North America

Commercial Forest Operations in NW Québec
Ecological questions and cultural concerns
Alan Penn, Cree Regional Authority and
Geoff Quaile, Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee)

1. Introduction

The following paper was drafted for the purposes of the North American Workshop on the Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Winnipeg, Manitoba (1). The focus of the paper is, however, not so much on the analysis of the direct (physical) causes of changes in forest ecology as on the exploration of the institutional context in which commercial forestry operations take place – and on how that context influences other social groups who depend upon the boreal forests for entirely different reasons.

We will explore here a number of issues which have arisen in the course of commercial forestry operations in a region within the boreal forest ecosystem of northern Canada. The region chosen for this essay is approximately 130,000 km2 in extent and is located mainly in the watersheds of the Nottaway and Broadback Rivers, two of the major drainage basins discharging to James Bay and thence into Hudson Bay in the subarctic region of northern Canada Forestry operations in this region are recent, spanning the last thirty years, and continue to increase in geographical extent.

Known as Eeyou Istchee to the Cree people who live this area, the boreal forest ecosystem supports a group of aboriginal communities whose economies and cultural traditions are still rooted in hunting, fishing and trapping. Presently there are nine Cree communities in Eeyou Istchee, five of which are located in the commercial forest zone. In a Canadian context, the area is one of the last major regions of the boreal forest to to be opened to commercial forestry. This area is now being exploited because forestry companies, motivated by shortages in areas further south in Quebec, have been moving operations northward in search of addtional wood supplies. The use of a pre-existing hydro-electric development road network has facilitated this northern expansion. If it had not been not for this prior investment in road infrastructure, this northward expansion of commercial foresry operations would probably not have been economically possible—at least at not the rapid pace we have recently witnessed. It is important to note that prior to the construction of roads for hydro-electric development, much of our case study area lay beyond the area defined as productive commercial forest, and therefore beyond the range of most of the inventories of forest resources.

We will first provide some background information on the Cree communities and their relationship to the forest environment. This is followed by a brief portrait of the boreal forest ecosystem. We will then sketch out what we believe to be the primary limitations in our understanding of this ecosystem relevant to the planning, management and evaluation of contemporary forestry operations. This is followed by an outline of the forest products industry in the region and a description of the evolution of forest tenure, with particular reference to issues of forest ecology.

A key argument in our presentation is that current management practices are not designed to provide the necessary information to move toward sustainable forest management. We will also argue that mill capacity and short-term economic viability, rather than the ecological characteristics of the boreal ecosystem drive thee allocation of timber resources. Moreover, discrepancies between current timber allocation and estimated long-term yields operate as a powerful constraint against the introduction of sustainable forest management practices. Finally, we will examine how the accelerated commercial forest harvest poses a serious problem for aboriginal communities which seek to maintain food production by hunting and fishing within a forest ecosystem.

2. Cree society, forests and subsistence food production

The aboriginal communities in this case study are members of a cultural group whose territory occupies much of the boreal forest ecosystem in Canada, extending from the Labrador coast in the East to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in the West. The communities of concern to us here carry the names Mistissini, Oujébougoumou, Waswanipi, Nemaska and Waskaganish, which together have a population of approximately 6,000. These are young communities, whose history as permanent, nucleated settlements dates back to the 1950’s – not very much older than the forest products industry discussed in this essay. Their contact with European traders, and their involvement in fur trading, extends back into the 17^th century. Until the 1950’s and 1960’s, these communities were still north of the Canadian northern development frontier based on mining, hydro-electricity and forestry. Their exposure to the industrial development indeed followed that sequence, as the first roads and railways were built to service the mining industry and then for the purposes of hydro-electric development. Forestry is in many respects a late-comer.

The preservation of the economic and cultural traditions of a hunting society are important social and political objectives for the Cree communities, who refer to their territory (which extends further north to the 56^th parallel of latitude and the outer limits of the open black spruce and Cladonia lichen forest) as ‘Eeyou Istchee’ – the people’s hunting territory. The individual Cree First Nations – as these communities are known – have experienced profound social, economic and institutional change in the last 25 years. The opening of the region to hydro-electric development led to litigation and to a complex land claim settlement, the James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement (JBNQA)(2).

With respect to forestry and the ecological issues addressed below, the JBNQA has been a source of frustration for the Cree people. There was an expectation that the provisions of the Agreement relating to access to wildlife resources and the protection of rights to harvest wildlife would help them to deal with the advancing forest products industry. This did not, in fact, happen, and the institutional mechanisms created to deal with wildlife management, land use planning and the impact assessment of individual projects have not materially influenced the sequence of events described below. It is now evident that, as a matter of practice, the senior levels of government in Canada (Federal and Provincial) did not share this vision of the objectives of the JBNQA. Within the Cree communities that now lie south of the northern limit of commercial forestry, there is a widespread belief that forestry is incompatible with the maintenance of a society which bases its food production on the harvesting of wildlife resources.

