When John Innes, dean of the faculty of forestry at the
University of B.C., talks about a sustainable forestry sector,
he is both encouraged and concerned about what he sees unfolding
in the province’s forests, educational institutions and mills.
First, he said in a phone interview from a London forestry
conference, he is encouraged by the attitudes of the students
now enrolled in faculty programs and by the innovative changes
taking place within much of the industry itself. The next
generation of foresters live and breathe sustainability, he
said, and the industry is beginning to look at a multiplicity of
values in the forests, creating a more diversified sector with
revenue streams from a suite of bio-products, not just pulp and
two-by-fours. But when he looks at forest-management decisions
now being considered by the provincial government, he fears the
province and the industry are about to take a huge step backward
that could do irreparable damage to more than a decade of effort
aimed at promoting B.C. wo