Vladimir Krajina: World War II Hero and Ecology Pioneer - Jan Drabek

Few people live lives that would make for an interesting book, and not all those who have lived such interesting lives are well known. Vladimir Krajina, a Czech botanist who worked at the University of British Columbia in the second half of the 20th century, fits this description. Biographer Jan Drabek, himself a Czech émigré living in Vancouver, in  Vladimir Krajina: World War II Hero and Ecology Pioneer, has written an insightful and informative biography that will be of interest to both WWII and ecology enthusiasts alike.

Drabek’s biography is essentially two distinct parts, reflecting the dichotomy of Krajina’s life. The first follows Krajina’s life in Czechoslovakia as a member of the Resistance until his escape to London in 1948. The second part documents Krajina’s life in British Columbia where he worked as professor and researcher at the University of British Columbia’s botany department. What is similar in both halves of Krajina’s life is how important was the work he was doing, and how unknown it was – and still is – to the majority of people. For myself, I was aware of Krajina’s botanical and ecological work through my university studies, but had no idea of his experiences in WWII and knew little of the events in Czechoslovakia during this time.

Krajina was a student at Charles University in Prague when Czechosolvakia was a fledgling democracy after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and before occupation by first Nazi Germany and then as a Communist country under the influence of the Soviet Union. Drabek hypothesizes it was this time living in an independent democratic country that Krajina felt strongly about, and when it was threatened by Nazi invasion he was compelled to play a role in protecting it.

By 1939 the Nazis had closed all of the universities in Czechoslovakia, and Krajina was no longer a botany professor but full time Resistance member. Krajina became a leading member in a group pivotal in the encoding, sending and receiving of intelligence-related information between Czechoslovakia and its exiled government in London. For example, it was Krajina’s group which relayed the intelligence that the Wehrmacht was planning to attack British-controlled Egypt and the Suez Canal, allowing some two months’ warning for precautions to be taken.

Drabek explains that Krajina was an ideal person for this kind of work because of “his enormous self-discipline and strict observance of rules of conspiracy”. However, he also intimates that Krajina was like the character in the Disney film “Ferdinand the Bull”:

“…a magnificent animal chosen for the bullfighting ring. But Ferdinand prefers to smell the flowers instead of fighting and, eventually…is returned to his pasture…sitting there still, under his cork tree, quietly smelling his flowers. The flower-loving Resistance fighter may have been a thorn in the Germans’ side, but unlike many of his companions, he refused to carry a gun.” 

At one point in the war the author’s father had given Krajina a book of flower drawings done by Czech artist Josef Manes. When Krajina had to flee the Gestapo, he returned the book for safekeeping; the author’s father noticed that even during this dangerous time Krajina had made corrections in pencil to the names for each flower.

Between 1939 and 1943 Krajina was regularly on the run from the Gestapo, hiding in sympathizers’ homes, meeting intelligence contacts in the streets after dark, and somehow managing to send upwards of 6000 radio messages each year. However, by early 1943 Krajina was captured, interrogated and sent to Terezin concentration camp until the end of the war. Post-1945 Czechoslovakia saw political struggles as various ideologies fought for supremacy. According to Drabek, Krajina again felt compelled to be active politically instead of returning full-time to his botany work because it was important to him that Czechoslovakia return to the democratic nation it was before the Nazi occupation. Instead, Krajina found himself arrested and threatened with execution by the new Communist government unless he agreed to cooperate. Again showing his principles and courage, Krajina arranged to escape by skiing across the border to the US military in Germany. Once finally made his way to England he arranged for the escape of his wife and two children.

Reunited, the Krajina family made its way to Vancouver, British Columbia. Working in the botany department at the University of British Columbia, Krajina made his mark with his ecological approach to forest research and the influence this had on the province’s forestry industry. This perspective was unique at the time, as in a report Krajina wrote for a major forest company in 1954 he said: 

“Forest resources are natural resources which should not be exploited by the methods used in mining, where the products cannot be regenerated. Forest resources should be kept for a sustained yield through all generations.” 

Krajina went further, saying that virgin forests were rapidly disappearing without thorough analysis, and that a representative portion of them should be saved intact for future study, an important consideration when areas needed to be reforested after logging. This was the basis of Krajina’s research into what were later termed biogeoclimatic zones, 14 of which he identified for British Columbia and which are still referred to today. By the late 1960s the provincial government was discussing setting up ecological reserves under the models proposed by Krajina, passing the Ecological Reserve Act in 1971. For the rest of his life Krajina was an ardent campaigner for establishment of reserves to protect sensitive ecosystems, always having to argue for conservation over immediate logging / economic opportunities in the short term. In 1973 an ecological reserve was established on Haida Gwaii bearing Krajina’s name, its literature describing it as “an outdoor museum and laboratory available for botanical, wildlife and geographical fishery”.

Drabek’s biography is enriched by the closeness of the author to its subject. His father worked closely with Krajina during WWII in the Resistance movement, and the author was the same age as Krajina’s daughter and even attended the same school. Drabek has written a detailed portrayal of a man who spent his life engaged in principled struggles for democracy and the environment, from which and from whom much can learned and applied today.

Empire of the Beetle - Andrew Nikiforuk

For thousands of years forests have matured, faced a natural disaster, lost a large percentage of trees, and started the cycle again. But in just over 100 years, industrial logging and governments have nurtured a bark beetle infestation that could completely destroy pine and spruce forests across British Columbia and North America.

Bark beetles, like the Mountain Pine Beetle, are extremely effective at forcing forest renewal. North American pine and spruce show centuries of evidence of bark beetles. However, historical infestations did not reach the levels seen over the last 30 years. Something has changed, and so far attempts to slow bark beetle deforestation have failed.

