Manitoba parks still threatened by logging

This week marked the end of my IPP (Independent Professional Project) journey to visit all 77 of Manitoba's road-accessible provincial parks and to document it for the Winnipeg Free Press.

I thought I'd take this space to republish an article I wrote roughly a year ago, concerning the on-going logging that takes place in one of Manitoba's flagship provincial parks, Duck Mountain. The research I conducted for this article helped inspire me to take on my IPP.

A year later and logging continues to take place in Duck Mountain Provincial Park and logging trucks continue to rumble through the caribou migration path in Grass River Provincial Park.

This feature article originally appeared in Sustain Magazine.

Logging Manitoba's Mountains

A disruptive protest at a downtown Winnipeg hotel far away from the majestic Manitoba boreal forest became a catalyst for change in the logging policies of Manitoba. Combined with an extensive education campaign, this event, organized by the Wilderness Committee lead to the end of industrial logging in 79 of 80 Manitoba provincial parks. Left off the list was Duck Mountain Provincial Park. The chain saws continue to rip through the heavily-forested park.

“Duck Mountain is one of the most beautiful areas in Manitoba. It’s one of the few forested, elevated areas in the province,” says Robin Bryan of the Wilderness Committee of Manitoba. “Yet it’s 61 per cent available for logging.”

Bryan and the Wilderness Committee began a campaign in 2006 to mobilize citizens to speak out against logging in Manitoba’s provincial parks. The campaign was a natural extension of the Wilderness Committee’s goal of protecting boreal forest throughout Canada. The organization was created as a citizen’s action group in Vancouver in 1980. Its concern was the conservation of wilderness and also to mobilize citizens to take action and become more politically active concerning the environment and its issues. The group’s Manitoba offshoot includes 6,000 members, while the national organization boasts 30,000 members, making it the largest member- based wilderness group in Canada.

The fight to end commercial logging in provincial parks was an uphill battle for Bryan and the Wilderness Committee.

“Logging companies have a lot of control and a lot of political sway in Manitoba,” says Bryan, who organized rallies, including a mass protest outside a 2007 Tembec logging conference in downtown Winnipeg. He was also involved in discussions with former Conservation Minister Stan Struthers and organized Wilderness Committee members to contact their MLAs with their concerns.

The protest outside the 2007 Tembec logging conference at the Place Louis Riel Suite Hotel in downtown Winnipeg kick-started the Wilderness Committee’s campaign against logging in provincial parks. Tembec was clear-cutting in the Nopiming and Whiteshell parks.

“We basically confronted them on the issue and that really kicked off this campaign,” Bryan emphatically explained. “We had some red-faced, embarrassed logging representatives on our hands, but it was a necessary step in showing our intentions.”

The fight was won in 2008, when the Manitoba government announced that it was banning commercial logging in Manitoba’s provincial parks. The ban included the Whiteshell, Nopiming, and Grass River parks, where large- scale clear cutting operations had been taking place. Logging companies found to be violating this ban could face fines ranging from $250,000 to $500,000 per offense. Missing from this ban was Duck Mountain Provincial Park.

Duck Mountain is actually not one mountain, but a series of pine, spruce, and balsam covered hills that rise up near the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border. It is a diverse ecosystem, home to large herds of mountain and valley elk. Moose, white-tailed deer, black bears and lynx also call the park home. The area is a nesting ground for countless species of birds. It was established as one of Manitoba’s original provincial parks in 1961.

Logging in the Duck Mountains began when the first European settlers moved into the area in 1899. Lumber mills sprouted up in the new settlements of Swan River and Grandview, as the settlers realized the area’s potential as a source of timber. Industrial logging arrived soon after and continued throughout the century. Even though Duck Mountain Provincial Park was established in 1961, logging continued due to lack of government protection. American lumber giant, LP Building Products (formerly Louisiana-Pacific) established itself in the region in 1996. The company does not log in the park, but independent harvesters of the park bring the timber they harvest to its mill in Swan River.

“LP logs in the Duck Mountain Provincial Forest, outside the park,” says Wade Cable, LP Building Products Area Forest Manager. “Approximately 30 Quota Holders who were logging prior to 1997, when the Duck Mountain Provincial Park’s boundaries were changed, can harvest in the Resource Management Zone of the park.”

The industry’s effects on the region’s economy complicate the situation.

“Because there is no alternative replacement wood available in the region, removing logging from Duck Mountain Provincial Park would significantly threaten the viability of hundreds of jobs and several mills in the region,” explains Rachel Morgan, the Press Secretary to Cabinet for the Government of Manitoba, as to the reason Duck Mountain was excluded from the ban.

Bryan has another take on the situation, speculating on then Conservation Minister Stan Struthers’ ties to Swan River, where LP Building Products’ operation is based.

“I think the minister, Stan Struthers, is from Swan River and he doesn’t want to piss off his friends,” says Bryan, who received the 2009 Brower Youth Award from the Earth Island Institute in San Francisco, for his efforts to stop logging in provincial parks. “It’s a sign that there wasn’t the political will to make the legislation complete. It’s an incomplete piece of legislation.”

Bryan is optimistic that the work the Wilderness Committee is doing to ensure an end to logging in Duck Mountain Park will be successful. He is hopeful that new Conservation Minister Bill Blaikie will re-examine the case of Duck Mountain.

“I have a lot of respect for the history of activism of both Bill Blaikie and the assistant, Rob Altemeyer, so we’re hopeful that their background will carry through to this issue,” says Bryan.

Whether that happens remains to be seen. Rachel Morgan refuses to comment on the issue, saying that the government “does not want to scoop itself.”

So in Duck Mountain, the status quo remains. It’s a place where logging trucks rumble through the habitats of countless species of wildlife. It’s a place where the opening line of the Manitoba Provincial Parks Act is ignored: “Provincial parks are special places that play an important role in the protection of natural lands and the quality of life of Manitobans.”

If you are interested in contacting the Wilderness Committee, they can be reached at (204)942-9292 or at www. wildernesscommittee.mb.ca. If you are interested in contacting the Manitoba Department of Conservation about Duck Mountain, they can be reached at (204)945-6784.