Forestry companies intent on clearcutting Canada’s boreal forest are spinning themselves green with a technique that should be familiar to climate and energy organizers, anti-tobacco activists, and even an earlier generation of DDT opponents: they’re behaving like climate deniers, according to a peer-reviewed analysis this week in Wildlife Society Bulletin.
“Their goal,” reports The Narwhal, “is to delay habitat protection in Ontario for boreal woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou),” an indicator species for the health of the forest itself—which is in turn a major carbon sink and essential to the effort to bring climate change under control.
“Successful use of this strategy has weakened environmental protection, undermined public debate on policy solutions, enabled harmful activities to continue long after their danger was scientifically established, and even legitimized campaigns for industrial expansion,” wrote a study team led by ecologist Julee Boan, boreal program manager for Ontario Nature.
“All the ways that industry and government try to shoot the messenger, discredit science, discredit the scientists, and then sow doubt and confusion, and buy time, are rote,” agreed Mark Hebblewhite, associate professor of ungulate habitat ecology at the University of Montana, one of the peer reviewers for Boan’s paper. “There’s nothing new here.”
The industry’s first of three standard tactics is to “question whether environmental degradation is actually happening, rather than [challenging] the goal of protection,” The Narwhal explains, citing Boan and her colleagues. “While skepticism and questioning are part of the scientific process, in these cases, industry interests are challenging conclusions well supported by evidence with opinions based on conjecture.”
The Ontario Forest Industry Association and mayors of some single-industry forestry towns say the caribou aren’t even threatened. But they’re listed under the federal Species At Risk Act, and according to federal government analysis, only 14 of 51 herds will be self-sustaining if current trends are allowed to continue.
“Species conservation is not about a Noah’s ark approach: grab these genes here and there,” Boan told The Narwhal. “It’s about the systems. And we don’t fully know how these systems all work together.”
Citing the Forest Products Association of Canada’s “Caribou Facts” website, the paper points to the companies claiming caribou are actually “healthier” in logged areas, even though the famously shy animals are known to travel many kilometres to permanently avoid logged areas. Companies prefer to blame climate change, rather than their own relentless logging, for declining caribou populations.
“There isn’t one published paper that I can think of directly linking the previous declines of the past 30 years to climate change,” Hebblewhite told The Narwhal. In one major inventory in 2010, “we did not need climate to explain the range retraction of caribou in the country.”
When all else fails, the industry raises the spectre of economic decline and job loss as a result of long-overdue caribou protections. “In fact, say the authors, forestry jobs in Canada have been in decline for two decades because of changing demand for forest products, high labour and energy costs, and declining investment in the sector,” so that forestry only accounted for 0.6% of Ontario jobs in 2013.
But Hebblewhite said the tactics are working to delay action on caribou protection, just as they have with climate action. “Climate change psychology tells us that people need to feel there’s hope to make a decision in the face of uncertainty,” he said. And because “there’s been so much denial about caribou declining for long, scientists have had to beat the drum.”
Public interest communications strategist Jasper Fessman said simple strategic messaging is the best way to turn the tide. “Raising awareness is not, by itself, going to change the problem,” he told The Narwhal’s Erica Giles. “An information campaign does not necessarily counter a disinformation campaign.”
But campaigners can win by making the science simple and easy to understand: If today’s rate of caribou decline is projected into the future, “are there any caribou left? That’s something people understand. If it continues as it is now, we will not have any caribou, and our kids will not remember what a caribou is.”
Another option is to offer a counter to the industry’s narrative, talking about the impact on tourism of losing an iconic wild species. “That’s countering one business interest with another business interest,” he said.
In an opinion piece for The Georgia Straight, environmental icon David Suzuki says the species protection issue gives forestry companies an ulterior motive to recognize climate change as a threat to the boreal.
“There’s no climate science denial, but there is caribou science denial,” he writes. “To downplay the urgent need to protect caribou and manage habitat, and to diminish their own role in boreal caribou declines, forest industry associations are using tactics the fossil fuel industry uses to sow doubt and confusion about scientific evidence.”
In an extensive study published by Natural Resources Canada ” Anticipating the Consequences of Climate Change for Canada’s Forest Ecosystems” (October 09, 2013), the authors are worried about the future of the woodland caribou: ” Woodland caribou are likely to be seriously affected by climate warming in boreal Canada. The mechanisms will most likely be mediated through increased predation, habitat change, nutritional decline in preferred foods and reduced food availability, physiological constraints owing to increased temperature, and mismatches between altered plant phenology relative to parturition.
Changes in caribou habitat will be driven largely by increasing fire occurrence, causing long-term reduction in areas of old forest and lichen availability. Human disturbances, including logging activity, are a further cause of habitat change. As the proportion of young forest area increases following forest fire and (or) logging, moose and white-tailed deer populations are expected to increase, resulting in accompanying higher number of wolves and associated predation on caribou.
The fatal neurological disease caused by Paralaphostrongylus tenuis will likely increase with the increased abundance of deer… Several studies have shown these many interrelated impacts of climate change will result in a substantial reduction in the present-day range of woodland caribou.”
Another result of a changing climate in the north is the impact of a warming climate on boreal peatlands. Boreal peatlands worldwide account for 50 to 70% of the global carbon pool, and Canada contains around 30% of the boreal peat land carbon pool. Within Canada, Ontario contains roughly 30% of Canadian peatland carbon, with a large majority of this residing in the Hudson Bay Lowland (HBL). Current estimates are that HBL peatlands contain 23.5 Gt (billion tonnes) of carbon… A recent United Nations report (Campbell et al. 2008) dealing with carbon storage in protected areas identified the HBL as a region where soil carbon storage levels are among the highest in the world. These boreal pools are predicted to be a key element in the feedback mechanisms affecting climate change. They could contribute to reaching “tipping points”, where carbon that has been stored since the last glaciation is released at greatly increased rates.
Current climate change projections indicate significant warming (6 to 8º C) and a decrease in precipitation ( around 30%) across the Far North Region (FNR) of Ontario by the end of this century. In response to warmer temperatures and changing precipitation across northern Ontario, the are burned by fire in the FNR is projected to double in that same period. In addition, both lightning and human-caused fire occurrence is expected to in crease significantly.
(source: Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, 2011: “Climate Change, Carbon Sequestration and Forest Fire Protection in the Canadian Boreal Zone”)
Canada’s Boreal and Subarctic regions contain 97% (142.94 GT) of the soil organic carbon mass occurring in Canadian peatlands. Increased forest fire activity combined with increased drought and melting permafrost suggest a significant increase in carbon being released into the atmosphere. The peatland sensitivity model indicates that approximately 52% (74.6 Gt) of this organic carbon mass will be “severely” to “extremely severely” affected by climate change.
(source: Canadian Water Resources Journal, Charles Tarnocai, Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada, May 2009)
What’s going on in Northern Canada will affect us all, not only the woodland caribou.