Biodiversity By Whose Standards?

                                                            'Biodiversity' has become a buzzword for those who wish to argue that we can ravage what is left of the forest in New Brunswick if only we do it according to the "best available science" that will protect those "non-commercial objectives" that everyone says must be considered. Unfortunately, many of those most prone to utterances such as these do not demonstrate much knowledge about what they are debating - or, if they do have the knowledge, they are not revealing the fact because, in so doing, they would be revealing the inherent contradictions in their positions. In short, those who are most prone to uttering all the right words are guilty of the old "wanting to have one's cake and eating it too" fallacy.  

           Using a word like "biodiversity" gives one, I suppose, a certain aura. It implies that the user has read the literature. Further it suggests that he or she is sympathetic to those "non-commercial objectives" to which I alluded above. And it implies that, somehow, the forest can sustain a twenty-five percent increase in harvesting, and a one-third reduction in the acreage that has been set aside from full-scale harvesting,while maintaining biodiversity, if only one uses "the best available science."  

           My personal response can be summarized in one word: nonsense. I am neither a scientist nor, in any formal sense, a logician, but I have read and thought enough on this topic over the years to know that the arguments about the future of the crown forests currently wafting around the province are self-contradictory and dissembling.  

           Biodiversity is a concept that defines the complexity of an ecosystem in terms of the number of organisms that make it up and the way they relate to one another. The more one looks at a complete ecosystem, however small, the more one understands its intricacy. A forest is much more than an amalgam of a few tree species; it also involves all of those micro-organisms that inhabit the soil and make it useful for the trees. It includes the soil structure itself, something that has built up over millennia to perform essential functions within the system. It includes those bird, mammal, insect, amphibian, and reptilian species that not only inhabit it, but contribute to it in ways that are often not evident until they are removed. To argue that one can harvest such a system and replace it with a few pre-selected tree species, which will then be encouraged to grow by preventing "invasive" or "intrusive", or "destructive" species from competing with them is at the very least, simplistic, misleading and false.  

           Further, the integrity of a given ecosystem may depend on that of another that might, at first glance, seems remote and independent. A clear cut forest may very well have a very negative impact on a brook valley community many kilometres downstream, and seemingly well away from the operation itself. This is  why, for example, that the water in the Restigouche River reaches mid summer low levels and high temperatures much earlier than it did years ago - and it is not just because the summers are warmer than they used to be. (They aren't, by the way).  

           In a mad dash toward economic self-sufficiency (suddenly another buzz-word, or phrase in this instance) I fear that we may be being asked to sacrifice a great deal more than we realize, especially if we succumb to the cant of those who know the right words - and who misappropriate them.