The explanations behind the intensity and length of the current infestation are what make Empire of the Beetle an urgent read. Andrew Nikiforuk illustrates how the natural role of bark beetles as useful forest manager was transformed into an enormous social and ecological problem with far-reaching implications. Nikiforuk explains that a major factor behind the epidemic is that forest renewal by natural disturbances does not occur on a time scale that works with the forest industry model of cost minimization and wood volume maximization. It can take several hundred years for a forest to completely renew after a disturbance, but companies cannot afford to wait that long.

So, the major players in the story of the bark beetle epidemic are familiar ones: a demand for wood products, government and industry greed, mismanagement due to misguided science and forestry practices, and climate change.


Nikiforuk focuses much of Empire of the Beetle on the situation in British Columbia because the scale of infestation here is one of the largest in North America. Forest companies in BC over the last 100 years have focused on growing millions of acres of large-diameter Lodgepole pine while suppressing the regular fires needed for both renewal and bark beetle population control in order to protect their investment. Inadvertently they set up the forests for bark beetle invasion. Aging large-diameter trees are most susceptible to death by bark beetle as they cannot produce enough resin to fend off attackers. The forest industry now finds itself in direct competition with bark beetles. Its response along with government—combined  with other factors—only exacerbated the problems.

The BC timber industry is huge. Until 2004 it accounted for 40 per cent of the province’s exports and was responsible for $14 billion in revenue. Tens of thousands of people were employed directly or indirectly. Forest companies have controlled up to 92 per cent of the province’s mature pine forest, waiting until it is just the right size to be logged. Bark beetles began increasing their numbers in the mid-1980s, with estimates of pine and spruce lost to bark beetles numbering in the millions of acres by the late 1990s. Thousands of jobs were lost as logging operations ceased and mills closed. Cities faced an exodus of residents as they moved away to find work elsewhere.

As panic set in within the forest industry and government over lost revenue, Nikiforuk cites reports saying it would be best ecologically to let the bark beetles renew forests and restore a healthy diversity of tree species. But this advice was ignored as it would have meant companies losing money. Selective logging was also rejected as too costly.

Instead the BC government removed restrictions, allowing companies to clearcut—salvage log—the land as they tried to get back every last cent. It also made the government appear benevolent as it created tree-felling jobs, saying it was better to turn negative into positive because letting nature take its course “was not an option.”

Clearcutting the forests was disastrous. Entire watersheds were damaged, increasing flooding in downstream communities and affecting fish stocks. Over 100 rural and First Nations communities were unsettled and faced with economic hardship as trees disappeared. And, as logging trucks traveled to mills, damaging roads and highways, they also created along the way mini bark beetle infestations. Clearcutting also has the dubious distinction of causing a net gain in carbon dioxide release as no vegetation is left to absorb carbon.

Climate change, resulting from burning fossil fuels, has allowed the bark beetles to continue eating their way through North America’s forests. Historically, extremely cold winter weather (below -30C) was a major factor keeping bark beetle populations checked. Since the early 1980s average winter temperatures have been increasing, with the last cold winter able to kill bark beetles recorded in 1986. Where at one time up to 80 per cent of the bark beetles were killed off each winter, today up to 80 per cent of beetles survive.

Warmer temperatures due to climate change have had other effects favourable to bark beetles. As aging trees are vulnerable to bark beetles, even more so are aging drought-stressed trees. Warmer summer temperatures have allowed bark beetles to change their life cycles from two years to one year, with some reproducing more than once in a year. The result is more bark beetles attacking aging, drought-stressed forests. As warming continues, trees are able to grow at more northerly latitudes, and so the bark beetles’ range is extending northward towards the boreal forest.

This description of the adaptability of bark beetles is one of the most frightening parts of Nikiforuk’s book. Not only are they reproducing faster, they can also collectively switch to a new tree species when they eat all of “their tree” instead of decreasing in number as expected. Bark beetles understand the need for rapid diversification in order to survive better than humans seem to, and this is an important message in Nikiforuk’s book. Concentrating large tracts of land in the hands of a few forest companies and park systems whose goal is to maintain a constant production of trees, gave the appearance of control of nature when in fact it created a system so huge that it would inevitably crash.

Even now government and industry are having difficulty admitting that they are not in control. A series of hearings this past summer indicated that there are no plans to reevaluate how the timber industry manages forests. Nikiforuk interviewed David Jorgenson, a selective logger, who thinks it is time for government and industry to turn over forest management to BC communities. He says the community has to live with the consequences of decisions relating to forests, and they would know what is best for them. Communities could develop a diverse economy driven by their needs instead of having a company president in a far-off city making decisions.

Empire of the Beetle is, essentially, an anti-capitalist book about how the economic interests of forest industry and government led to policies and practices that left BC’s forests and the communities depending on them defenseless in the face of collapse. Yet after spending an entire book detailing the how and why of forest destruction, Nikiforuk makes only the most subtle critiques about those most to blame and suggestions of how to move forward—instead of saying outright that the capitalist system produced the problem and is undermining solutions.

While bark beetles are not the biggest environmental threat, they are an example of the interconnections found in nature, of how changes to climate can cause changes in other areas that lead to their destruction. Right now the capitalist system is the greatest barrier to making the necessary changes to reverse these environmental threats. Environmentalists and activists need to continue to wage a campaign against climate change, but also fight against the system that puts profits before the health of entire forests, watersheds and communities.

Review originally published at www.socialistworkercanada.com