These days, intellectual shortcuts are in common use in public discourse. For example, a former mayor of a municipality in eastern Quebec, now a candidate for provincial deputy, recently compared the forest to rhubarb, saying something like this: “The forest, it’s like rhubarb, it grows back when you cut it. At first glance, we have to admit that the analogy contains a grain of truth: the forest generally regrows when you cut it down! However, this sentence testifies to a naive and simplistic vision of reality, a vision that disappoints in 2022.
I have been doing scientific research in forest ecology for the past thirty years, including more than twenty studying the forests of the North Shore. The forest is not just about trees. It is a complex ecosystem, where several forces interact affecting its dynamics and functioning. For example, we are just beginning to grasp the extent of the exchanges that take place under our feet in forest soils, where bacteria, fungi and a myriad of micro-organisms are at work and have a decisive influence on productivity and the biodiversity of our forests.
While the infinitely small is decisive in structuring the interactions between organisms that share the same habitat, on a larger scale, large-scale events will disturb the ecosystem, but also bring about a renewal. Forest fires and insect outbreaks are examples. The balance between these forces acting at different scales and the physical environment characteristic of the different regions shape the portrait of the forest. So, yes, forest usually grows back after a cut, but it’s not rhubarb. Perhaps it could be cultivated intensively, a little like a garden, in certain places where proximity allows it, but it would be tendentious and counterproductive to make people believe that the vast boreal forest can be a garden that the we cultivate and where we harvest the trees as we would with carrots (to vary the examples).
When we avoid taking into consideration the complexity of ecosystems and the interactions of the living world, one day or another, we pay the price. Comparing the forest to rhubarb or a garden only fuels the perception that it only serves to produce fibre. We must change the paradigm in forestry and opt for ecosystem-based management, which relies on the values that we want to maintain in our forests rather than the vision strongly centered on fiber harvesting. Over the past thirty years, the age structure of commercial forests on the Upper North Shore has been largely transformed by the action of logging.
Thus, from a landscape dominated by old forests (> 70% of stands in the 120 years and older class before the 1990s), we are now in a landscape strongly dominated by young forests. This observation is not without consequences both on the functioning of the ecosystem and its biodiversity and on the availability of fiber in the coming years. It’s not the caribou that will kill the jobs, it’s our insatiable thirst for growth in a world where resources are limited. Humility and caution would be in order, but showing it doesn’t make for such catchy maxims.
For the past few months, I have had the chance to work for the Innu community of Pessamit by supporting it scientifically in its approach to preserving its culture,Innu aitun, intimately linked to the forest. The Innu, like many Aboriginal nations, know that they are part of the forest ecosystem just like all other living beings. Although they adhere today to modernity, they mostly keep this vision in tune with their ancestors and their values, and that is why they defend with ardor and all their heart theInnu aitun.
Thirty years of research in ecology have led me to see the forest with great humility and wonder. A pledge of reconciliation with the First Nations would be to recognize that we are also part of nature and that it is both complex and fragile. A paradigm shift that would be truly beneficial for the future of the forest and economic development in this beautiful region that is the North Shore.