does a crisis matter? forest policy responses to the mountain pine beetle epidemic in british...

Does a Crisis Matter? Forest Policy Responsesto the Mountain Pine Beetle Epidemic

in British Columbia

Harry Nelson

Research Associate, Forest Resources Management, Faculty of Forestry, 2045-2424 MainMall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4 (phone (604) 827-3478;

fax: (604) 822-9106; e-mail: [email protected]).

“[a]n epidemic of catastrophic proportions"...Larry Pedersen, Chief Forester in 2003, in describingthe impact of the outbreak.

What factors are responsible for the introduction of new policies (especially those involving substantivechange) is a phenomenon that is still poorly understood. Researchers have identified policy windowswhere a confluence of events, such as a change in government, the emergence of a new issue, andongoing policy processes, come together to create the opportunity for new policy development. Naturaldisasters can open such policy windows by drawing attention to an issue and mobilizing politicalwill. Yet at the same time, even if policy windows do open, they may not result in effective policydevelopment. The institutional setting in which such policies are developed also plays a key role. Inthe case of the Canadian forest sector, the combination of public resources and private capital makepolicy development especially challenging. Although the scale of the Mountain Pine Beetle epidemic inBritish Columbia is unprecedented, and will change the nature of the forest resource (and by extensionthe industry and communities that rely upon it), the policy response has been limited to short-termmeasures. Although some policy reform was introduced, policy makers have yet to address the questionof whether more fundamental changes are required in order to address the full consequences of theepidemic.

La determination des facteurs responsables de l’introduction de nouvelles politiques (particulierementcelles qui comportent des changements substantiels) demeurent un phenomene mal compris. Deschercheurs ont determine des fenetres d’opportunite politique ou divers evenements, tels qu’un change-ment de gouvernement, l’emergence d’une nouvelle preoccupation et des processus politiques continus,convergent pour creer l’occasion d’elaborer de nouvelles politiques. Les catastrophes naturelles peuventcreer ces fenetres d’opportunite politique en attirant l’attention sur une preoccupation et en mobilisantla volonte politique. Pourtant, meme si des fenetres d’opportunite politique s’ouvrent, elles peuvent nepas se solder par l’elaboration de politiques efficaces. Le cadre institutionnel dans lequel ces politiquessont elaborees joue aussi un role important. Dans le cas du secteur forestier canadien, la combinaisonde ressources publiques et de capitaux prives rend l’elaboration de politiques particulierement delicate.Bien que l’etendue de l’epidemie de dendroctone du pin ponderosa en Colombie-Britannique soit sansprecedent et modifiera la nature de la ressource forestiere (et par extension, l’industrie et les collec-tivites qui en dependent), la reaction politique s’est limitee a des mesures a court terme. Malgre unecertaine reforme des politiques, les decideurs doivent s’interroger sur la necessite d’apporter ou non deschangements fondamentaux supplementaires pour surmonter les consequences de l’epidemie.

INTRODUCTION

Opportunities to create major policy change in forestry policy are uncommon, in part dueto the multiplicity of values and outputs associated with forests, along with a diverse set of

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stakeholders, that make the questions of how forests are managed and what they shouldbe managed for, complex and difficult ones. Byron (2006) identified three triggers forchange in forest policies: implementation failures arising from ineffective institutions orincorrect assumptions; changes in social priorities reflecting changes in values; and newopportunities in how to utilize the forest resource. In Canada, calls for significant forestpolicy change have been widespread and increasing in the past two decades as changingpublic expectations about how the forest should be utilized have resulted in a shift inemphasis toward social and environmental objectives relative to the historic focus oneconomic objectives (Luckert 2005). However, the unique nature of the forest institutionsin Canada makes change even more difficult than in other countries (Haley and Nelson2007). Provinces across Canada have chosen to develop their forest resource throughlong-term agreements under which private firms assume obligations in exchange for therights to harvest the public timber resource. Firms are likely to resist the introductionof new policies if they impose additional costs, and government has historically beenreluctant to act absent sufficient industry support. Yet at the same time, given enoughurgency, policy makers can and do choose to introduce far-reaching policy changes evenif not all stakeholders fully acquiesce (Kamieniecki 2000). Given the widespread callsfor new policies, how then might such a system respond when a crisis occurs? Might ittrigger substantial policy change? The next section discusses several different approachesto considering how policy change occurs in the face of crisis. I then describe the researchmethod, and turn to an examination of how government responded. I show how the crisisopened a policy window but also how the nature of the crisis, combined by the existinginstitutional framework, largely circumscribed the policy response.