For the five Cree communities located within the study area, the terrestrial mammals, waterfowl and fish associated with this forest environment consistute the basis of their food production.. The nearly 6,000 Cree who live in these communities depend upon a combinatin of moose, black bear, beaver, lynx and other small fur bearers, in addition to waterfowl and fish. In the 1970’s, prior to the incursion of the forest products industry, the annual harvest (expressed as edible weight), of meat and fish from the study area was in the range 300 – 500 metric tonnes/year, of which amount, big game (principally moose and black bear), and small game (such as rabbit, grouse and partridge) together accounted for approximately two-thirds of the meat harvested (3).

3. The boreal forest ecosystem

In eastern Canada, the spruce-dominated forests have a latitudinal extent of roughly 1200 km, about 9o of latitude – from roughly the 47th to the 56th parallels (our study area is located between 49o and 51o N). Although there is a gradient from closed to increasingly open forest (and then tundra), local topographic and hydrological controls result in a broad range of stand density. The commercial harvest is typically in the range 70 – 90 m3/ ha (gross merchantable volume), but the lower limit of standing volume considered to be commercial is 50 m3 /ha. As well shall see later, these low values for standing volume are an important factor in the large-scale ecological impacts of forestry operations.

Our study area is typically between 200 and 400 meters above sea level and, in the east, takes the form of a heavily glaciated plateau of granite and gneiss bedrock, of which lakes occupy roughly 10-15% of the surface area and wetlands a further 5-10%. Forest soils have generally developed on a veneer of till of till of variable depth, derived mainly from the granite and gneiss basement complex. This plateau slopes gradually westwards towards a plin formed from sediments laid down in the vast proglacial lake Barlow-Ojibway. Extensive shallow lakes and muskeg characterize this region, and the poorly drained soils are an important constraint on forest operations. Logging companies thus face a wide range of soil conditions, from freely draining podzols to the wet gley soils of valleyes and depressions.

The boreal forest in much of this region is dominated by black spruce (Picea mariana) and it is this species which initially attracted the pulp and paper and later the lumber industry. The black spruce forest ranges from closed canopy with very limited ground cover, to a more open moist forest with a sphagnum moss and vaccinium dominated groundcover, to the open lichen woodlands dominated by the characteristic pale green cladonia lichen cover. The closed-canopy feature of black spruce forests is important because they strongly influence the water and thermal regimes of the underlying soils, with important consequences for nutrient mobility and the rate of accumulation of forest litter (4).

The black spruce are accompanied by considerably smaller quantities of jack pine (Pinus banksiana), larch (Larix laricina) white spruce (Picea glauca) and balsam fir (Abies balsamea) ,which are also utilised by the forest products industry. In areas not yet open to commercial forestry, hardwoods (principally trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides) and birch (Betula papyrifera) represent typically a few per cent of the standing volume. Hardwoods tend to be concentrated along the relatively enriched soils of watercourses, where willows (Salix spp.) and alders (mainly Alnus glandulosa) are also found. They are also relatively abundant on the southern slopes of the isolated hills, which rise from the Shield plateau and which provide both browse and shelter for moose, particularly in late winter. The commercial harvest of these hardwoods is limited in Eeyou Istchee.

Mature spruce stands typically have ages from 120 to 200 years. In rare cases stands in excess of 200 years have been identified. Fire is the key factor in forest ecology in this region, and accounts for the age distribution in many black spruce stands. Using the distribution of exposed bedrock outcrops, it has been determined that, on average, fire affects anywhere from 500-1000 km2 per year for every 100,000 km2. In recent years, as much as 25,000 km2 has burned in a single summer, including areas north of the current limit of commercial operations. Our case study is increasingly subject to fire surveillance, and the relative importance of fire as a source of disturbance is decining in the face of commercial forestry.

4. Some unresolved questions in boreal forest ecology

Notwithstanding the importance of forest products in the Canadian economy, and the considerable literature on boreal forest ecosystems in the circumpolar nations in general, there remain – at least at a regional level – a number of sources of appreciable uncertainty about the functioning of this forest ecosystem (5). We outline below some of the issues that we find to be particularly relevant to the assessment of commercial forestry.

