt acknowledges that some clearcutting is still going on in the Spirit Bear Rainforest but says that "major, major advances have been made to improve" the situation.

The rainforest and masala are important to his people. Sterritt relates how the Gitga'at First Nation has been living in "co-existence with masala forever … [and] have won the right to use the bear as a crest" -- exclusively for the hereditary chief.

Today, First Nations continue to fight for recognition and treaty rights to their ancestral lands. Few treaties were signed with the First Nations of BC. Sterritt describes the treaty discussions as "pretty disappointing," being "bogged down in bureaucracies," "stalled," and "not moving along well at all." The "snail's pace" of the process -- which many say is deliberate -- serves the interests of the province well.

But progress is near on a land use deal, says Sterritt. "The First Nations are on the verge of striking a new deal with the BC provincial government."

The Gitga'at and Kitasoo/Xais-xais First Nations have developed land-use plans that go a long way to protecting some of masala's essential habitat.

The Kitasoo/Xaixais First Nation has already designated protected areas -- the Nakami Weld -- where resource extractive industries will be prohibited. The remaining land base of the traditional territory will be managed according to Ecosystem Based Management (EBM) principles: sustainable use of the land and resources. The purpose is to foster economic development and job creation while respecting ecological values and conserving wildlife and marine life.

According to Sterritt, the EBM should be fully implemented by 2009.

Territorial sovereignty is delayed, but the First Nations of the Pacific Northwest and environmentalists have achieved an ecological victory. In so doing, a large expanse of intact rainforest is preserved for Original Peoples and their culture to flourish and for masala and other wild species to thrive.

Kim Petersen looks at the prospects for survival of the the Spirit bear, which has particular significance for west-coast First Nations

Lo Que Hemos Aprendido

Tue, 13 Jan 2004 05:15:31 +0000

The Right Whale Program of Peninsula Valdes

Each September, right whales gather off the coast of Peninsula Valdes in Argentina's Chubut province. Since 1971, researchers have gathered there, as well: an unlikely group of biologists, conservationists, and whale-lovers, engaged in one of the world's longest-running studies of a marine mammal population. This past September, photographer John Haney and I spent a week on Peninsula Valdes, and got a window into the history of this study, onshore and off.

Photographs by John Haney

Substitute camera for harpoon, and Iain Kerr is one part Ahab, one part Ishmael.

Vice-president of Ocean Alliance, a conservation organization based in Lincoln, Massachusetts, Kerr is Ishmael in that he is a brilliant raconteur. Over the course of this trip he has regaled us with tales of his courtship with his wife, of their adoption of a mongrel dog on the coast of Alaska, of his swimming with a sperm whale in the Indian Ocean, and of his coming upon a plane wreck in the Colombian Andes while adventuring with a frenchman named Jean-Paul. Now Kerr has taken us along on his evening's whale-watch, and his desire to get a good photograph is bringing out the Ahab in him. As we're motoring out into the belly of Golfo San Jose, he says to Diego Taboada, at the tiller, "All right. Now what I want is a whale breaching, while giving birth, backlit by the sunset." He is half-joking. "The fact remains," he says to me, "that if you want to capture people's hearts and souls about these animals, the best way to do that remains through photography." He adjusts the f-stop on his telephoto lens. "There!" he exclaims, spotting a fluke in the distance, and off we go.

All day we've been watching from land the group of right whales that congregates, May through December, in Golfo San Jose. Some five or six hundred creatures come to this peninsula to calve, mate, and raise their young. Far out, we'd see in silhouette a whale hurling its 40 tonnes into the air, then crashing down into the water. We'd watch the breach take place in eery silence; the sound of the impact would reach us several seconds later, like thunder, over the bay. Now, out in the zodiac, I am haunted by thoughts of what that crash-landing would do to this fifteen-foot boat. "Um, Iain," I say, as a nearby trio of whales dives, showing us their flukes one after another, "is there any way to tell when a whale is going to breach?"

"They tend to dive first," he says, digging in his camera bag for another roll of film. "Rather like that, actually." He gestures at the 'footprints' left by the submerged trio.

"Shouldn't we, um, get out of here?" I ask.

He shakes his head. "Once they go under, it's best not to move. If we stay still, they'll know where we are."

That's just what I'm afraid of.

"If they know where we are, they'll avoid us," he says.

Avoid us?

Kerr reassures me that, although there have been close calls, no scientist - or photographer - has ever, to his knowledge, been breached upon; in fact, there are stories of whales going to great lengths to keep from upsetting a boat.

