I welcome the opportunity to…

I welcome the opportunity to comment on the draft Forest Sector Strategy. ERO# 019-0880, and I would also welcome your complete attention and co-operation on this matter.

While the government states that it is “committed to consulting on the draft strategy”, it is even more important to listen and act accordingly. Stakeholders should not be limited to industry primarily, but MUST include ALL THOSE SPECIES who depend upon forests for their own ‘livelihoods’.

Your draft Forest Sector Strategy benefits only one species -- ours -- at the expense of countless other species. If you want to earn Ontario the reputation of responsible forest managers, you require policies and best practices to end logging in old-growth forests that support biodiversity, while upholding protections for species at risk -- there would be no species at risk if forests had ever been properly 'managed' in the first place. It is crucial to note that existing forestry practices are already negatively impacting fragile ecosystems and wildlife, making it irresponsible to suggest that doubling the annual wood cut is good for Ontario.

I urge you to support Canada’s commitment to sustainable forest management which is defined as “management that maintains and enhances the long-term health of forest ecosystems for the benefit of all living things” according to 2020 Biodiversity Goals and Targets for Canada. This draft Strategy fails our commitment in numerous significant ways:

- by implying that logging can double in output without negative
impacts
- no overall benefits will be granted to species at risk
- forest access roads will increase in number and permanence, which
will directly increase road mortality and hunting/trapping pressure on
wildlife already impacted by habitat fragmentation
- by promoting our forests as reservoirs of material that should be cut
down to replace plastics as single use products

I note the mention of “a 2018 study commissioned for the United Nations indicates that the global demand for forest products is expected to increase by more than 30% by 2030.” This government believes Ontario can meet these demands through “advanced manufacturing as espoused in its “Four Pillars of Action”.

These four pillars include:

Remove barriers to wood access by encouraging “critical infrastructure”, which must mean roads.

Only the fourth and final pillar mentions stewardship, environmental sustainability, science, best research, climate change and respect for indigenous rights. How about CONCENTRATING on the fourth pillar before announcing Ontario will somehow … magically? … meet the needs of the burgeoning human population. Forests occupy dwindling areas on this planet as governments around the world make plans to ‘harvest’ them, or clear them for growing human setlements and industrial activities. The human population urgently needs to align itself with ecological limits.

Then, there are references to “Maintain and attract new investment” and “encourage use of under-utilized species and log qualities”. With respect to this statement, I would have to add “BEFORE undertaking either strategy”, it is CRITICAL to undertake careful and complete SPECIES’ SURVEYS of the natural ecosystems being targeted for increased harvesting in order to gain a clear understanding of those ecosystems and their natural functions."

As for ‘under-utilized species’, that is a pure human judgment, and there is at least one glaring example of how human judgment almost wiped out a species critical to MEDICAL use, without ever considering its intrinsic ecological value to other species and our own. The Pacific Yew tree of the west coast was once considered a ‘weed tree’ of no ‘commercial value’. No forester studied its ecosystem value because it had no immediate commercial value.

So, all these yew trees were felled and never replaced as forest companies replanted with ‘timber species’. Some Pacific Yews remained in national parks in B.C. and northern west coast U.S. states. By the early 1980s, medical research had discovered the value of the bark of the Pacific Yew as the key ingredient in taxol, a medicine used to treat certain cancers.

In a 1991 article published in the New York Times, the stark reality of the tremendous loss of Pacific Yews as 'weed trees', weeded out by forestry operations, explained how important this loss was to medical science: "It takes six 100-year-old Pacific yews to treat one patient, and the trees are scattered in the underbrush of ancient forests in the Pacific Northwest", but "The tree was considered so uninteresting and commercially unimportant that no one bothered to do inventories of it, said Charles Bolsinger, a Forest Service researcher in Portland, Oregon." See this entire account at https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/13/us/tree-yields-a-cancer-treatment-bu… It is a testament to the egregious limits of self-absorbed money-oriented human thinking.

The search was on for MORE sources of Yew trees, but they had been decimated by forestry activities that assigned zero value to these trees. Now identified for their medical value, poaching of Pacific Yew trees in national parks followed. These Yews are now planted and permitted to survive, but they take several decades to grow to the right height. Have we learned anything here? There is MORE to the ecological value of trees than human foresters can assess from their ‘commercial perches’.

ALL trees have value, and they are essential parts of their inter-related communities. Humans are inter-dependent upon one another for a social network, including products and services, but ALL most of THOSE life-sustaining products and services come from nature and agriculture. Humans are incapable of processing their necessities of life directly from the sun and atmosphere, as the majority of plant life does. Have more RESPECT for nature and its associated LIMITS. Remember that trees are best served by natural soils, and any compaction of the earth (associated with road-building and heavy equipment) has a negative impact on the soil.

Look at the research of UBC professor, Suzanne Simard, who has demonstrated that trees in a forest share their carbon and other nutrients via their inter-connected route systems that work like an underground ‘internet’, or ‘neural network’, which Dr. Simard has described as the Wood Wide Web. https://www.biohabitats.com/newsletter/fungi/expert-qa-suzanne-simard/

The boreal forest has also been studied extensively, and a sample of those findings can be reviewed at www.nrcresearchpress.com
See the research paper, Anticipating the consequences of climate change for Canada’s boreal forest ecosystems, by David T. Price, R.I. Alfaro, K.J. Brown, M.D. Flannigan, R.A. Fleming, E.H. Hogg, M.P. Girardin, T. Lakusta, M. Johnston, D.W. McKenney, J.H. Pedlar, T. Stratton, R.N. Sturrock, I.D. Thompson, J.A. Trofymow, and L.A. Venier, published in Environ. Rev. 21: 322–365 (2013) dx.doi.org/10.1139/er-2013-0042, plus other research papers about The Boreal 2050 Project: a road map towards sustainability of the Boreal, listed and available at https://www.nrcresearchpress.com/toc/er-bor/01/01

Registration may be needed to view the full articles, but you can gain some understanding of the value of the entire boreal ecosystem by reading the associated summaries or abstracts.

Once the government of Ontario gains an appropriate perspective on the TRUE VALUE OF FOREST ECOSYSTEMS, then it can collaborate with industry and forest biologists to figure out how to remove some trees carefully and sustainably.

It is more crucial than ever to create a Forest Sector Strategy that will result in forest ecosystem resilience, which will ultimately make our economy stronger and help us tackle climate change.