Our forests are important sources of fibre for everything from building materials to paper. But while we must recognize our need for forestry, we also cannot underestimate the ecological impacts of forest cutting and the need to do as much as possible to lessen these impacts. For information read here about:
Saskatchewan's Forestry Industry:
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Industrial logging occurs mostly in the southern half of Saskatchewan's forest, south of the Churchill River, where the trees are large and close to the mills. Timber harvesting is an industry that provides jobs and wood products that are important to the Saskatchewan economy.
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In 1999, the Saskatchewan government announced its decision to double the forest industry over three years. Although no one knew for sure how much logging that actually meant, plans called for a variety of new and expanded mills, such as sawmills, oriented strandboard mills, finger-jointer plants, and so on. logging activities expanded on to the Canadian Shield north of the Churchill River.
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Sixty-six percent of Saskatchewan's harvested forests are considered 'understocked' (Natural Resources Canada, 1999: The State of Canada's Forests 1998-1999). Prior to the Province's 1999 announcement to increase forestry, evidence was already pointing to the fact that Saskatchewan's commercially harvested forest was being depleted faster than it was being renewed. Saskatchewan has the distinction of being the Canadian province with the highest amount of forest land that has not regenerated after harvesting (see report on Deforestation in Saskatchewan).
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Harvesting in riparian areas: In the late 1990's, and for the first time in Saskatchewan history, the logging industry in the south/central forest was given permission to cut close to the waters' edge along lakes and rivers. It is well know that these areas are ecologically important. They are critical for many animals to give birth and raise their young, to hunt, to travel, to feed, and to hide. The plants stabilize soils along the banks and help to maintain water quality.
Similar to forested uplands, natural disturbances like fire and wind are important to the renewal of riparian areas.To date, very little research has been done to measure the impacts of logging on these riparian areas. Logging activities are experimental.
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Much of the information that government is using to develop long-term management plans is sketchy, under-researched, and outdated. There has been little investigation into issues surrounding ecosystem sensitivities, rare ecosystem types, ecological limits, and so on. No one is looking into the cumulative impacts from cutting, road building, fire suppression, aerial pesticide sparying, and other human activities in the forest. This situation is due in part, to significant cutbacks over many years to our Environment Department's staff and budgets.
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| Ecological Impacts of Logging: |
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Forest andscapes are changing in unnatural ways as widespread cutting and road building fragment the land and alter predator-prey relationships in the ecosystem.
Sensitive species such as woodland caribou, goshawk and some songbirds depend on old-growth and/or contiguous forests for their survival. The Blackburnian Warbler for example, depends on contiguous, old-growth habitat and is not adapting well to the massive changes in Saskatchewan's forest. Other animals, like the woodland caribou are at risk too. As populations decline, scientists have called this trend "slow-motion-extinction" and predict that if we do not protect the large areas of intact forest that some species need to survive, they could disappear entirely.
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When clearcutting replaces fire on the landscape, we remove mother-nature's 'cleansing' tool for managing natural processes like insect outbreaks and disease. Fire is the dominant renewal agent of the forest ecosystem and is necessary to create young forests and maintain healthy landscapes.
Large, old trees used by everything from cavity nesters like kestrals and owls, and large mammals like black bears to raptors and songbirds become increasingly scarce in our forests.
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The use of heavy machinery such as feller bunchers and skidders can cause soil compaction and erosion, especially on sites with thin soils, such as on much of the Canadian Shield.
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The removal of nutrients from a site, particularly after clearcutting or whole-tree harvesting (in which the entire tree is ground into wood chips on site) can deplete soils and cause regeneration problems.
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The removal of large tree structures from a site, either standing or dead/dying on the forest floor) depletes the area of important wildife habitat, nursery sites, and vessles for water retention.
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The genetic diversity of forest systems is compromised as trees with specific adaptations are removed.
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The age and structural diversity of forests across the landscape is reduced as older forests are targeted for cutting and replaced by younger growth over large areas.
