Restructuring of the boreal forest and the forest sector in Newfoundland, Canada

Abstract

Newfoundland pulp logs were once considered an abundant resource available for export, but over the last part of the 20th century became a shrinking commodity, imported to the island to keep 3 paper mills supplied. What were the concurrent changes in the human and the forested landscapes? Faced with increasing resource and labour costs, forest operations became increasingly centralized and mechanized during the second half of the 20th century. Labour productivity increased and, until the mid-1970s, pulpwood processing also increased as a means for forest companies to remain competitive. By the mid-1970s, processed volumes began to fall, but the number of employees in the forest sector continued to decline, resulting in a steady increase in the volume of pulpwood required to support a forest sector job. Forests accessed by loggers were first concentrated around waterways and then became more dispersed across the landscape, as a result of changes in wood extraction and transportation technologies. Beginning in the 1950s and increasingly through the 1980s, pulpwood was cut from targeted, high-volume stands. Eventually 2 of the 3 paper mills was forced to close, in part because of higher costs associated with accessing pulpwood. Newfoundland's history of forestry restructuring is similar to the experience elsewhere in Canada. We suggest that signals of overexploitation have been often overlooked by policy-makers and changes in the forest sector can be more easily viewed as a response to new technologies and global markets than policy-making. Canada, employment, history, landscape, logging, Newfoundland and Labrador, policy, restructuring, sustainability.