CLAYOQUOT SOUND is well known in British Columbia for its temperate rainforest, as home of the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples, and for its "war in the woods" over land use and logging practices. It has been inscribed in the imaginations of British Columbia and the world as an old-growth treasure, a culturally modified landscape, a site of conflict, a tourism destination, and an object of research. Today, its people and ecosystems continue to navigate a shifting terrain of committees, meetings, panels, and programs, constantly redefining the meaning of their place and defining where its future might lie. Such activities produce stories of change enacted by many characters. One story little told among the others is that of the Long Beach Model Forest (LBMF), a federally funded experiment based in Clayoquot. In 1993, the Long Beach project began as one of ten sites across the country intended to provide working models of sustainable forestry in each of the major "forest regions" of Canada. (2) Direction and sponsorship for this Model Forest Program came from Natural Resources Canada and Forestry Canada. (3) While the nine other model forests were funded for three five-year periods from 1993 to 1998, 1998 to 2002, and 2003 to 2008, the LBMF was "cancelled," or ceased to exist, after 2002. Local newspapers chalked up the death of the model forest to internal structural issues, infighting, and an inability to meet federal expectations. (4) Like other Clayoquot stories, this one had its share of controversy and disappointments. Unlike the stories of 1993, when thousands massed in the Sound to protest forestry company MacMillan Bloedel's harvesting plans there--an occasion remembered for the protest camp at the "Black Hole" in the middle of an extensive clear-cut, for the women of Clayoquot standing up for old-growth, and for counter-protests from logging families whose livelihoods were at stake--the LBMF story has not been recounted. The LBMF's nine years of existence are not catalogued by the Canadian Forest Service (CFS), in secondary literature, or through any regional memoir. To some, the LBMF is understood as a failure, as another bureaucratic project that caused trouble and came undone. (5) Yet there is more to its life and death. The silence around its demise demands a postscript.

Model forest, Long beach, Canada