Stewards of the People's Wealth: The Founding of British Columbia's Forest Branch

Abstract

Xthe turn of the century, growing concern over the effects of accelerated forest utilization, forest fire, disease, and other threats to a valuable natural resource prompted the establishment of numerous public forestry agencies throughout the United States and Canada. Initially, such agencies were poorly equipped to handle the important job of forest conservation. Formation of the new state or national forestry services was an exercise in fiscal and bureaucratic restraint; seldom were they given the requisite power to design and implement an effective forestry program. Extending their jurisdiction gradually, such agencies evolved through a period of public debate and sometimes acrimonious bureaucratic wrangling before they achieved maturity as conservators of public resources. In the United States, Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot's fight to transfer administration of the federal forest reserves from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture is one case in point.' In Canada, Chief Inspector of Timber and Forestry Elihu Stewart likewise struggled for control over cutting on dominion timber berths. At the provincial level, Judson Clark and Bernhard Fernow fought and lost the battle to consolidate powers in Ontario's forestry agency. The British Columbia situation was the exception to this trend. The provincial government had checked the transfer of public forestlands to private cornpanies in 1905, leaving B. C. with one of the highest percentages of commercial forest under government control in the world. The province's Forest Branch, established in 1912, was immediately given jurisdiction over all forestry activity on this immense area of crown (public) land. Relative latecomers to the North American forest conservation movement, British Columbia foresters were not only able to use the experiences of others to justify radical action to curb industrial excesses, but they were able to avoid the pitfalls of developing a forestry system in a region traditionally controlled by private interests operating on public lands. The B. C. forestry situa-