FORMER Greenpeace chief Patrick Moore’s

attack on the

World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) report, Forests in Trouble,
comes at a critical juncture in the battle over protection of
biodiversity and old-growth rainforests in B.C.

The main battlefield has shifted

from focal hot spots like the
Carmanah Valley and Meares

Island to Brussels, Belgium, where

the European Economic Com-
munity makes its sweeping deci-
sions, and its policy-makers can
be lobbied.

Fearful of a repetition of the
events that led to the banning of
seal pup pelts, and thus the col-
lapse of the Canadian sealing in-
dustry, the forest industry and
government leaders alike have
been frantically trying to stomp
out efforts by some conserva-
tionists to instigate a European
boycott of Canadian forest pro-
ducts as part of a pressure cam-
paign to force reforms.

All of this is well cnough
known. What is perhaps less well
understood is that in this high-
stakes game of academic chicken,
contending private consultants’
reports are the shells that en-
vironmentalists and industry lob
back and forth at each other.

The WWF's report was written
by Nigel Dudley, of Earth
Resources Research, based in
London, England, whose claims
to accuracy are no more
automaiically divinely ordained
that anybody else’s, including Pat
Moore’s.

In the war of statistics and
words, WWF president Monte
Hummel felt compelled to fire off
a 16-page letter to Jack Munro,
chairman of the Forest-Aliance of
B.C., in reply to the alliance’s at-
tack on the WWF's contention
that ‘‘on the west coast of
Canada, the rate of clearcutting
has increased enormously over the
past 20 years and native forests
are rapidly disappearing."

According to Moore and
Munro, statements about an
enormous increase in cut on the
West Coast are misleading, and,
in fact, the most part of any in-
crease is attributable to opening
additional areas in the Interior to
development.

Hummel insists that ‘‘of course,
the resource base has not increas-
ed, but rather the area being ex-
ploited has expanded (which)
means that a larger proportion of

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the province is being affected by
forestry operations than previous-
ly.

“The area of forest felled every
year has increased very substan-
tially over the last few decades,
and only began to decline in the
last year or so."’

He allows that the WWF
“could have been more up to
date”’ in its criticism if it had ac-
knowledged that for the period
1990-91, the area of forest felled
declined from an average of
260,000 hectares ‘‘over the last
many years’’ to 180,000 hectares.

This, in Moore’s view, makes
hash of the WWF's allegation that
“the rate (of forest felled) con-
tinues to inerease.’*

Huinmel had to admit the fig-
ures say otherwise, but in view of
the lack of protection for as-yet
unexploited areas, ‘pressure to
cut more hectares per year may
well increase.”*

He adds: ‘‘WWF takes little
comfort from Moore’s statement
that there are ‘vaster’ areas which
the Forest Alliance calls ‘de facto
wilderness’ where ‘little develop-
ment is contemplaied.’ That does
not constitute legal protection,
which is what wilderness badly
needs in B.C. today.””

The WWF report stated that
“‘only six of the 89 largest water-
sheds remain unlogged.”

Moore called this statement

misleading, too, on the grounds
that it does not define the extent
of logging and because few other
countries can claim to have entire
watersheds unlogged.

Hummel counters that it is
precisely because B.C. has more
remaining natural temperate Forest
than most other places on Earth
that “there is such concern about
current logging rates and prac-

Moore calls the WWF's use of
the term ‘‘crisis proportions”’ to
describe the loss of old-growth
forests in B.C. ‘‘a bit dramatic.”

On the vital question of how
long mainland coastal ancient
forest. can survive, Moore predicts
that 50 years of cutting ‘remain
in presently available commercial
old-growth forest.’

The WWF had argued that ‘‘at
current rates of felling, litte
(such) forest will remain in 15
years.”*

Hummel replies by quoting the
B.C. Ministry of Forests as stating
‘Gc is true that within 15 years, all
important unprotected valleys will
be roaded and harvesting will
probably have commenced."’

And here, I think, Hummel
lands his own best blow:

“Finally, WWF reiterates that
any debate over time, whether 15
or 50 years, concedes that current
forestry practices are unsus-
tainable.’? Touche!

One of the most significant
points made in the original WWF
case study was something that
Moore chose not to attack, and
this, really, is what the debate is
all about:

“Despite a long history of
timber harvest, B.C. entered the
second half of the 20th century
with much of the primary forest
intact. However, in the last two
decades there has been an enor-
mous increase in the rate of cut...
half of all the timber cut in B.C.
since 191] has been in the last 14
years.”"

Moore accuses the WWF of
“statistical obfuscation,’* and
“tricky ways of giving inaccurate

statements and misleading ideas
more credibility and public cur-
rency.’’

I'm sorry, Pat, but this sounds
an awful lot like the pot calling
the kettle black.

Bookkeeper’s name corrected

A STORY in the Wednesday,
Feb. 17 News incorrectly stated
that Doris Alm was the former
chief bookkeeper for Boma
Manufacturing lid. and

Panabo Sales Lid. of North
Vancouver.

In fact, Donna Alm was the
companies’ former chief book-
keeper,

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