Woodlots are Important

What’s the value of the poplar forest on our doorstep?  Well, that all depends.

Conventional wisdom says it has a negative value. The bush needs to be removed! Only then can we use the land for something of value: grow annual crops, spread hog manure, or build houses.

But it has not always been that way. Both the aboriginal inhabitants and the early settlers had a preference for the transition areas; the space between the forests and the prairie where they had access to both the trees and rich soils for food production.

But that changed with the arrival of more convenient, cheap energy: oil and natural gas. Given our culture’s focus on human efficiency, heating our homes with oil and natural gas now makes sense. And as our dependency on that gas and oil grows, our need for energy derived from wood diminishes. The forest on our doorstep has lost much of its value.

So this is now “normal”. We heat our homes with oil and gas pumped or trucked from Alberta 1200 km from here. Our “normal” fuel is a fossil fuel of a finite quantity. The price of this fossil fuel is determined by the cost of extracting it, with no thought for replacing it. At one time oil was available by simply scooping it up. That oil is long gone. Then we learned to drill for oil so we could pump it up from underground. That oil supply too is dwindling rapidly. Now we are extracting oil from tar sands, which is even more challenging, but possible. This is the current “normal.”

But even as we increase our dependence on this dwindling, distant energy supply, we have a renewable energy supply on our doorstep – and consider it a liability.

Not only that. The current tragedy in Japan makes it obvious that large scale interdependency has created significant efficiencies, but the interdependence also creates incredible vulnerabilities when that interdependency is disrupted. Our dependency on an energy source 1200 km away brings with it a vulnerability we trivialize at our peril.

At South Eastman Transition Initiative we try to look at things non-conventionally. Depending on a distant non-renewable resource while we waste a local renewable resource is simply not sustainable on the long run. It is foolish. It does not make sense. On the long run we will run out of energy. We need to find other ways of doing things. Utilizing the woodlots in our neighbourhood is one such way.  

How much do we know about the potential benefit of a woodlot in southeastern Manitoba? For most of us, not much. Our emphasis has been on efficiently clearing the bush, not managing the woodlot. This emphasis needs to change, and it will – either now, as a result of vision, forethought and conservation, or later as our oil and natural gas reserves dwindle.

  

Eric Rempel