Policy Windows and CrisesIn considering how policy makers address issues, researchers from different fields haveused Kingdon’s model of agenda-setting to describe how issues formally move onto gov-ernment agendas (Howlett 1998). In the model, policy entrepreneurs inside and outside ofgovernment take advantage of policy windows that open up that can lead to policy changeand new policy development. Policy windows are created when three different processstreams—political, policies, and problems—converge to create the greatest opportunityfor policy change.1 What opens the policy window can vary: it may be institutionalizedevents, such as elections that happen with predictability, or unexpected occurrences, suchas an airliner crash, that serve as focusing events that can then lead to the streams con-verging. Kingdon suggests that there are two main types of window: a “political” window,where an election or change in public concern opens the window; and a “problem” win-dow, where an issue or problem captures government attention (Kingdon 1984). Kingdon(1984) also describes why policy windows close: if participants feel that the problem hasbeen addressed; if they do not achieve any results; if the crisis is short-lived; or if newparticipants decide that the issue no longer warrants attention or there is no solution tothe problem and its political prominence fades. Michaels et al (2006) argue that sudden,exceptional experiences that lead to harm or expose the prospect for great devastationserve as focusing events that can open policy windows. t’Hart and Boin (2001) suggestthat the nature of the crisis cannot only determine whether or not a window opens butalso contribute to it closing: while the severity of the disruption created by the crisis mayspur action, if the end is indeterminate or the scale appears overwhelming the policy

FOREST POLICY RESPONSES TO THE MOUNTAIN PINE BEETLE EPIDEMIC 461

window can close without any new substantive policies developed as any efforts appearfutile. Solecki and Michaels (1994), in an analysis of how different regional planningorganizations responded to two types of natural disasters (an earthquake and hurricane),found that in those events policy windows did not appear to open.

Organizational Responses to CrisesAnother area of research has been in exploring how a crisis influences decision makingwithin organizations and at a political level. How quickly each crisis arrives, and thedifferent degrees of threat, urgency, and uncertainty all influence both the organizationaland political response. The sense of urgency and threat are especially important as they aremore likely to attract public attention and mobilize political will and hence the resourcesthat are brought to bear in addressing the problem.

Solecki and Michaels (1994) noted that even where windows did open, they didnot necessarily result in the development of new policies or change in objectives, resultssupported by other researchers examining earthquake and flood hazard management(Burby and French 1985; Alesh and Petak 1986). Instead, the organizational and politicalstructures in place are important determinants in influencing policy development. Soleckiand Michaels (1994) suggest that three organizational factors are key in turning suchevents into policy windows that can be exploited: first, a comprehensive view of theissues (rather than a narrow focus on selected aspects); second; an organization that isflexible and empowered to respond in a substantive fashion; and third, the presence ofa policy entrepreneur to champion new policies. In some cases, the policy response maybe conditional on the presence of the crisis; policies that were viewed as restrictive andrelaxed during the crisis may be reinstated when the crisis passes. t’Hart and Boin (2001)note that the decision to “terminate” a crisis is often a political decision to “end” orat least lower the political importance of the issues that it raised as new issues emerge(regardless of whether the consequences persist). Therefore, while a crisis may providethe basis for change, organizational and political factors may support or impede policydevelopment. Indeed, t’Hart and Boin (2001) emphasize that a little-studied aspect ofcrisis is the opportunity it may create for policy reform through relaxing key institutionalconstraints.

