This is a follow-up to my two earlier 2021 Letters to the Editor to Pique on B.C.’s abysmal forest practices.
Call this the last salvo. I met with retiring UBC Dean John Innes a few weeks ago hoping that in his retirement he would become more proactive in facilitating greater involvement between the UBC Faculty of Forestry and the B.C. government, with the goal of implementing the highest level of science-based forestry management in our province.
B.C. needs this to be much more than “his hope” as he called it in his last Dean’s Message, “11 Years as Dean: A Look Back.”
How could he say that the Faculty is “increasingly recognized as one of the leading faculties of forestry worldwide” given the sad state of B.C.’s forestry practices? He himself mentioned his “inability to engage government and industry” and there is little evidence of acceptable science-based management on the ground in B.C.
Scientific progress is irrelevant if no one is listening and these advancements are not being acted upon.
I appreciate the way Dean Innes took our government and the industry to task in his last Dean’s Message for their lack of interest in engaging and collaborating, but what that tells me is that the Dean of the Faculty needs to garner as much public support as possible and become very vocal and as proactive as possible.
His criticism of government and industry should be made very public. The people of B.C. need to hear it. Academics and scientists might not naturally embrace that role, but if they don’t speak out who will?
It must be unbelievably frustrating to be producing good science, if that is the case, yet with no one caring. The Dean and others like him need to speak out and sell the good science to the people and our government.
Given Dean Innes is retiring I have copied his successor, Dr. Rob Kozak, on these thoughts and have attached my two previous Pique Letters to the Editor (copying Premier John Horgan) for him to read. This thread is important, as it is my hope that Dr. Kozak, as the new Dean, will initiate a dialogue with our government with the goal of making the UBC Faculty of Forestry relevant in the management of our forests.
I hope Dr. Kozak will show leadership and courage in speaking out as loudly as possible with regard to the dire need for the highest level of science-based forestry practices in B.C.
If the province won’t come to UBC then UBC needs to go to the province.
I hope Dean Innes will take this to heart and that in his retirement he will use all of his know-how to do the same.
We need both of them to act now as our forests have run out of time.
