In 2016, Rick Rajala and Robert Griffin's The Sustainability Dilemma examined issues that arose for the Forest Service, the forest industry and British Columbians in general over a roughly 60-year period, starting from 1930s. Chiefly it presents different viewpoints as to how the BC Forest Service managed forests before the word ecology gave rise to sustainability concerns. The authors seek to highlight historical events that have been largely forgotten by the public and mostly unexamined by scholars. In doing so, they unveil some of the larger power dynamics beyond the efforts to practice sustained-yield and multiple-use forestry methods.

Previously University of Victoria instructor and historian Richard (Rick) Rajala examined how the development of forest practices in British Columbia traditionally served corporate rather than social or ecological ends in Clearcutting the Pacific Rain Forest (UBC $75). It won the Forest History Society's Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award.

As a research associate at the Royal BC Museum, Dr. Rajala provided a comprehensive history of logging from Bella Coola to the Nass River in Up-Coast: Forest and Industry on British Columbia's North Coast, 1870-2005 (Royal B.C. Museum, 2006). It chronicles how and why small-scale operations tied to the needs of salmon canneries and early settlements were eclipsed by giant pulp-and-paper companies such as Pacific Mills at Ocean Falls. Concentration of ownership was further enhanced by granting extensive Tree Farm Licenses, enabling companies to use northern log extraction to feed their southern mills despite the protests of First Nations, unions and local communities.

Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
The Legacy and the Challenge: A Century of the Forest Industry at Cowichan Lake

BOOKS:

The Legacy and the Challenge: A Century of the Forest Industry at Cowichan Lake (Lake Cowichan Heritage Advisory Committee, 1993)

Clearcutting the Pacific Rain Forest: Production, Science and Regulation (UBC Press, 1998).

Feds, Forests and Fire: A Century of Canadian Forestry Innovation (Ottawa: Canada Science and Technology Museum, Spring 2005).

Up-Coast: Forest and Industry on British Columbia's North Coast, 1870-2005 (Royal B.C. Museum, 2006). 0-7726-5460-3 $49.95

The Sustainability Dilemma (Royal B.C. Museum 2016) with Robert Griffin

[BCBW 2016] "Forestry"