Determinants of Institutional ChangeInstitutional economics considers more broadly how institutions (which covers not onlythe organizations themselves but also the “rules” and legislation that provide the gover-nance framework) operate and how they might affect policy development (North 1990).Luckert (2005) notes that the main approach has been through property rights theorythat examines the link between how rights are constructed and their influence on firmand agent behavior. Policy analysis then considers how different configurations of rightslead to different outcomes and the distributional impact of changes in benefits streamsassociated with alternative policies. Luckert (1991), in a case study of forest tenures inBritish Columbia, argues that the effect of any changes in rights or obligations had to betaken into account in designing new policies as these change the incentives firms face andhence their behavior. He emphasizes that particular attention has to be paid to whetheror not the effect of such polices may lead to the elimination of any economic benefits tothe firm from harvesting.


Ideology also plays a role in institutional change, as it explains the mental model ofhow individuals evaluate the world and provides the basis for their normative judgmentsthat are important aspects to public policy making (Schluter 2007). In their study of forestpolicy changes in Europe, Kissling-Naf and Bisang (2001) identify where changes in thepolitical regime paved the way for more substantive changes in forest policies in EasternEuropean countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. However, they also notethat it is more difficult to introduce more fundamental reforms, especially in regard tothe introduction of a rights-based approach where none existed before (Kissling-Naf andBisang 2001).

Research MethodThe assessment of the policy response to Mountain Pine Beetle is based in part on in-terviews with both industry participants and government officials on the effectivenessof the different measures implemented by government and how well they achieved theirobjectives. This follows the triangulation or convergence method as used by Jick (1979)where multiple viewpoints are considered, along with external data, to give more confi-dence in the research results. This approach is used to evaluate organizational responseswhere qualitative analysis is an integral part of the research (Meyer 1982). Solecki andMichaels (1994) and Michaels et al (2006) used a similar approach. In this research,a series of semistructured interviews were conducted with firm and industry associ-ation representatives, along with key government policy makers. A total of 20 inter-views were conducted. In each interview, several standardized questions were asked inregard to the nature of the crisis and an assessment of the policy response that hap-pened and its effectiveness along with how the interviewee’s particular organization hadresponded. Additional data from press releases, action plans prepared by the govern-ment, along with secondary sources, such as newspaper clippings, were used to providecorroboration.

Assessing the Policy ResponseThere are then three aspects to the event that are important in explaining the policies thatwere developed in response to the outbreak. First, how was the crisis framed and perceivedby the different organizations that were involved in policy development? Second, did thecrisis result in a policy window opening, and if it did, how long did it remain open?And third, how did the institutional setting impact the policies that were adopted? Did itfacilitate or circumscribe certain policy options? Before doing so, however, I describe theevent itself, the institutional arrangements governing forest policy, and then the policyresponse.

The Mountain Pine Beetle EpidemicInsect infestations are part of the natural cycle in forests, and indeed British Columbia hasexperienced Mountain Pine Beetle outbreaks before, the most recent being one in the WestCentral part of the Interior in the 1980s. In such an outbreak, as populations expanded inan area, tree mortality would increase and the infestation would start to expand in an areauntil cold winters would interrupt the cycle as it would lead to increased beetle mortalityand populations would fall to low endemic levels. In fact, from an ecological viewpoint,researchers do not necessarily view the current infestation as a crisis, as outbreaks are part


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Figure 1. Volume of mature timber killed by the Mountain Pine Beetle (millions of m3)

of the natural cycle (Taylor et al 2006). However the scale of the current epidemic is muchgreater because of past fire suppression and climate change (Safranyik and Carroll 2006).Figure 1 illustrates the volumes of mature timber killed by the beetle and the dramaticexpansion in the past five years.

This has raised concerns about the possible impact of losing large proportions offorest cover and its effects on habitat, hydrological functioning, and increased risk ofwildfire (Natural Resources Canada 2005). However, the Provincial government has pri-marily framed the epidemic in terms of the impact it will have on timber supply (Pedersen2003) and the crisis is therefore now being largely defined in terms of the socioeconomicconsequences that will follow from reduced harvest levels in the future that in some areasmay fall by 50% or more from preepidemic levels.

