Basically, there’s reasonable compromise by reasonable people for reasonable reasons. Then there’s unreasonable compromise which Lorne Fitch pulls apart in the following opinion piece.
Killing Them Softly With Compromise: The Fate of the Eastern Slopes
Lorne Fitch, P. Biol.
It’s time to talk of many things. Of bull trout and of caribou and what their disappearance brings. Why the forest is reduced to fields of stumps. And whether a compromise of coal is the stuff of selfish lumps.
This paraphrasing is from Lewis Carroll’s nonsensical poem, The Walrus and the Carpenter. There is a parallel between the compromises made to accommodate resource extraction industries and Carroll’s poem. Both involve themes of trickery and selfishness. The poem’s absurdity humorously critiques human greed, consumption, and manipulation.
Whether the industry is logging, mining, or drilling, the compromises made create a type of world where everything is a bit upside down and backwards, like the poem. Compromise is the stuff of politics and business, to create a necessary juggling of competing interests to achieve an outcome beneficial to them.
When compromise is used in the context of resource allocation, the dynamics of power pits intact ecosystems and their wild inhabitants against an economic juggernaut. It is anything but a balance since it results in the former losing and the latter winning. It is not an equitable outcome.
Coal mining and oil and gas extraction irrevocably change landscapes, leaving behind an extensive, polluted footprint. Coal mines in the Eastern Slopes create a legacy of water and air pollution with toxic elements. The burning of fossil fuels, with the current level of use, releases GHG that bring us more climate uncertainty and wicked weather.
Declines in river flow are compounded by climate change and the changes in hydrologic response are triggered by logging. It can take up to a century for a watershed to regain a hydrological equilibrium following logging. This is more than compromise, it is capitulation to an economic model.
The critters signalling a decline in the integrity of the Eastern Slopes didn’t wink out overnight, this happened over decades of land use compromises. What did those compromises look like?
They included the inability and failure to recognize ecological thresholds which have been exceeded. Added to that was (and is) the additive nature of cumulative effects. The growth in industrial-scale logging has increased the footprint beyond the ecological limits for caribou and coupled with extensive road networks with minimal safeguards for preventing erosion and sediment delivery, these are implicated in native trout declines.
The connivance of the provincial government with industry has given us administrative, industry-friendly guidelines, with buffer zones that are untested and unproven to protect trout habitat, an ambivalence to change harvest plans to protect critical habitats for both trout and caribou, and endless variances when even the weak guidelines for logging can’t be met because of economic implications. Timber harvest operating ground rules lack a background of empirical evidence for protection of species at risk trout and their habitats.
This has happened with a substantial amount of green washing. The contention from the forest industry that logging is just like farming, harvesting a crop of trees sustainably. The narrative ignores and glosses over the changes to the watershed and to biodiversity, especially with clear-cut harvest methods. A forest is not a wheat field!
The forests of the Eastern Slopes are the headwaters for all of the rivers that flow east (and north). Their value for collecting, storing, and slowly releasing water is recognized, is referenced in provincial planning documents, and is largely ignored by the timber industry. This should be of interest of anyone who is a downstream water drinker or user. The majority of Albertans depend on that water, as well as those in our neighboring provinces. You would think we would treat these water towers with more respect.
These Eastern Slopes headwaters are also biodiversity havens, a place of recreational escape for many, and an essential element in the DNA of Albertans. Our past reckless land use practices have rendered many of the wild denizens as species at risk, especially all of the trout and caribou. Unfortunately, the past remains our present and an economic compromise, especially for logging and mining interests, devalues our future which we ignore at our peril.
For the trout, any analysis of what constitutes “critical habitat” indicates the essential features required for population survival, maintenance, and recovery exist at a watershed scale. The “guidelines” for logging, the timber harvest operating ground rules, are a classic example of compromise with a massive thumb on the scale favouring logging. They facilitate logging but do not effectively protect fish and wildlife habitats.
Mike Judd, a wilderness campaigner, summed it up this way: “The way that species disappear is incremental. The way that human rights disappear is incremental, and the way that industrial wastelands replace forests, rivers, and beautiful wildlife is also incremental.” Compromise is incrementalism manifested and made somewhat palatable with soothing words and business explanations. It is an ideology that knows the answer before the question has been asked.
In reality, compromise is one of those greasy words, used to rationalize the slippage of standards and principles. What it means is to go just a little bit (or a lot) below what you know is right. In an economic ideology, politicians, bureaucrats, and corporate interests look at compromise as a necessary evil. However, as C.S. Lewis wisely said, “Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.”
If we want watersheds with resilience and integrity that give us the full expression of biodiversity signalling high water quality and buffering us from drought and flood, the era of compromise must come to a close in the Eastern Slopes. That doesn’t mean the end of land use, but the end of the scale of industrial-strength logging and mining that has paid lip service to essential watersheds.
Working on a principled approach to land use is much different than the current compromises made to accommodate economic interests. Land use planning has to incorporate a set of values that have to be adapted to but not compromised away. What should be included in a principled approach is the first and most obvious—do not exceed ecological thresholds.
There are some land uses that are simply incompatible, coal mining most notably. As well, there are some watersheds that are too sensitive, too valuable, to allow extractive land uses. Many require an investment in restoration to bring them back from the brink.
An economic imperative does not, should not, override watershed protection. Such a compromise has no compelling argument in the long run. We have to get over the syndrome of resource liquidation—that is the road to landscape and biodiversity hell. We have to get off that road to hell to provide subsequent generations more than an impoverished legacy.
To allow land uses will require business interests to prove these can proceed with no damage to fish, wildlife, water quality, or to hydrologic responses. This has to be based on rigorous monitoring and research, the stuff of environmental impact assessments and cumulative effects analysis, not hype and promises from sham “guidelines.”
It is time to talk of change. Otherwise we will continue to bulldoze ahead and kill the Eastern Slopes with compromise.
Lorne Fitch is a Professional Biologist, a retired Fish and Wildlife Biologist and a past Adjunct Professor with the University of Calgary. He is the author of Streams of Consequence and Travels Up the Creek.