People in the Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 518

in the twentieth century, a large labor force was required, resulting in the importation
of workers from beyond the mountains, many of whom moved on following the deple-
tion of the resource. In labor-deficient areas such as British Columbia, where forestry
remains a mainstay industry today, experienced forest workers came from as far as
Europe, northern Punjab in India, and parts of China. Some of these migrant workers
settled, and their descendants remain an important part of the multicultural society of
this mountainous region. Along with the harvesting of trees, the construction of roads,
railroads, and work camps had negative impacts on forests, landscape, and mountain
communities, while at the same time generating employment and income for mountain
people and outsiders.
Prior to colonial expansion and independence, most mountain people held local cus-
tomary or de facto forest use rights established over long periods (Fig. 10.13). Within
these rights, tribute may have been owed to rulers and community leaders. Customary
rights of use and management were swept aside to varying degrees with the widespread
commercialization of, and demand for, timber that accompanied new colonial and/or
national land administration. This was especially the case in the Himalaya and North
American Cordillera, where vast forested areas became crown or state-owned land.
Rights of use were written into law, becoming de jure rights, which, with some excep-
tions, removed the customary rights of local people. Widespread deforestation ensued
to meet the demands of an external market. In the European Alps, mountain forests are
largely still owned by the government, the Church, or private persons.
The large-scale deforestation also had many negative impacts on local food sources,
water quality and quantity, soils, and customary livelihoods. This led to many protests,
most to no effect, but two protest movements in the 1960-1990 period, Chipko in the
Garhwal Himalaya (Rangan 2000) and Clayoquot Sound in the coastal mountains of
Vancouver Island (Braun 2002), became iconic and helped draw attention to customary
rights and the need for comanagement of forest resources in the mountains. It should
be noted that, during the time of British colonial administration in the Himalaya, some
customary rights were written into law in what is now Himachal Pradesh (Fig. 10.13).
However, many of these local rights have disappeared since Indian independence.
Principles of “scientific forestry,” as practiced initially in Germany, were widely adop-
ted in the late nineteenth century in an effort to redress some negative aspects of tree
harvesting and to encourage sustainable forestry in the mountains. Silviculture was a
key component and led to reforestation of some harvested areas, a practice that con-
tinues widely today. In some cases, reforestation has favored replanting with fast-grow-
ing, commercially viable species as monocultures, resulting in a loss of endemic species
and a reduction in forest species diversity, thus changing mountain forests. The new
forms of forest management and forestry have generated additional forms of livelihood
and have reduced some of the negative impacts of widespread deforestation. Forestry
ebbs and flows with global market demand, prices for timber products, and interna-
tional trade regulation, all factors external to local mountain settings. This leaves local
livelihoods with a high level of uncertainty, as is the case in most resource extraction
economies.
Today, mountain communities, private landholders, corporations, governments, and
various international institutions emphasize the vital multifunctionality of mountain
forests and the need for sustainable forest management (Price et al. 2011; Fig. 10.13).