The Institutional SettingA key area of forest policy making in British Columbia is around those policies thatgovern the allocation and management of the forest resource in those areas. These areprimarily done through long-term tenure agreements in which the provincial governmentgrants access to the crown forest resource to private firms in exchange for undertakinginvestment in developing the resource. While firms enter into and hold these agreementsfor the financial benefits that accrue from harvesting the timber and converting it, theynot only assume an obligation to pay for the timber but must also assume obligations inregard to meeting social and environmental objectives set by the provincial government.These objectives range from the provision of employment in local communities as wellas providing opportunities for public participation in local management decisions tothe maintenance of biodiversity and wildlife habitat, and long-term enhancement ofthe forest resource. The implementation of these objectives in the management of theresource are then carried out by the firms through their development of harvesting plans(which incorporate these different objectives) which determine what and where theywill harvest as well as in their responsibility to carry out reforestation following theharvest. Indeed, while the province can offer new licenses that direct the license holder


into certain areas or timber types, they have no such power over existing replaceablelicenses that are largely held by the firms that hold the processing capacity. Therefore, thegovernment has to rely in large part on establishing the right incentives if it wishes firmsto carry out certain activities or achieve desired outcomes as it cannot directly mandatefirms directly to do so. This institutional framework in which responsibility is delegatedto private firms to carry out public objectives therefore serves as the key mechanismthrough which any changes in objectives and therefore management policies must then beimplemented.2

The Policy ResponseBoth the provincial and federal government have responded to the outbreak althoughthe British Columbia government is the only one to develop specific forest policies givenits jurisdiction over the forest resources. The federal government has contributed fundingfor assistance and research.3 The main policy approaches taken by the provincial gov-ernment have been in redeploying and increasing harvesting activity by firms operatingin the affected area. Interviewees identified two distinct phases where new polices wereintroduced and subsequently modified; the first, a control phase, was aimed at stemmingthe spread of the beetle and having firms shift their effort from harvesting healthy greentimber to infested trees in areas where the outbreak was occurring. In the second, a sal-vage phase, the policy focus shifted to increasing harvest levels to utilize the dead anddying trees. Currently, most of the harvesting effort is directed toward salvage activities,although there are smaller areas on the edge of the epidemic where there are still somecontrol efforts being undertaken.

Policy changes were introduced in two key areas, notably timber pricing and alloca-tion mechanisms. During the control phase, the government recognized that in order tohave firms shift their harvesting activity away from healthy, green wood to beetle-infestedtrees, that it would need to make the changes cost neutral from a company perspective(British Columbia Ministry of Forests 2001). The most efficient way to do this was throughthe timber pricing or stumpage system. As efforts were directed toward harvesting smallareas of infested trees that were more distant and in nontraditional operating areas, thisled to the development early on of special salvage rates based on the patch size as wellas haul allowances that allowed for timber to go to more distant mills (as the stumpagesystem was based on pricing timber to the closest mill site).

During the salvage phase, the special rates and haul allowances were either dropped ormodified. Instead, more significant changes were made to the timber pricing system itself(although these were not fully implemented until 2006) (British Columbia Ministry ofForests 2006). Historically there had been little differentiation within the system itself forlog quality; timber was either deemed to be a green sawlog with no distinction for qualityor size; dead timber sold for a nominal amount and was excluded from the determinationof harvest levels. Two changes were then introduced: first, log grades were introducedsuch that dead sawlog quality material was no longer sold at the statutory minimum; andsecond, that volume would now count against a licensee’s annual cutting rights. However,the more fundamental change was in terms of the timber pricing system itself. Previouslyit had consisted of a complex administrative system where the rates depended on productprices indices; the new system was one based on market transactions that would take intoaccount the decline in values associated with beetle-killed timber.


The government also moved to increase harvest levels in order to capture as muchvalue from the timber as it could before it became uneconomic to utilize. The results of theuplifts associated with the Mountain Pine Beetle were significant; the overall increasescompared to previous levels of Annual Allowable Cut in the area affected were 60%or more. Here the government chose to make the additional timber volumes availablethrough short-term volume-based agreements known as Nonreplaceable Forest Licenses(NRFLs), as well as expanding the volumes available through the government’s timbersales program (which had been recently restructured). These NRFLs were awarded usingthree different methods: competitive sales in which the highest bidder paid a lump sumplus ongoing stumpage payments; direct awards in which they were directly allocated tonew license holders; and by basing the award on commitments to build new non–lumber-processing capacity.

