The Peterborough Currents article “Reframe program invites reflection on our fraught relationship with logging” started me thinking about how forestry is portrayed in the film “Logging Algonquin” and whether the criticisms in the article by Will Pearson are valid. The article, which gives a lot of weight to an interview with a single Peterborough forester (Fraser Smith), is critical of the film for leaving out the perspective of foresters. The reason for this omission became clear during the Q&A at the ReFrame Festival: the filmmaker, Conor DeVries, tried to interview the Algonquin Forestry Authority and other foresters, but no one he contacted would appear on camera. But let’s say DeVries had been able to get a forester to go on the record, would it change or improve the film in a significant way?
Before I try to answer that let me introduce myself. I appear in the film twice, I’m a researcher documenting the remaining unprotected old-growth forest in the park. I think the issue of logging in Algonquin is often oversimplified, but not in the way that Pearson and Smith are suggesting. I am often frustrated by discussion of Algonquin Park which boils down to “protect everything” or “log everything” that remains. More work needs to be done, and these numbers may change, but it looks like if we increased the protected area of the park from 35% to around 41%, we could protect the remaining large roadless areas and the most valuable old growth forest that still lacks protection. To my mind this should not even be a controversial proposal, it would help defuse some of the tension around logging in the park at minimal cost to local communities.
Because let’s be honest, logging continues in the park because of the economic value to the surrounding communities, not because it can somehow “help the forest ecosystem.” You can make the argument that forest management is beneficial in some southern Ontario woodlots that are heavily impacted by invasive species or bad past management; but in the relatively intact forests of Algonquin it is simply not true, especially in the hardwood-dominated west side of the park where fire was historically rare. This argument ignores the impacts of roads (there are over 5000 km in the park), fragmentation, elimination of old-growth forest, and repeated cycles of disturbance on the wildlife and native plants that depend on interior forest in the park. There is also ample evidence that logging is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and that intact forests are best left alone for that reason as well. But all of those negatives can be weighed against the relationship with surrounding communities that depend on the wood supply, a relationship that the film captured poignantly thanks to interviews with Liam Murray.
In this context the question of how relatively well or poorly the forests of Algonquin Park are managed becomes secondary to the question: should we allow logging to continue in the park to sustain local economies, even though it compromises the ecological integrity of Ontario’s flagship park? I honestly don’t know the answer to that. The question of logging in the park is indeed difficult and complicated, and the film Logging Algonquin does a pretty good job at conveying this truth. But I hope we can all agree that some areas should be protected. From my perspective what we’re really trying to decide is how much is enough for loggers and foresters, and how much we can afford to leave alone.