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At the Cutting Edge: The Crisis in Canada’s Forest

by Elizabeth May

Elizabeth May, an environmental writer, has written At the Cutting Edge: The Crisis in Canada’s Forest primarily as a wake-up call to alert people to the devastation of Canada’s forests – a crisis that May repeatedly asserts is parallel to the overfishing of cod in the Maritimes. May lays the blame for this devastation at the feet of cavalier politicians, profit-driven business, and such corporate shibboleths as the superabundance of Canada’s resources and the role of logging in creating jobs. She argues, too, that technological mechanization is the driving force behind the wood-supply crisis and ecological damage, likening it to the dragging of the fishing banks, allowing plunder at inconceivable rates that would not be possible if workers were operating manually.

With a foreword by Farley Mowat, this book grew out of a report on the state of Canada’s forests by the Sierra Club and examines the long-term effects of clear-cut logging on the environment. May assembled a team of 13 researchers across the country, who have worked primarily from secondary sources, and examined the current situation in each geographical section of the country. In addition to charts and helpful maps, a concise overview of the industry in Canada explains how we got into this mess. There are good explanations of such forestry terms as clear-cutting and stumpage and how Crown Land was parcelled out in long-term leases with very little regulation.

May hopes to heal polarities and open the debate between the two extreme positions on this issue: business and the environmentalists. By bringing the two sides together, further waste can be averted and we can safeguard what’s left for future generations, mainly by increased regulations, decreased cutting (the Sierra Club believes the cut is currently at least 30% higher than it should be), and by community forestry.

Unfortunately, statistics, graphs, and numbers don’t make for riveting reading. I highly doubt businesspeople or the general reader will pick up this book. It’s dry reading, and will interest those already concerned about the plight of Canada’s environment.

May writes objectively and reasonably. There are no traces of hysteria. The only low point I found was her statement that to find out what we’ve lost as a nation, we’d have to ask a tree.

May’s cause would have been better served by reaching a wider audience through television programs and documentaries, rather than another book, albeit well researched and clearly written, that will likely disappear from shelves in a few months time.

 

Reviewer: Susan Hughes

Publisher: Key Porter

DETAILS

Price: $28.95

Page Count: 384 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 1-55013-852-4

Released: Feb.

Issue Date: 1998-2

Categories: Science, Technology & Environment