The Changing Nature of the Crisis and Policy WindowsAlthough the beetle epidemic can be traced to outbreaks that started in the early 1990s,the first formal policy responses did not take place until 2001. Interviewees suggestedthat the delayed response was largely due to the fact that it was first treated as a localproblem and that the outbreak would run its normal course and be brought to a haltby a cold winter event, as it had in the past. However, as the infested area continuedto spread over the next several years, it raised concern within the broader region andlocal government and company officials collaborated to press their concerns through theindustrial association representing firms in the region. The organization embarked uponan effort in 2000 to increase public awareness in order to mobilize political action. Indeed,the interviews suggested that these efforts contributed to raising the profile of the outbreakthat, combined with the increasing scale of the infestation, helped make it a problem thathad to be addressed. At the same time there was also a change in the political stream.The newly elected Liberal government in 2000 had chosen to pursue a more market-basedstrategy and appeared more predisposed toward taking more immediate actions to protectand recover the economic values associated with the forest resource than the previousgovernment. The government had also been contemplating changes in its timber pricingpolicies for some time and was also being pressed politically to make changes in its timberallocation policies.4 Together, these two streams led to a policy window that opened in2000 that lasted for several years and contributed to the policy changes.

Perceptions of how to address the crisis also influenced the policy response. Initially,in the control phase, policy makers and others believed the appropriate approach wasto treat the outbreak as one would a fire, attacking hot spots (localized concentrationsof beetles) through harvesting activities that in turn control and eventually suppress theoutbreak. Over time, as the infestation continued to grow despite the measures that hadbeen implemented, decision makers’ perspective of the epidemic changed from a problemthat could be controlled to adapting to a crisis that was inevitable.5 The policy focus hastherefore shifted to extracting as much economic value from beetle-killed trees as possibleand how to mitigate the reduction in timber supply that will happen in 10 years’ time andlast for several decades.

However, it is also apparent that the policy window has closed even though a numberof stakeholders (namely firms and communities) felt that the policies developed do notdeal with the full socioeconomic consequences of the epidemic, especially the predicted


disruption in timber supply and its impact on the industry and employment and byextension on forest-dependent communities in the area. In this case the window closed,not because the epidemic went away (if anything, it expanded even more quickly), butbecause the sense of political urgency started to evaporate. Industry interviewees feltthat government had started to take a more fatalistic view that little could be done asthe epidemic progressed and that the focus was now only on how much timber couldbe harvested before it lost all economic value. From their perspective, government hadreverted to a more “business as usual” approach and was less willing to explore alternativeapproaches or develop new policies to address issues raised by the epidemic, especiallythe longer-term consequences of the epidemic. From a government perspective, officialsfelt that while initially there had been a shared sense of commitment and responsibilityto address the problems raised by the outbreak, over time the industry had shifted intomore of a negotiating position in regard to seeking policy changes that would benefitthemselves and that were not consistent with government objectives, instead seeking tomaximize short-term economic returns through harvesting the highest-valued timberpossible. From a broader political perspective, public interest outside of the affectedcommunities waned after the announcement of action plans and funding commitmentsthat offered the promise of resolving the issues associated with the epidemic (althoughthis was not a sentiment shared in those communities). There also did not appear to beany policy entrepreneurs pushing for overall change for the system; instead, there wasonly the effort to push for changes around timber pricing.6

The Institutional Limitations to Policy ChangeWhile the Mountain Pine Beetle crisis did spur policy change in the areas of timberpricing and allocation, the degree of change differed, resulting in more substantive policyreform in terms of pricing but only incremental changes in terms of allocation. Severalgovernment officials noted that a part of the policy-making process in British Columbia isthe consultative process government goes through in making policy changes with industry,a fact noted by other observers (Kamieniecki 2000). Interviews confirmed that timberpricing is one of the key variables influencing firm behavior and also one of the mostcontentious areas of policy change. Policy makers had wanted to introduce changes tothe timber pricing system for a number of years but industry resistance to change hadprecluded their adoption. However, as the volume of dead sawlogs started increasing,combined with the realization that in future the existing timber pricing system wouldnot adequately address the changing quality of the timber resource, firms acquiescedto making such changes although they continue to express reservations about how wellthe newly introduced system reflects current costs and values. In this case the epidemiccontributed to helping overcome previous institutional constraints.

