By relentlessly razing its vast temperate rainforest, British Columbia has come
to be known as "the Brazil of the North." In 1990,
13 of the province's logging companies resolved to clean up this tarnished image.
Did they end their clearcutting of B.C.'s old-growth forests? Hardly. They hired
a public-relations firm and begat what they archly dubbed "share" groups,
Canada's answer to the
corporate-sponsored "wise-use" movement south of the border.
These two videos look past the smoke and mirrors to explore the roots of the
troubles in B.C.'s vanishing wilderness.
In Forests Forever-the title echoes that
of a feel-good campaign by the Forest Alliance, the timber industry's main
propaganda arm-we meet conservationists, loggers, scientists, Natives, and others
with a stake in the forests' future. There's even an interview with the
Alliance's Patrick Moore, the Greenpeace director turned industry mouthpiece, who
appears as a somewhat hostile witness.
Forests Forever asks why, after a half-century of sustainable forestry, the
province began cannibalizing its old growth, and why so many industry workers are
nonetheless losing their jobs. The answers to both questions come down to
government and industry policies. We learn here how "Honest Bob" Summers, the
minister of forests, went to prison for taking bribes-but not before signing away
the logging rights to most of B.C.'s publicly owned timberland.
And we discover
that 27,000 loggers were thrown out of work from 1981 to 1991 not by
tree-huggers, but by the industry's embrace of labor-reducing technology. From
such unpleasant realities grew the disinformation campaign by Burson-Marsteller,
the PR giant called upon by Exxon and Union Carbide in the aftermath of disasters
in Prince William Sound and Bhopal, India.
"The one good thing I could say about the hiring of Burson-Marsteller by the
timber industry," observes one critic of the Forest Alliance, "is that at least
they seem to be admitting there's a disaster here."
The extent of that disaster lies at the core of the poignant Legacy, which
juxtaposes vivid images of B.C. forest devastation with the words of those intent
on denying it. Although nobody speaks in this ten-minute film-the sound track
consists entirely of a cello and violin-title cards show us the calm assurances
by timber and government officials of healthy, sustainable logging practices.
"Mistakes were made in the past," reads a 1991 quote by Canada's minister of
forests. "But the criticisms are no longer deserved." Asserts Jack Munro, a
Forest Alliance spokesman, "We are not devastating forests anymore." And Patrick
Moore offers this bit of philosophy: "Don't think of them as clearcuts. Think of
them as temporary meadows." Meanwhile, aerial and on-the-ground views of old
growth from Vancouver Island north to the Great Bear Rainforest reveal the
heartrending truth behind the industry's spin. It adds up to a quietly eloquent
plea for an end to the plunder in the Brazil of the North.—B. J. Bergman