Boreal Forest Soils

• Soils developed on materials derived from the granites and gneisses of the Canadian Shield are young and have limited base exchange capacity. They are vulnerable to acidification, and the role of primary nutrients and trace metals is poorly documented. The influence of atmospheric deposition sulphur and nitrogen on forest nutrition is not fully understood, nor has the role of forest disturbance (fire and commercial operations) on soil status been adequately documented.
• There is a corresponding lack of information on forest soils as they relate to growth rates of commercially targeted species, and to overall forest productivity. There are few indicators, therefore, that would allow for the application of standardized growth estimates developed for forests outside (south of) the area of our case study;

Biological Diversity

• It is difficult to incorporate concerns over biological diversity into commercial forest management due to the lack of appropriate indices of biodiversity. In NW Quebec, there appear to be few if any inventories (whether for terrestrial or aquatic systems, plants, invertebrates, mammals or avifauna) which might inform a discussion about the operational definition of biological diversity and its use in landscape management;

Role of Old Growth

• Although black spruce-dominated forests are assumed to reflect the role of fire, the precise nature of that role is not understood, particularly in relation to the dynamics of the major insect infestations and cryptogamic diseases and to the importance of habitat created during the ageing and opening of stands which escape the effects of fire. The application, therefore, of the concept of ‘old growth’ and the conservation of ‘old growth’ has consequently so far escaped attention in the practice of forest management in this region;

Regeneration and Forest Composition

• Forest management practices in northern Québec assume that the mixed softwood populations, dominated by black spruce, are in some form of equilibrium with the contemporary climate and soil conditions. In other words, it is assumed that the composition of the forest that will return after commercial harvesting will closely resemble the contemporary harvest. This is inevitably a hypothesis which does not lend itself to direct verification because of the time scales involved, but the widespread presence and even dominance of deciduous species in stands which have emerged following commercial harvesting at least suggests the possibility that deciduous (i.e. hardwood) species will form a progressively larger component of the future forest for at least one generation. The relation between fire as a factor in regeneration (in itself a diverse entity) and other forms of disturbance – including commercial operations – is similarly not well understood;

The Influence of Forests and Drainage

• The influence of the undisturbed forest canopy on precipitation-run-off relations and on surface water quality is similarly unknown (ref). Removal of the canopy increases the intensity of storm run-off events (including spring run-off), but how does it affect run-off on longer time scales? This question, the subject of intense investigation in a number of countries with significant forest products industries in areas which are also important for water supplies, appears to have escaped attention in the management of forests in north-western Québec.

Wildlife Habitat and Forest Productivity

• The boreal forest provided the basis for the subsistence food economy of many aboriginal communities in Canada. The wildlife resources that support subsistence food production also support a considerable sports hunt. What is the relationship between forest composition and the production of the species referred to above? There is little field data, especially on mammal populations, to inform such an analysis. The relationship between forest habitat conservation and sustaining the productivity of vertebrate populations remains a significant source of uncertainty in evaluating forest management strategies. The problem is compounded by the considerable temporal instability of the populations of most of the key species (the case of the lynx and rabbit cycles is well known, but the problem also applies to moose).

The practice of commercial forest harvesting involves a number of assumptions about the functioning of the forest ecosystem. Companies and the agencies which regulate them have a predictable tendency to claim that the ecological basis for commercial forest harvesting is sufficiently understood. In north-western Québec ideas about what constitutes sustainable forest management tend to be imported from other biophysical regions where there is a longer cultural history of commercial forestry—mainly in areas south of Eeyou Istchee. The availability of ecological knowledge specific to the boreal forests near or at the limit of commercial viability and relevant to defining sustainable forest management policies is often not discussed. The list of unanswered questions about boreal forest ecology provided here is far from complete and represent many of the risky assumptions that have been incorporated into the management of commercial operations in Eeyou Istchee.

In the following section we will attempt to explain how and why the forest industry in Quebec began to move northwards with a steadily expanding definition of what consistitutes commercially viable forestry and how Québec’s forest tenure has evolved to facilitate this northward expansion.

5. Commercial Forestry and the Framework for Forest Management

Establishing an Industry in Northern Quebec

Commercial forest harvesting in north-western Québec, or Eeyou Istchee, is a recent phenomenon. Harvesting began in the region with the construction of three pulp mills south of the region. This was soon followed by the establishment of approximately 15 sawmills, a number of which are outside or on the periphery of the Cree hunting territories.

Most of the investment in infrastructure for the processing of forest products took place in the decade from from 1968-1978. It must be emphasized that much of this forestry infrastructure was in place before the acquisition of forest cover data which might have informed the debate about the economic and ecological sustainability of forestry operations in this region. The northward advance of the forest products industry took place mainly during the following twenty years, and has been driven by forecasted supply problems in areas close to the mills themselves. Given the supply problems occurring at the time and forecasted shortages in the future, it is not surprising that the government authorized investments in road infrastructure, primarily for the hydro-electric development but also for the forest products industry. The displacement northwards of forestry operations is the product of a number of economic considerations. An important consideration has been the stabilisation (on a time scale of the order of 30 years) of the costs of haulage to the mills. For the last twenty years, companies have been provided with several incentives (access to supply and support for road construction) to obtain their supplies from from both nearby and distant stands. In this process, the investment in roads for hydro-electric development has considerably facilitated the implementation of this policy.

