Is New Brunswick running out of wood?

While the vast majority of the large, old trees of New Brunswick's forests have been cut, there is still much of New Brunswick's native Acadian Forest that is diverse, healthy and productive. The forestry multinationals say that harvesting this forest in long-run sustainable way will not sustain their businesses, so the harvest rates on New Brunswick's forests must move ever upward to support industry's demand for growth. Of course it defies common sense to imagine how we can double the harvest beyond the current rate without incurring a huge cost to the land and to the people of New Brunswick.

New Brunswick has not run out of wood….but for wood workers, wildlife and the public we will be running out of real forests if the industry's proposal is approved by our government.

Will getting rid of government oversight, cutting closer to rivers, doubling the harvest rate and taking hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars create more wealth and prosperity for New Brunswickers? Not likely. In fact, this is really a proposal by industry to ignore the public interest and decide once and for all that the forests of New Brunswick belong to them and not the people of this province.

If we want to protect existing jobs and ensure new jobs in the future, we must focus on diversifying our forest industry and move away from a heavy reliance on low-profit commodities like pulp and newsprint. We also need to look at how our forests can be valuable in other ways, including for tourism, high-end wood products and non-wood products like gourmet mushrooms or ground hemlock.

Clearcuts to the edge of wild rivers and sterile, lifeless tree plantations are not the building blocks of a healthy future for this province.