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The species make-up of forests is changed as the time interval between cuts decreases, there is also less chance that the original species composition of the forest will ever be restored.
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Many tree species may experience regeneration problems after cutting because the specific soil and sunlight conditions they require are no longer available. This can be particularly true for fire-dependent species such as jack pine and black spruce.
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| Ecological Impacts from Forestry Roads: |
Road networks are a major part of modern forestry operations and are used to bring in large harvesters and trucks to load logs. Roads also bring a host of problems: |
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Erosion of road materials into waterways, leading to siltation and turbidity problems in rivers, streams and wetlands.
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Oil and gasoline spills into waterways from machinery and trucks.
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The fragmentation or division of large, intact areas of forest into smaller blocks that are then affected by heat, dust and sunlight. These smaller blocks lack the sheltered interior spaces of larger forest blocks and are more open to predators and invasive species.
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Roads can form barriers to wildlife movement, especially for smaller animals that often will not cross roads. Other species may be killed by vehicles while trying to cross.
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Easy access to previously hard-to-reach areas for sport hunters and fishermen, lead to increased hunting and fishing pressure, including poaching. Such an increase can affect the balance of predator-prey relationships as predators become hunting targets and prey species become less abundant. Hunters also often target the largest and healthiest animals in a population.
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Roads may pave the way for further developments in once-wild areas, such as mines, resorts or cottages.
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Garbage and accidental fires: Careless human use of roads may include garbage dumping and setting accidental fires.
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Sand and Gravel: glacial features such as eskers or moraines are destroyed or cut into to provide gravel and sand for road building.
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| Fire versus Clearcutting - How are they Different? |
Fires have played an important role in Saskatchewan's forests since the end of the last ice-age, 10,000 years ago. Fire is crucial to the normal functioning of our forests. For years, debates and controversies have arisen over the issue of whether or not clear-cut logging has similar ecological impacts to fire. While there are some similarities, there are many more differences.
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Similarities:
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both types of disturbance allow significantly more sunlight reach the ground, increasing the abundance of this important growth factor.
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Both disturbances result in some degree of soil erosion and runoff of materials due to the decrease in supporting vegetation. The amount of runoff is quite variable for both depending on the severity of fire, method of clear-cutting and site conditions.
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both clear-cutting and fire always regenerate to a new forest; the problem is that they do not always regenerate to the same type of forest.
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Differences:
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a significant difference between clear-cutting and fire is that numerous standing dead trees usually remain after a fire. This is not so in a clear-cut where most of the trees are removed. Dead trees reduce wind velocity and provide partial shade and habitat for some animals.
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Heat from fires help some forests to regenerate naturally. Seed cones from conifers like jack pine rely on fire-heat to break open and spread their seeds.
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the amount of ground material removed from the site differes. With fire, some material is turned to ash and some leaves the site as gas and smoke. Particulate matter in the smoke mostly falls elsewhere in the forest. Large tree structures fall and decay over time, providing plant and animal habitats and perform as water reservoirs. With clear-cutting, more material leaves the site to be trransformed into lumber, pulp and paper. Large structures important for plant and animal habitats are lost.
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Contary to fire, heavy logging machinery used in clear-cutting redistributes, ruts and compacts soil. Compaction can cause problems for seedling to grow in soils that have lost their natural aeration. Some of these problems can be avoided if harvesting takes place when the soils are frozen, but in many places, harvesting occurs during warm months as well.
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Machinery from logging operations can damage micro-organisms in the soil that are important for plant growth in the forest.
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over centuries, one effect of the intense heat of wildife is that rocks and boulders shatter and ultimtely become soil. Logged sites that are rocky or have bedrock close to the surface do not gain this benefit.
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servere fires reduce many fungi and insects from the ecosystem. Logging activities don't usually provide the same benefits.
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logging, unlike fire, requires roads. New roads bring many impacts including a change in behavior of some animals and greater hunting and fishing pressure.
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