| A plan to log the Kananaskis Country could irreparably damage the forest, hurt the local tourism industry and lower the quality of Calgary’s water, according to area residents.
However, the provincial government says the logging is necessary to prevent the spread of mountain pine beetles, which have already killed millions of trees elsewhere in the province. Spray Lakes Sawmills, which owns the area’s logging rights, plans to harvest nine square kilometers of timber annually, starting in the Sibbald area 50 kilometres west of Calgary.
Joy Brennan moved to Kananaskis Country 12 years ago with her children and she’s already seen the effects of logging in some parts of the woods. She doesn’t want to see any more. "You walk to the top of the Fullerton Loop (hiking trail), and you can see the clear-cuts," she says. "People come here from all over, and it’s gonna be ruined for them." Brennan isn’t buying the argument that logging is necessary to curb the spread of pine beetles. As a teenager, she worked in Waterton National Park when it suffered an eight-year-long pine beetle outbreak. The damage done by the beetles wasn’t as bad as the damage done by clear-cutting, she says.
Ralph Cartar, a biology professor at the University of Calgary, lives in the Bragg Creek area and agrees with Brennan. He believes the plan to stop the spread of pine beetle with tree harvesting is ridiculous. "It’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face," he says. "I’d rather lose a few trees to beetles than all of them to logging." Unlike British Columbia, where the beetles are wreaking havoc on the forest, the trees in Kananaskis are mostly small and offer too little food for the beetles to infest them, he argues. As a result, most trees would be unharmed by an outbreak. Despite its brush with pine beetles in the 1970s, the Waterton’s forest has regenerated. "You go there today and it’s a beautiful forest," he says.
Doug Sephton runs a Bragg Creek tourism website and fears that his business and others who depend on visitors would be hurt by an increase in logging. He’s visited areas already logged by Spray Lakes Sawmills and doesn’t want to see it happen in Bragg Creek. "It’s a devastated landscape completely stripped of trees," he says. "There’s bare dirt that goes way off into the distance."
Clear-cutting Kananaskis could also translate into water problems for Calgary, Sephton says. Fewer trees would mean greater runoff into the Elbow River and the surrounding creeks, leading to floods. While pine beetle might have a similar effect, he says it wouldn’t be as bad as clear-cutting.
John Jagorinec, senior water quality and regulatory analyst for the city, is also concerned. "Potentially, you have runoff, minerals, metals coming into the water," he says. Trees absorb water and release it gradually into the river. Cutting them down would cause water to flow into the river too quickly during runoff, while in dry season there might not be enough. The resultant problems could mean water restrictions for the city and hurt the quality of the water. "We’ve got a lot of concerns that aren’t being answered," says Jagorinec, who doesn’t think the models created by Spray Lakes Sawmills are thorough enough. "We really have to maintain the conditions that give us the water we have."
However, the provincial government says that logging won’t have any drastic effects on the watershed. "Our modeling shows that forest fire and pine beetle have a worse effect than logging," says Ted Morton, Minister for Sustainable Development Resources (SRD), the department that oversees forestry. He says that protection of the water is his priority for the area, and that he’s already turned down forestry plans that could harm the watershed. He also disputes the residents’ claim that the Waterton has recovered well from its pine beetle outbreak. "I was down there 10 days ago, and it didn’t regenerate at all."
Morton, who is the MLA for the area, says he’s been meeting with residents over the past two years and listening to their concerns. On Tuesday, his department held and information session in Bragg Creek.
Robert Stokes, who manages SRD’s relations with forestry companies, was at the session to explain that timber harvesting is a government method for stopping pine beetles. He says the province holds forestry companies up to a high standard and requires that they gather public input before going ahead with logging.
John Diiwu, a government water expert, spent the day fielding questions from residents and argued that pine beetle would have a worse effect on the watershed than logging. While both remove trees, the logging can be controlled in order to manage the forest. "It’s managed to recover faster after being logged," he says. Some residents weren’t convinced.
"The rest of the world is moving away from clear-cutting, so why are we still doing it?" asks Noah Cebuliak, a 17-year old high school student who’s lived in Bragg Creek all his life. After a 20 minute-long exchange with Diiwu, he still felt SRD didn’t want to deal with his concerns. "This isn’t a democratic process at all," he says afterwards. "They say they respect our opinions, but that’s not true."
He recently organized a petition against the proposed logging at his school, Springbank Community High School. More than half the student body signed the petition, which he delivered to Morton. Cebuliak says he hikes, bikes and cross-country skis in the forest on a regular basis and he fears cutting it down will drive away visitors who do the same. "It’s a recreational area and it’s our backyard," he says. "It sucks to go cross-country skiing through a clear-cut."
Kirsten Cook-Zaba left the session frustrated and feeling her questions hadn’t been answered. The homemaker says the logging company doesn’t bother to reforest and wondered why they weren’t present at the session. "You need a forum with everybody there. Nobody knows what everyone else is doing," she says. "What we really need is a park here." |
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