The area of productive commercial forest in Northern Québec (7) is assessed at around 130,000 km2, of which 82,000 km2 (63%) is currently considered accessible and available to the forest products industry. The annual harvest from this region of more than 4 million cubic meters of softwood lumber involves clear cutting a total area of approximately 550 km2. This volume accounts for 20% of Québec’s softwood harvest but the relatively low per kilometre yield (76 in relation to the provincial average of 92 m3 /ha) means that the total area of clear cutting is closer to 25% of the provincial total. The recent history of commercial harvesting has involved clear cutting from a cumulative area of approximately 12,000 km2 (1973-1998).The concentration of harvesting in areas currently accessible by road has resulted in extensive transformation of the landscape and considerable alarm on the part of the Cree communities whose hunting territories overlap with these clear cut areas.

Conifers account for nearly 90% of the forest cover, and black spruce represents more than two thirds of the total harvest, which is split more-or-less equally between the lumber and pulp and paper sectors of the forest products industry.

Establishing a Management Framework

Forestry operations in the region began under a system of forest concessions that provided exclusive harvesting rights within defined areas. When the concessions were established, forest inventories were limited or non-existent, and the concession holders had limited reporting responsibilities. The Québec Government moved in the early 1970’s to revoke the concessions and replace them by annual grants of cutting rights. A significant increase in total licensed mill capacity took place at that time and set in motion allocation practices which tended to reflect licensed mill capacity rather than the yield of the forests being harvested.

As a result, it became the responsibility of the provincial department of Lands and Forests to provide the companies with a guaranteed volume of accessible timber each year. The guarantee was incorporated into the authorization of mill construction. The same department also acquired responsibility for forest inventories and for the setting of annual harvest rates or annual allowable cuts (AAC). The provincial government also assumed responsibility for ensuring that regeneration took place following logging (through scarification, seeding and planting programmes).

The Québec government retained its role in the annual allocation of harvesting rights and the management of rather limited silviculture activities for approximately 15 years (i.e. 1974 to 1989). In the last five years of this period, a series of policy papers appeared which made it clear that the Québec government had every intention of relieving itself of the politically sensitive and increasingly controversial responsibility for the management of forest harvesting activities, and of the administrative and direct costs involved in these activities.

In 1987, accordingly, the government passed the Forest Act (8), which provided for the overhaul of the forest tenure system in Quebec. Under the new system, all previous tenure arrangements were cancelled and replaced by timber supply and forest management contracts (known as CAAF’s - the acronym for ‘contrats d’approvisionnement et d’aménagement forestier’). Eligibility was limited to those companies which owned timber processing facilities.

CAAF’s allocated timber for a 25 year span within a defined area. The agreements are extended by five-year increments on satisfactory completion of silviculture targets, and more than one company may operate (for different species) within the same area. The licence holders prepare general 25 year and five year management plans for their CAAF’s, as well as annual cutting programmes; all three are subject to government authorization. The key element of these new tenure arrangements was that management responsibility was transferred from the government to the private sector. The government determined the initial allowable harvest from the available inventory data, and the companies were entitled to increase the level of harvest on the basis of specific rules equating silvicultural investment to presumed increases in forest productivity.

Under the previous system of annual harvesting rights, the government would collect the necessary data on forest inventory and physical constraints on harvesting, determine harvesting rates for the companies and prescribe silviculture treatments. With the CAAFs, companies are now required to collected inventory data needed to calculated the authorized harvest from their supply area and define silviculture objectives to match the authorized harvest. All these activities form the basis of the annual, 5 year and 25 year management plans that are submitted to government for approval. Although the companies are required to collect data on forest composition and restocking for the planning of their own operations, the government retains some involvement in forest inventories. The last such survey was carried out between 1991 and 1993, but the legislative intent is to transfer this responsibility to the industry. This policy has raised concerns about the effective ability of the government to monitor the implementation of its own legislation – a problem which is compounded by the tendency to treat forest inventory data as priviledged commercial information.

It is an important feature of this tenure system that, while appearing to delegate management responsibility, the government in practice has established a tight system of controls over the exercise of that responsibility. The companies enjoy very little discretion in their own management strategies, and are under some pressure to main output as close as possible to the allowable cut assigned to them.

Issues in the determination of the Annual Allowable Cut (AAC)

The allowable cut – referred to in French as ‘la possibilité’ – is calculated in a manner which takes into account the silvicultural investments by the licence holders. (i.e. beyond a certain mimimum approved requirement, the allowable cut is proprtional to the incremental investment in silviculture). These investments are applied to the duties payable on the harvested wood (on the basis of area). In other words, the model is based on standard, uniform assumptions about the effect of different silvicultural practices on stocking and subsequent growth. The criteria for satisfactory stocking apply to the first 8 years after clear-cutting. In practice, the silvicultural treatment of choice is known as ‘cutting with protection of advanced growth’ – in recognition that young trees established by layering can be included in the calculation. This practice followed a debate about the use of strip cutting to favour regeneration from seedlings and the realisation that in such practices, much of the successful growth originated with layering rather than from seedlings (9).

