Garth Lenz

Industrial landscape: Industrial Forestry

  • Warmer winters are causing the spread of the mountain pine beetle. It has now crossed to the east side of the rockies and threatens the boreal forests across the north.
  • Another early aerial image while flying with Vicky Husband of the Sierra Club back in 1990. Yaky Kop Cone, Quatsino Inlet, Vancouver Island. B.C. Nicknamed {quote}Mr T{quote} by Doug Tompkins when edited for the book {quote}CLEARCUT.{quote}
  • Extensive cearcutting in the San Juan Valley on southern Vancouver Island near Victoria. This image is from my first assignment. The Globe and mail contacted the B.C. chapter of the Sierra Club when they wanted a photographer to accompany their writer on a flight over Vancouver Island. The Sierra Club recommended me and I shot my first assignment and my first aerials.This image was used extensively with the title {quote}Brazil Of The North{quote} to bring international attention to B.C. logging practices. In the middle foreground, a once productive salmon stream can be seen.
  • CSA certified logging by Weyerhaeuser.Walbran Valley, Vancouver Island,B.C., Canada.In an effort to counter educational campaigns directed at changing the market for the procurement of clearcut forest products, forest industry groups have come up with {quote}certification{quote} systems to convince customers they are logging responsibly.
  • A {quote}progressive{quote} clearcut on Haida Gwaii. Progressive in the sense that recent clearcutting directly joins to older clearcuts to create on massive area of deforestation.
  • This is a so-called {quote}alternative logging operation{quote} by Macmillan Bloedel from 1991. The company issued a press release stating that this was an example of {quote}World class alternative logging,{quote} {quote}The best that we can do.{quote} Armed with this information I wanted to see the so called alternative logging. The image ended up being a poster for Greenpeace's compaign to end clearcutting.
  • Another early image - 1990 - and first attempts at aerials.In the early 1990's, as an attempt to counter growing international criticism of logging practices in B.C., the government brought in logging guidelines. Seen hear is a {quote}Scenic Fringe{quote} as part of the Government's {quote}Visual Quality Objectives.{quote}
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  • In an effort to counter educational campaigns directed at changing the market for the procurement of clearcut forest products, forest industry groups have come up with {quote}certification{quote} systems to convince customers they are logging responsibly.
  • Pulp Mill, Hinton, Alberta, Canada
  • This mill has been owned by Proctor and Gamble, Kimberley Clarke, and now Weyerhaeuser. It spews ras, untreated effluent into the Smoky River. It has failed hundreds of water quality tests and never been shutdown. Downstream, native communities with double digit unemplyment and extremely high fodd costs, are forced to take fish from the river to survive, in spite of govenment warnings not to eat the fish due to health risks.
  • This mill has been owned by Proctor and Gamble, Kimberley Clarke, and now Weyerhaeuser. It spews ras, untreated effluent into the Smoky River. It has failed hundreds of water quality tests and never been shutdown. Downstream, native communities with double digit unemplyment and extremely high fodd costs, are forced to take fish from the river to survive, in spite of govenment warnings not to eat the fish due to health risks.
  • This may be the World's most southerly clearcut. Originally deforested for cattle grazing, it is at the tip of Mainland Chile with the Straits of Megellan visible in the background. As clearcut logging pushes further north into areas that were previously intact, so to does industrial logging now threaten southern areas like Tierra del Fuego, which until recent times was free of industrial logging.
  • Throughout Patagonia native forests are being clearcut and replaced by plantations. In 2005, two of the largest Chilean forest companies commited to ending this practice.
  • A common feature of the boreal is the site of patchwork logging. Often used as a way to get around clearcut size restrictions, it merely spreads the damage and fragmentation over a larger area.
  • A common feature of the boreal is the site of patchwork logging. Often used as a way to get around clearcut size restrictions, it merely spreads the damage and fragmentation over a larger area. This particular clearcut is in Wood Buffalo National Park. this is the World's second largest National Park, and straddles the Alberta/Northwest territories border. The park contains on of the greatest inland deltas - the Athabasca Delta - and is the sole breeding ground for the Whooping Crane. Logging was approved as part of the war effort during the Second World War. The permission to log in a National Park was only terminated in 1992.
  • Logs from Rene-Levasseur region (Quebec).Being processed at Abitibi's Des Outardes sawmill near Baie Comeau, Quebec.
  • Tembec Forest Stewardship Councilcertified logging operations.Kapuskasing/Timmins, Northern Ontario
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