Arthur Haliburton, 1st Baron Haliburton

Transcription

[ Episode 3 Preview: The Haliburton Forest ] >> NARRATOR: The Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve is a three hundred square kilometer, privately owned forest located in the northern reaches of The Land Between. It is Canada’s first ‘sustainable forest.’ >> PETER SCHLEIFENBAUM: The lands were originally owned by the timber barons that came into this country in the 1860s and the 1870s. The method of choice of dealing with the forest at the time was high grading, which means all the good timber is being removed, and not only that, but in the process a lot of the remaining forest is being damaged. And that has happened through several rotations, so really when Haliburton Forest was formed in the 1960s - there really wasn’t a lot of usable timber. So since then, because obviously takes a century to rebuild a forest like this, we’ve been trying to improve and rebuild the forest to its original glory. Overall the basic principal that we apply here at Halliburton Forest, in terms of timber harvesting, is referred to as ‘single tree selection harvest.’ So we literally look at each tree individually, and then they mark the trees for removal. Commonly, one out of four, one out of five trees in a forest is being marked. And the harvesting then focuses on those trees - take those out of the forest as benignly and carefully as possible. When Haliburton Forest was created, there really was no resource to speak of that was able to carry the operation sustainably. And one of the other things that I think is crucially vital for us to remember is - there is no ecological sustainability without economic sustainability. If we can’t afford it, we can’t do it. And the manager at the time started to incorporate camping into the fabric of Haliburton Forest. Once camping, which is predominately a summer use, was established and thriving, staff were on site here - and the staffs obviously didn’t like to be laid off in the fall, and that’s what brought snowmobiling on the scene. And to this day, Haliburton Forest is really the only, truly private snowmobiling operation in the world. And from that then flowed all the other uses that today make up the overall fabric of the Forest, where about half of our revenues are being derived from income not related to timber or resource use at all. We have a very strong research partnership with a number of organizations - the most prominent being the Faculty of Forestry at the University of Toronto. And throughout the summer, there’s probably twenty-five to thirty researchers living on site, and carrying out the various research projects. The rationale being that you need to know what you’re talking about and what you’re dealing with first before you actually start to do something. The concept that we’re following in our management approach is referred to as ‘adaptive management.’ So whenever we see something happening, something that we should change, we do change it - immediately. So we don’t have to wait for another five or ten year plan to be drawn up, as governments often do.