Debbe Crandall, an environmentalist from Bolton, Ontario, came to Peninsula Valdes to see the right whales in 1991."'I was walking along the beach one night,'"she told me, "sort of stumbling." (The beach is made of polished pebbles, which can make for difficult walking, though Crandall confessed she'd had a glass or two of wine.) "I got thinking about it: here are these creatures, and we've harassed them and harpooned them, propellered and polluted them. We've practically hunted them to extinction, and yet they'll swim right up to the boat and treat it as gently as if it's their baby. They're so tolerant of us. I got a little maudlin," she admitted. "I was quite teary-eyed."

'Quite pie-eyed,' said her sister, whod been listening in.

Too old to hang out with their mothers but too young to mate, the adolescent right whales are the most avid people-watchers. They will sidle up next to the loitering zodiac and raise their heads out of the water to have a look at us. Mariano Sironi is in the final stages of a doctoral dissertation on the social development of these young whales. He's piloting the zodiac today, and he knows these creatures as if he had grown up with them - which, in some sense, he has. We are nervous observers of his careful dance with this 40-foot-long adolescent. Again and again, with slow deliberation, the whale approaches the boat. In the instant before he touches us, Sironi moves the boat away. The whale dips under, wheels around with surprising agility, and approaches us again. "Shall we let him touch us?" Sironi asks. "Let's take a vote." There is a chorus of abstentions. Sironi holds his ground. The whale approaches. "Ramming speed?" says one of us, half joking. We brace ourselves. The great head goes under, then gives us the gentlest poke.

"Did he touch us?"

"I don't know. Did you feel it?"

Satisfied, the young whale swims away.

It is a fact widely recognized but seldom discussed that the novelty of whale-watching is not so much the experience of watching the whales as it is the experience of being watched by them. The mutual curiosity that exists between an adolescent right whale and a boatful of human observers makes whale-watching an activity of an entirely different nature than, say, bird-watching - or even people-watching. Sarah Haney of the Canadian Whale Institute has been a supporter of the Right Whale Program for over a decade. The first time she came to Peninsula Valdes, a whale approached her zodiac. As he swam past the boat, he kept his gaze fixed on her. She still remembers the glimpse she caught of the white of his swivelled eye. "When you look at the eye of a fish or shark, it's slate-grey, dead-looking," she says. "Whales are different. When you look a whale in the eye it's like looking at a dog or another person. There's a feeling of connection."

Vicky Rowntree, director of the Right Whale Program, prefers to observe the whales from land. Almost every morning, she takes her backpack, stocked with notebook, spyglass, water and food, and makes the hike out from the research station, along the tawny cliff which lines the bay, to the 'cliff hut' - little more than a sheet-metal wind-break, constructed by scientist Roger Payne in the 1970s. If the weather is fair, she sits outside, often with her legs dangling over the precipice, the spyglass propped between her knees. She'll focus on a group of whales, and she'll watch -- for hours, sometimes. "The spyglass is great because it focuses you," she says. "It's like you've gone through this tunnel into the world of the whales. If you watch for long enough, you begin to anticipate what they will do."

Most often Rowntree fixes the spyglass on a mother-calf pair. The mothers seem to use the shallow waters of this bay to shield their calves from predators: orcas, sea lions. In five-metre water, the girth of a mother whale forms an effective blockade. In recent years, however, the mothers have proved unable to protect their calves from a new threat. An inflated population of gulls, nurtured on fish-processing waste from nearby Puerto Madryn, has discovered a new food supply: a gull will land on the back of a surfaced whale and rip at its flesh and blubber. The whale will thrash about, go under; the gull will circle around and wait for the whale to resurface, then attack again. Most of the whales that Rowntree spots from the cliffs these days bear open wounds along their backs.

The mother whales don't eat while they are in the nursery ground. They try to keep still, to conserve their resources of blubber and mother's milk. (The calves, on the other hand, love to cavort. A calf will hump up onto the back of the sleeping mother, breach onto her, cover her blowhole with his tail. All this she bears with extraordinary calm.) The real concern about the gull attacks is that, in evading the gulls, the mothers may be expending the energy they need to nurse their calves and to make the trip back to their summer feeding grounds.

By sea and by land the scientists make their observations. Then there is John Atkinson, who observes the whales by air. Each September he makes the trek by plane from Toronto to Buenos Aires, then from Buenos Aires to Trelew, and finally, by truck, from Trelew to the town of Piramides, where he rendezvouses with a crew of apprenticing pilots from the Argentine navy. He'll spend the next three days, if the weather co-operates, hanging from a harness out of an eight-seater navy plane, taking photographs of whales from an altitude of 300 feet.