The more incremental policy changes in terms of allocation reflect the fact that theseare more fundamental changes to the system and therefore elicit even greater industryresistance. Industry did not resist the introduction of NRFLs in part because it did notlead to any changes in their existing rights and, indeed, it simply meant that more timbervolume was being made available to be processed through their facilities. Indeed, as thegovernment decided to award a significant portion to First Nations in an effort to addressaboriginal concerns over treaty rights, this also helped relieve some short-term politicalpressure in terms of allocation policies.7 Yet government and industry officials also noted


that by allocating such licenses, even if they were short-term and nonreplaceable, thegovernment had also created new claims on the resource at the same time the future avail-ability was going to fall, heightening potential political conflict. In this case, there wasnot a willingness to make more fundamental changes to the tenure system itself, despitethe fact that changing resource values will make it even more difficult to achieve the tradi-tional economic, environmental, and social objectives. Indeed, as the public continues todemand greater weight be given noneconomic objectives, while politicians and communi-ties continue to express worry about the effect of reduced employment and mill closingson forest-dependent communities, it can be expected that this pressure will intensify asboth the quantity of timber available decreases and the value of that timber declines.The conflict between different objectives will only be heightened (McGarrity and Hoberg2005). Yet at the same time the policy response also revealed how difficult it is to establishnew objectives. A number of interviewees felt that although the policy focus in terms ofsalvage clearly emphasized economic objectives, there was no clear goal in the policiesthat had been introduced: they were unsure as to whether the goal was to maximize short-term timber revenue by targeting recently attacked trees; maximize long-term revenue bysalvaging as many trees as possible before they lost in value (requiring harvesting treesthat were in a further stage of attack); or trying to maximize the long-term timber supplyregardless of the economic costs associated in doing so. Here preexisting paradigms interms of forest management (such as an emphasis on maintaining and maximizing pre-dictable levels of harvest), combined with the political difficulty of introducing changesin objectives (where the political will is lacking absent a public consensus) help explainthe lack of more substantive policy response.

Perhaps the more fundamental question is what role the government should playin developing policy responses for the post-beetle world. The full effects of the reducedtimber supply is expected to materialize in 10 or more years’ time, which offers individualsand firms time to make their own decisions as to how they want to respond. Marketadjustment is an alternative to potentially costly and perhaps unsuccessful efforts tomaintain the timber supply or offset the community impacts with other programs thatare ultimately not economically justified. Given that falldown has been recognized as aninevitable part of industry transition across Canada, the effects of the Mountain PineBeetle epidemic should be discussed within this framework and consideration should begiven to the limitations of what government can do. More generally the long-term timbersupply planning approach in predicting future timber supply can lead to expectationsthat government has greater control over future events than it actually does.8 In fact,government policy efforts to craft some long-term response may have perverse incentivesas individuals and communities (rather than initiating actions that make sense from theirown economic circumstances) lobby for relief even as their economic fortunes decline.9

CONCLUSIONS

While it was clear that the crisis did trigger some policy reform, that reform was limited.The most substantive changes were around the timber pricing system, which had been alongstanding policy goal of the government. Industry had resisted the implementationof these changes over concerns on their overall costs and the uncertainty as to how suchsystems would work but the epidemic helped overcome this resistance, not only because


it was apparent that the system had to change, but also indirectly as the increased timbervolumes that were being made available reduced some of the risk associated with short-term timber availability (firms could reasonably assume that sufficient timber would beavailable at competitive prices). This is perhaps unsurprising; at least in the short-term,there was little need for the system itself to change, as it simply required expandingto handle higher volumes of timber and the existing system is oriented around tryingto generate as much timber volume as possible. Indeed, the additional timber volumessatisfied short-term political demands while not resulting in any fundamental changes inallocation as these rights were of limited duration.10