Since the forest in northern Québec is being exposed for the first time to commercial logging, a considerable portion (typically 20-30%, but the amount depends on the geographical sector involved) of the cover consists of forests classified as ‘over-mature’ – which means that the gross merchantable volume is assumed to be declining rather than growing over time as a result of wind throw and tree mortality. Probably these areas represent pockets of greatest biological diversity, but because of the declining standing crop, the forest growth model used by the industry, provides for the removal of these stands as a priority.

The introduction of the CAAF’s was accompanied by a transformation of the regulatory framework for forestry operations, particularly with respect to environmental protection. Previously, commercial harvested had been subject to directives administered, with varying vigour, by the regional offices of the Ministry of Lands and Forests. This system, and the discretion which accompanied it, have since been replaced by prescriptive regulations (10). These regulations define in considerable detail the requirements for the protection of different categories of habitat. The remaining discretion, in effect, lies in the determination that there is indeed a stream, lake or wetland which justifies a measure of protection. The overall effect of the regulation is to lower the effective area of productive, accessible forest land by approximately 7%.

Thus, although in a technical sense the companies found themselves responsible for forest management, they also found themselves constrained by a regulatory environment far tighter than anything they had previously experienced. The regulations, though, were designed in order to maintain the output of the forest products industry, not to reduce it. Rules which operated to ensure a minimum degree of protection (e.g. set-backs along streams) also served to define the maximum area that could be so protected. The same principle operated for other aspects of habitat protection. In such a system, there is little if any latitude for discretion on the part of the companies. There are thus two sides to the process of delegation to the industry of responsibility for forest management.

A key issue here, evidently, is how lands receive their commercial designation in the first place. This is the prerogative of the government (more specifically Québec’s Ministry of Natural Resources). The designation is largely based on the status quo, that is to say, previous assumptions by the government department originally responsible for commercial forest operations about what lands would be used to supply a given mill. In a context of severe competition for access to timber, any withdrawals of land previously regarded as reserved for commercial operations carries a significant economic penalty – for the company involved and by implication for the government department. Thus there is a strong impetus to maximise the designation of lands for commercial forestry, and to expand that designation northwards where it is biologically and economically feasible to maintain commercial operations.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Northern Québec (region 10), contains no parks, ecological reserves or other land use designations which would have the effect of limiting commercial logging operations. The licence-holders were advised during the negotiation of the CAAF’s that their share of the resource would be based on their own output during the five-year period preceding the implementation of the new legislative framework. They had time to respond, in other words. Even so, the evolving forest inventory (notably the poor initial stocking and the amount of land where regeneration in commercial species was found not to be taking place) posed a problem. The companies were advised that reductions in overall output – in the five to fifteen percent range – would be necessary despite the silvicultural investment (11).

6. Ecological issues in commercial forestry operations

We turn now to a brief examination of some of the ecological issues which have arisen during the emergence of the forest products industry sketched above.

a). Biomass removal and geochemical considerations

The first general point we wish to make is that what is referred to as the gross merchantable volume of soft wood lumber (of the order of 70- 75 t/ha; 35 – 45 t carbon/ha) represents a modest fraction of the total phytomass and of the total pool of organic carbon. On well-drained podzolic soils, we should be dealing with approximate quantities of 100, 120 and 200 t/ha of organic matter associated with mineral soil, litter and above-ground biomass. In poorly drained gleysols, the values for organic matter associated with soil and litter increase to values several times those cited above. Commercial forestry operations remove much of the above-ground phytomass, and the increasing tendency to delimb and debark beside haul roads adds to the export of organic carbon and associated nutrients. The removal of the forest cover changes the water balance of forest soils, and the nature of the redox environment. Mineralization of organic matter takes place, and an overall decrease in soil organic carbon and associated phytomass results. What is the significance of this modification of soils for future forest productivity? How does the oxidation of organic carbon affect the availability of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium for plant nutrition and their export with run-off from harvested sites? To what extent does commercial logging mimic the effects of fire?

The companies are not required to monitor the evolution of forest soils in the course of commercial forest operations, and the biogeochemistry of forest soils does not feature in the state’s own supervision of forestry operations. In a general sense, the overall trends can be derived from the relevant research literature. To what extent, and at what rate, soil degradation and overall nutrient loss is actually taking place remains essentially unknown in the absence of monitoring specifically designed to answer such questions. The approach in Northern Québec to the delegation of forest management responsibilities to individual logging companies (in which much of the logging is done by independent owners of forest harvesting machinery) does not facilitate, and may hinder, the acquisition of data in this area. We conclude that there is little in the nature of current forest management to inform this larger question about the evolution of the nutrient status of forest soils as this relates to future productivity.

b)-Forest hydrology, hydraulics and water quality

The protection of water quality and the avoidance of unwanted problems in water quantity have long been issues in forest management practice, and northern Québec is no exception. The current practice, enshrined in regulations, is to provide for set-backs of 20 m along permanent water courses, lakes and wetlands. Logging companies, however, are authorized to remove trees of commercial diameter without deploying their machinery within this zone. The limited set back is often criticized, on all sides, because of the resulting loss of trees from windthrow. The recovery of commercial timber is tedious and difficult to accomplish without damaging soils, and the entire policy requires considerable judgement on the part of the operator who must determine where these set back zones begin and end, and what constitutes a permanent water course or water body requiring protection.

