Chris,

The label 'Bambi' was used a long time ago by some writer, perhaps it was
Donald Worster. He mentioned I think that Disney Productions created this
image of nature for untrained folks in which nature was perceived as being
nice like bambi. The application of Bambi as a term for nature assumes that
some city folks believe that animals in nature are always kind, and so on.
The rejoinder of some critics of this tendency to view nature as benign, and
innocent was to call nature "red in tooth and claw" a phrase coined by
Charles Darwin. Now the two phrases are strung together: "that is not Bambi
out there but Nature red in tooth and claw."

Humans are a part of nature, so right now we are that which is "red in tooth
and claw" as the metaphor is extendible to almost anything, even the
'featherless biped' which uses an array of devices to extinquish forests and
species habitats (50 % of the worlds' forests have been destroyed by man.
Eg. in England only 5% of the country is forested, whereas in the past most
of the country was forested).

www.soilandhealth.org

As far as the idea of importing wood for furniture to New Zealand from
Indonesia is concerned I have a suggestion. Why not reforest the
approximately 2 million acres of degraded sheep pastures in NZ with fast
growing pines or native species? Most of the fast growing radiata pine in NZ
was established on sites where no trees grew before such as sand dunes,
agriculture sites, etc., so why cut down any primary forests and put roads
into them?  In BC here there is currently an epidemic of lodgepole pine bark
beetle that is impacting millions of hectares of mature trees. This is the
largest insect infestation in the history of North America and there is an
estimated 10 -15 million cubic meters of commercial wood that will have to
be harvested in the next two years or it will root and burn. In the Amazon
there is an estimated 75 million hectares of degraded and deforested forest
lands that could grow at least 150 million cubic meters per year.

There benefits of conservation are numerous and in many cases the economic
benefits vastly outweigh the timber values. This is easy to prove because
countries like Costa Rica which has practically halted logging on the
remaining rainforests now makes much more from tourism than it ever did from
harvesting primary forests. In fact Costa Rica now has more visitors than
Hawaii I have read.

In addition we here in BC burn millions of cubic meters of small wood at the
landings and roadsides. This is wood that could be used for many useful
purposes such as furniture (in fact the Sears catalogue has solid pine
furniture with knots that costs up to $600 per piece. The most common
furniture now being sold is no longer solid pine or hardwood, but something
called wood fiber product made from sawdust and some adhesive which
essential has very little strength. This stuff does not last more than about
five years often, then is thrown into landfills).

There is no forest legislation on most private lands in BC. We have about 2
million private hectares of which half is consists the best sites in Canada.
This land is periodically clearcut and abandoned.

There is no real need any more to continue harvesting timber from primary
forests because there is more than enough forest land that is not growing
much of anything. Much of the waste wood is simply burned on landings
because the logs are too short to haul with existing logging trucks.

Protecting 160,000 hectares in NZ is not enough if the viability of the
ecosystem is to expected to be in the thousands of years. 160 square
kilometes is a very small area. This area would be about 40 kilometers by 40
kilometers. If introduced species are getting into the center of the most
remote of this remaining primary forest, then there is essentially no core
are without an 'edge effect' and this means that this ecosystem will not be
sustainable in terms of the maintenance of the habitat for all indigenous
species.

Old growth management areas for forests have to be sufficiently large to
provide core areas in the center without edge effects. For instance a
Grizzly bear habitat area that will conserve this species must be larger
than Yellowstone National Park which is much larger than 160,000 hectares.
You will need an area large enough to sustain about 500 breeding animals to
prevent inbreeding and genetic drift, and you need some metapopulations
outside that are connected. That means that for a Grizzly population about
10,000 square kilometers at least (if it is good habitat) to conserve the
species in one population longer than one thousand years. That is an area of
one million hectares. One million hectares is about one quarter the size of
Costa Rica which is only about 3.5 million hectares.

We are witnessing the extinction of the mountain caribou here in BC because
there are no large preserves that allow for the species to be uneffected by
clearcut logging. The issue for the Caribou is that when the forest is
logged then the cutblocks if clearcut create abundant winter browse for
moose ( a species that was not even reported here over one hundred years
ago) and this results in high wolf populations through out the year. The
wolves use the moose as compensatory prey until they can prey on the nearly
defenseless caribou which feed on the lichens in old growth forests during
late winter. Clearcut logging destroys the lichen by complete removal of the
old trees. It takes up to 150 years for the lichens to establish on the old
trees near the treeline.

The only place where the caribou are stable is in the largest park in the
southern half of the province, which is Wells Gray Park. This park is over
0.5  million hectares; if the adjacent parks are combined then then the park
is larger by 0.2 million hectares. The park area is over 60 miles in length
I think. It is the only viable refuge left in the southern part of the
province. The Grizzly bear population in the Cascades of BC is down to less
than one dozen animals. The Grizzlies are all but absent in the southern
areas of the province except for the national parks in the Rockies and these
parks combined include well over 2 million hectares. No introduced predators
can live in these large parks because they cannot survive predation
themselves by more powerful predators like the wolverine, the black bear,
the cougar, and wolf, and so on. The small parks have domestic dogs, and
disease brought in by domestic livestock. As a result the small parks cannot
provide any habitat for the most endangered species on the earth right now
which include the Grizzly and the mountain caribou. There are an estimated
2,500 mountain caribou left in southern BC. During the last century there
were 100 times this amount, and no moose which have been assisted by the
first settlers who often burned off forests for grazing, for prospecting and
by accident (railroads burned off millions of acres between Jasper and
Prince Rupert, two towns almost 1000 kilometers apart).


I think that 160,000 hectares is insufficient in size for protecting most
endangered species and their habitat for very long. Certainly Manual
Antonnio park is too small. There the monos (monkeys) have a lot of
diseases, the trees are blowing down along the edges...these little islands
are biological zoos that are not sustainable unless there is habitat
connecting them, and we do not know what or how to manage that habitat yet
if we are going to allow both logging and have long term preservation of
species in mind. There is no example yet that I know of where managed
forests that are logged can protect all species. Sweden has well over 400
species on the endangered list....and it is all forest lands where logging
is going on.

anyway

I am informed on this aspect of Natural Resources because I have been on
contract to advise governments on how to protect habitat (designing and
mapping landscape level biodiversity plans).

chao

john foster



----- Original Message -----