However provincial governments have yet to consider how well suited the existingsystem is to address the full consequences of the epidemic, especially when the availabilityof timber (and the quality of the remaining timber) start to decline significantly. Indeedthe questions posed by the epidemic are likely to increasingly face Crown forest managersacross Canada in the future as climate change and associated changing environmentalconditions across Canada increase the risk of drought, wildfires, and even the mountainpine beetle spreading into the boreal forest (it has already entered Alberta). Respondingto these issues requires consideration of how well adapted existing systems based on even,predictable timber flows are to such disruptive events. It is to the credit of policy makersthat they do recognize that adapting to these changing circumstances will require a changein policies and indeed these changes may need to be much deeper and transformative thanhas been the case in the past (Betts 2006). Yet at the same time the limited response inBritish Columbia underscores the difficulty of change and how briefly the window staysopen and how limited change may be when the consequences are in the future, moreremote, and appear inevitable.

NOTES1The political stream consists of the characteristics of the political process (ideology, election cycles,structure of legislative bodies), while the problems stream consists of the characteristic of the issuesthat arise and the policy stream consists of the development of policy solutions (Howlett 1998).2Given the predominance of publicly owned land in British Columbia (94%), this means that themajority of the timber harvest—typically in excess of 85% or more—is coming from public lands.3The Federal government has promised $1 billion while the provincial government has madecommitments of close to $500 million (British Columbia Ministry of Forests 2005).4Indeed the provincial government in 2003 introduced a broad set of forest policy reforms coveringthe entire province (Niquidet et al 2006).5Indeed, it is possible that such measures may have been effective a few years earlier when beetlepopulations were lower. However, given how rapidly populations can expand in the epidemic phase(doubling each year), the effort required at this stage to suppress populations may no longer havebeen feasible.6The provincial government also introduced what could be considered a policy champion within theorganization by creating a position called the “Beetle Boss” within the Ministry of Forests in 2001(Stirling 2002). The idea of a Beetle Boss was modeled on the idea of a fire boss—a local decisionmaker empowered to draw upon whatever resources were required to suppress a fire. However thepurpose of the Beetle Boss was simply to provide a focal point for the policy responses and hedid not have the authority to make any policy changes, thereby limiting the effectiveness of thisresponse. The one area in which he had any authority was during the control phase, the ability todesignate areas Emergency Mountain Pine Beetle management zones. This permitted the use ofthe special timber pricing allowances as well as the use of streamlined regulations that expedited


harvesting approvals. Following the control phase, the role has changed to one of providing morecoordination within the ministry in response to the different issues raised and the Beetle Boss doesnot enjoy any special powers under the salvage phase.7While industry officials did not disagree with the general approach, they felt that this had caused ashort-term disruption in the timber supply as some of these volumes were being delayed in enteringthe market. This delay was having a twofold effect: first, the impact on overall timber availabilitywithin localized areas; and second, the subsequent deterioration in quality that would reduce theamount of revenue that could be recovered in the long term.8“Such alterations have taken place under the guise of rational planning and created an illusion ofhuman capacity to impose not only order on the environment but also to alter the environment toconform to human will” (Ingram 2001, p. 298) in referring to large-scale water development in aridareas.9This is not to suggest that there is no role for government. Rather it would be in developingtransition strategies for individuals and communities rather than maintaining the belief that thesystem as a whole can be expected to sustain current levels of economic outputs while simultaneouslymeeting all of the other expectations.10The increased harvest levels provided a relatively painless way for politicians to meet politicalcommitments to First Nations and communities more generally that followed from the policychanges in 2003 avoided the political cost of additional redistribution of cutting rights away fromexisting licensees that may otherwise have been required. As well the increase in timber supply hashad the expected effect of leading to lower log prices; at least from a short-term perspective thismade the overall market-based tenure changes introduced several years earlier more palatable toindustry (where they had a portion of their cutting rights removed).

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does a crisis matter? forest policy responses to the mountain pine beetle epidemic in british...

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