There is a strong aesthetic component to this issue, and critics argue that the 20 m set back does little to conserve the integrity of the river or lake shore environment – a view shared by the companies for which the entire practice of set backs represents a loss of revenue.

The issue of protecting water quality and quantity is another matter. At issue here is whether there is indeed any field evidence, relevant to the terrain in our case study region, which would support the current set back policy. Again, neither stream and river basin hydrology nor water chemistry feature in the companies’ monitoring obligations. The government also not does monitor either surface water quality nor water quantity at a level of detail which might inform this debate. Thus it can be argued that there is no basis for determining the relevance of these set backs for their stated purpose. The major changes in water balance and water chemistry also are presumably taking place within the areas which have been logged, and it appears unlikely that the residual set-backs would be very effective in restricting transfers of water, nutrients and dissolved organic carbon. Significant degradation of forest soils and transformations of soil hydrology could be taking place notwithstanding the presence of these buffers.

A preoccupation which should be noted here is the elevated levels of mercury in fish within this region. Methyl mercury concentrations were high enough to result in levels of exposure in the Cree population which led to unprecedented attention to their neurological status in the 1970’s. The toxicological issues remain largely unresolved, but the Cree have been actively discouraged from eating fish (especially piscivores) during most of the recent history of commercial forestry operation. There is an underlying concern here that one of the geochemical consequences of forestry is the enhanced mobilisation of mercury, probably in association with dissolved and particulate organic matter.

Reference should also be made to the problem of navigation and the installation of culverts. One of the charges laid before the forestry industry is that the construction of forestry roads leads to an overall restriction in the navigability of streams. Although culvert designs are intended in principle to take into account navigation by canoes, it appears that in practice roads do indeed affect navigability. Windthrows are also cited as a constraint on navigation.

In the absence of monitoring specifically designed to address these questions, there will be no answers; and in the delegation of responsibility for forest management there is little scope for investigating such issues.

c)- Habitat fragmentation, terrestrial mammals and avifauna

Clear cutting is the harvesting practice of choice in northern Québec and it accounts for nearly the totality of current operations. The size of individual clear cuts has, however, long been an issue and the current regulations on this subject reflect this debate. Companies are now required to vary the size of individual clear-cuts and to provide for corridors between adjacent blocks. The maximum size limit is now 150 ha, with provision for a proportion of the cuts less than 50 and less than 100 ha. The intervening corridors vary with the size of the clear cut and the amont of logging permitted within them to between 60 and 125 meters. There are requirements, also, that a mimum of cover be established before the logging of adjacent clear cuts takes place and before the intervening strips can be removed. This is an important evolution and it is intended to provide a degree of continuity of forest cover in response to the often-laid charges that extensive clear cuts – frequently several square kilometers in extent – restrict the movement of large mammals such as moose.

Moose, indeed, have been the subject of a good deal of controversy. They seek shelter in hardwoods (for browse) and adjacent soft woods at the end of winter when the snow is deep (sometimes with an ice crust), and the mobility of the animal is greatly reduced. Moose are vulnerable at this time. Cree hunters have long emphasised the protection of these ‘yards’ as they are known, and there has been a prolonged and unresolved debate about the definition of ‘yards’ and what is required for their protection. The debate, predictably, revolves around the quantity and distribution of softwood species which should be left intact. In effect, the current regulations reflect an attempt to set aside this debate in favour of a mosaic-based approach in which there is sufficient continuous cover (in the form of strips) to provide the necessary shelter.

Much of the pressure on moose derives from the extensive network of roads and trails required for forestry operations (the rule of thumb of one kilometer for every square kilometer of commercial harvest translates to over 10,000 linear kilometers of road built in the last quarter century). Forestry operations open up the country for the Cree hunters, but also to a considerably larger number of sports hunters and fishermen. Since roads mean that the ‘yards’ are also accessible, they also increase the vulnerability of the species to uncontrolled harvests in late winter.