Atkinson is a veteran traveller and a closet writer. He has four unpublished novels stashed away. He's published children's books in English and in Spanish. I ask him how he wound up working as an aerial photographer.

"My main qualification is that I don't get airsick," he says. "And I seem to take pretty good pictures."

Aerial surveys have been part of the research program at Peninsula Valdes for 32 years. Because the heads of right whales bear distinguishing patches of rough skin, called callosities, a good overhead view allows scientists to recognize an individual whale, year after year. The scientists on Peninsula Valdes have compiled a database of information on over 1800 individuals. In recent years, computer mapping has allowed them to quantify this visual data, and to compare it with data gathered on right whale populations in Brazil. Initial comparisons show that a few whales have moved back and forth between the two populations. In coming years, comparisons may be extended to the catalogues compiled by scientists working in South Africa and Australia.

Kerr, Rowntree, Sironi, Atkinson. I gradually come to know this population of researchers, which returns year after year to Peninsula Valdes in an ironic mirroring of the whales. The unlikely group that's present at the research station when I visit is rounded out by Luciano Valenzuela, a soft-spoken Argentinian who is beginning a study on the factors affecting group formation of whales in the nursery ground. I also meet Roxana and Diego Taboada, the husband-wife team that has been the driving force behind the formation of the Instituto de Conservacion de Ballenas, a Buenos-Aires-based organization which promotes whale conservation in Argentina. (Over the course of the past few years, the Taboadas have weathered their country's economic collapse, raised two small children, and still managed to turn the Right Whale Program from an American-driven, top-down research effort into a vital, grassroots organization which combines local expertise with international interest, environmental goals with economic demands, and academic research with conservation and education.) The final members of this right-whale team are Sarah Haney and Alan Calderwood of the Canadian Whale Institute (CWI).

Spend a week with these people, and you begin to realize that the behaviour patterns evident in the human population of Peninsula Valdes are as complicated as those evident in the whale population. There are politics upon politics. The property on which the research station is located belongs to the Argentine navy. It is leased to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which in turn permits the Right Whale Program to do its work. The Right Whale Program is affiliated with the Whale Conservation Institute (WCI), a branch of Ocean Alliance, and also with the Taboadas' Instituto de Conservacion de Ballenas (ICB). The program is funded in large part by the CWI, and is a member of the South American Marine Mammal Working Group (SAMMWG). This stew of acronyms has been a hotbed of competing interests and conflicting approaches, all complicated by the interests and approaches of outside groups: the whale-watching industry, fishermen, the Argentine government, and other groups of scientists, studying armadillos, guanacos, gulls. But Rowntree and the Taboadas have proved masters of diplomacy; perhaps their background in animal-behaviour research stands them in good stead. When I leave the peninsula, they are preparing for a conference which will bring together right whale researchers and conservationists from Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile. Valenzuela is helping Rowntree translate her lecture from English into Spanish. Roxana Taboada is distributing educational posters to local whale-watching tourists and guides.

All week, I have been meaning to ask someone about the connection between research biology and conservation. At the end of the day, when all of the aerial surveys have been completed, the observations taken down, and the callosity patterns recorded and compared, are we really any closer to restoring this ocean? Any less likely to continue our oftentimes unwitting assault on the natural world? Are these whales better off for our efforts?

As a parting gift -- and as if in answer to my question -- Roxana Taboada gives us a copy of her poster. Printed in large script across the bottom of the poster is the motto of the ICB: Solo podemos amar lo que conocemos, conocer lo que entendemos y entender lo que hemos aprendido; We can only love that which we know, know that which we understand, and understand that which we have learned. I'm guessing that love does not get mentioned in Rowntree's research papers about the whales of Golfo San Jose, but it is implied in the quiet intensity with which she speaks about these whales, and with which she works on their behalf. There is, perhaps, an unstated prefix to the ICB motto: It is only that which we love that we desire to preserve.

* * *

Amanda Jernigan currently lives and writes in Sackville, New Brunswick. She is a contributing editor of The New Quarterly and of Canadian Notes & Queries.

John Haney's photographs have been exhibited in New Brunswick and Ontario. The images included here are part of a larger body of work examining human and animal life on Peninsula Valdes.

The Right Whale Program of Peninsula Valdes