Moose are perhaps the most visible example of a number of species which may be adversely affected by the combination of greater accessibility and the fragmentation of habitat. Nesting waterfowl, certain fur bearing animals (such as marten), woodland caribou, black bear and possibly beaver all fit into this general category.

d)-Regeneration, forest composition and biological diversity

What happens to the boreal forest ecosystem in northern Québec after commercial logging? The models conventionally used to describe the growth of the major commercial species imply that the establishment of a commercially harvestable stand may require roughly a hundred years after initial logging, although much of the current harvest is taking place in stands with ages of 100 – 150 years. The time scales are uncertain to the extent that both the rates of initial stocking of commercial species and their growth, on previously logged terrain, are uncertain.

The problem of time scales is fundamental here because of its impact on what we think we can know about the consequences of current forest management policies. These policies are based on claims of certainty, but those claims tend to stand because they cannot be disproven. They cannot be disproven because of the time scales involved, however plausible the arguments may be. The problem here is similar (and related to) the problem of biogeochemistry of forest soils following commercial logging. In the absence of data, the policy cannot be evaluated. But we need to keep in mind that the absence of evidence should never be confused with evidence of absence.

In the case we are dealing with here, the forestry industry collects and reports information on forest management practice which is prescribed by regulation or by government directive. There is no incentive to do otherwise. The regulatory framework is designed to sustain the forest products industry, to maintain output. It simply does not contain the feedback mechanisms which would provide knowledge and understanding that could be applied on the longer time scale.

Companies may contest the model assumptions about allowable cut if they consider, on the basis of their own field experience, that the resulting levels of harvest are unrealistically low and they apparently do so. But in the reverse case, where the model leads to an overestimate of the allowable cut, is there any incentive to challenge the model assumptions and to lower the level of output? The answer is most probably no, and indeed the companies face penalties if they harvest at levels below the allowable cut without prior approval. As a result, there appears to be a fundamental asymmetry in management practices which place the onus of responsibility for implementation with the logging companies. Many years will pass, under the present regime, before an imbalance between commercial harvest and growth will begin to hurt the companies directly. If that time horizon is 50, 75 or 100 years away, is it rational, in an economic sense, for the company to restrict output in the short term? It is not at all clear.

The time scales we are discussing here are significant in terms of global climatic change and regional shifts in biogeochemical cycles. We do not know how the composition of the forest is evolving on such a scale, partly because we are not able to predict with confidence the evolution of thermal and precipitation regimes (we have difficulty relating existing climate to forest composition). However, there are a number of indications that the boreal forest composition in northern Québec – in the absence of commercial harvesting – may be shifting in the direction of an increasingly mixed and probably more diverse forest cover. Commercial logging may have the effect of accelerating the rate of change, and perhaps of the biological diversity of the forest environment itself. These changes may result in higher overall productivity (in terms of woody tissue), or they may not. Depending on the evolving technology of forest product transformation, these developments may or may not be seen as positive for the industry.

7. Conclusions

The evolution of the forest industry and its corresponding administrative regime in northern Québec illustrates a number of problems associated with operating at the northerly limit of commercially valuable timber. The spatial distribution of the operations, which may be up to 200 kilometres from the transformation centre, combined with low harvestable volumes per hectare, places considerable pressure on the logging companies to harvest as efficiently as possible. In order to be efficient, these operations must be large enough to justify the high costs of transportation and generate sufficient product to offset the added costs of operating in an environment where the volume per hectare is significantly lower than more southerly regions. Simply put, economies of scale dictate that these operations must attempt to maximize output. Given the lower volumes per hectare, these operations inevitably clear cut large areas of forested land.

For this reason calculations related to harvesting rates tend to maximize output, even in the face of doubts about the nature and effectiveness of regeneration. From the industry’s perspective, recognizing that the majority of these stands range from being mature to over-mature and being conscious of the poor rates of regeneration of the black spruce forest, it makes economic sense to treat these forests as standing stock rather than a renewable resource, especially if existing silviculture measures eventually prove ineffective in accelerating growth. Faced with the uncertainties outlined in this essay, the companies may feel that it is in their best interests to treat the northern forest as a stock rather than a renewable resource.

The Forest Act, which we have discussed in this paper, is built around the concept of sustainable yield, but we would argue that in this context this is an economic rather than ecological argument. The objective is to ensure a stable supply of the resource, but most probably on a time scale which is short in relation to the cycle of growth and mortality in these black spruce-dominated forests. If sustainability means stabilising output on a time-scale of maybe 20 – 50 years, then the present regime may indeed be sustainable. What happens in the longer term to the forests themselves, or to the industry, is another matter. But should we be concerned about stability or sustainability on the longer time scale, when there is so much that it not understood about the implications of current operations?

The Crees stand as outsiders in this analysis. They are largely excluded from the contemporary forest products industry, so their own direct interest in the issue of sustainability as it affects that industry is quite limited. The forest, which returns after logging, may or may not be more productive (in terms of wildlife resources) than the forests originally harvested commercially. The future forest cover, for several reasons not necessarily linked directly to the forestry operations, may well exhibit greater patchiness and biological diversity, and contain stronger representative of a variety of hard wood species. Ironically perhaps, the more successful the silviculture management techniques (at maintaining the cover sought by the contemporary forest products industry), the poorer the forest environment may be from the perspective of both net primary production and species diversity, and of wildlife productivity. Cree society may derive little benefit from these considerations, however. They are faced with securing a livelihood from a territory over which they are losing control. Disturbance from machinery, absence of shelter, and the constant expansion of roads into territories previously accessible only by water, mean that the ecological considerations sketched may well not be the primary factors determining the viability of the subsistence food production system.

There is in this case, and we presume that the problem can be generalised to other areas in the Canadian North, a problem with the operational definition of sustainability in the notion of ‘sustainable development’. What precisely is meant by ‘sustainability’ and for whom? There are problems of equity that need to be examined here. Sustainability may be the stated objective of the Forest Act, but who benefits and why? We would argue that in the present scheme of things, the Cree communities and individual hunters could hardly be considered beneficiaries. They are collectively faced with a very serious problem of defining ‘sustainability’ for their own communities – communities which face an uncertain future from both a socio-cultural and economic perspective.

We conclude our presentation with a pitch for adaptive management. We have tried to show that learning about ecosystem responses to human intervention depends very much on the quality and relevance of the information that is collected about those interventions and its consequences. We have concerns that commercial forestry is being carried out on the basis of incomplete and partial forestry inventory data (increasingly regarded as privileged company information rather than a matter of public interest). We believe that delegating management responsibilities to the logging industry carries with it serious risks and uncertainties, and that those risks are in the long run borne by communities and societies which may have interests in the forest environment entirely different from the forest companies. The absence of consideration of forest hydrology, of changing soil characteristics, of the influence of forestry on the cycling of nutrients – these are themes which are not reflected in company responsibilities. But the government agencies which promote delegation are not themselves prepared to take on the research and data collection activities which they know the companies are not required to gather – which, perhaps, it is not in their interests to gather. We like to believe that forest management practices have secure foundations, and we are disturbed when we reflect upon the fragility of those foundations.

=================

Endnotes

1. Joint NGO-Government Initiative to Address the Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest Degradation. Workshop organized by the Biodiversity Action Network. Winnipeg (Manitoba), Canada, October 1-2, 1998.

2. The James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement and Complementary Agreements, 1991 edition, Les Publications du Québec, 1991.

3. The Wealth of the Land, Wildlife Harvests by the James Bay Cree, 1972-3 to 1978-79. This is the final report of a seven-year study aimed at establishing in quantitative terms the contemporary harvests of the Cree communities as part of a wildlife management strategy originally conceived to protect the subsistence resource base of the Cree population.

4. The boreal forest ecosystem in Canada is the subject of a number of comprehensive reviews. We found the following references particularly relevant to the workshop: ‘The Boreal Ecosystem’ by J. A. Larsen (Academic, 1980); ‘A Systems Analysis of the Global Boreal Forest’, ed. H.H. Shugart, R. Leemans and G.B. Bonan (Cambridge, 1992), ‘Canada’s Vegetation – A World Perspective’ by G.A.J. Scott (McGill-Queen’s Press, 1995). An important source on mineral nutrition and carbon cycling in the boreal forest is ‘Dynamic properties of forest ecosystems’ ed. D. E. Reichle (Cambridge, 1982).

5. See in particular the chapter by D. Elliott-Fisk in ‘North American Terrestrial Vegetation’ ed. M.G. Barbour and W. D. Billings (Cambridge, 1988).

6. Our primary source is an upublished report by Québec’s Department of Lands and Forests, March 1979 (‘Proposition de stratégie régionale en regard des engagements que le ministère des Terres et Forêts a envers les industriels du Nord-ouest’).

7. The statistical data used in this paper are drawn from annual ‘Portraits statistiques de l’Industrie forestière’ and a State of the Forests report for the period 199-1994. The Québec government has recently created a ‘Northern Québec’ administrative district, which approximately coincides with the Cree territory. For simplicity, we have used data for Northern Québec (i.e. Region

8. La Loi sur les Forêts (L.R.Q. c. F-4.1). Originally adopted in 1987, it came into force progressively over a three year period, and has also undergone a number of amendments dealing primarily with the re-organization of the CAAF’s referred to here.

9. See, for example, ‘The effect of advance regeneration height on future yield of black spruce stands’. D. Pothier, R. Doucet and J. Boily. Can. J. For. Res. Vol. 25, pp. 536-544, 1995.

10. Règlement sur les normes d’intervention dans les forêts du domaine public (standards for forest management in public lands). D.498-96 (L.R.Q. c. F-4.1. a 171) (1996).

11. These observations are based on briefings given by officials of the Department of Natural Resources to the James Bay Advisory Committee on the Environment in the period from 1986 to 1988 (the negotiation and implementation of the Forest Act.

back to UC Process