{"id":278588,"date":"2025-11-12T17:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T17:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/278588\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T17:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T17:07:08","slug":"how-logging-has-sent-b-c-forests-into-freefall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/278588\/","title":{"rendered":"How logging has sent B.C. forests into freefall"},"content":{"rendered":"

B.C.\u2019s NDP government has recently lent a steadying hand to its beleaguered forestry sector, pausing<\/a> stumpage fees, expediting<\/a> permits and investing in mills to prevent its looming fall \u2014 but some say to no avail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy does it keep getting worse?\u201d Prince George-Mackenzie Conservative MLA Kiel Giddens asked<\/a> during the spring legislative session, voicing a question that continues to echo months later.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A new report commissioned by the Sierra Club BC points to a theory: B.C.\u2019s supply of unlogged, high-value trees that industry has long relied on is dwindling, rendering short-term fixes and freebies inadequate.<\/p>\n

As report co-author and forester Dave Daust puts it, \u201cIf you have a car with a broken engine, fixing the flat tire is not going to fix the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pressure on B.C.\u2019s most at-risk forests appears to be intensifying. The report says the province\u2019s efforts to temporarily pause logging in rare forests through old-growth deferrals have failed. Instead, B.C. forests were four times more likely to be logged inside recommended deferral zones than outside over the past four years. With industry pressure exacerbated by escalating wildfires, the report suggests B.C.\u2019s century-long feast on big, old trees is approaching its end. The question is how many of them will be left.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A report commissioned by the Sierra Club of BC provides data on the state of B.C. forests. The findings indicate primary forest, which is forest that has never been logged, are shrinking. Map: Supplied by Sierra Club BC\n<\/p>\n

Since being elected in 2017, the BC NDP has taken a Janus-faced approach to forest management. In 2020, it committed<\/a> to a \u201cparadigm shift\u201d that would transform its forest management system from one that prioritizes logging fast and furious to logging only what ecosystems can handle. More recently, they\u2019ve seemingly cooled on such commitments; at the beginning of the year, Premier David Eby instructed his forest minister to aim to raise logging levels by roughly 50 per cent compared to 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe failure to fully deliver on old growth commitments is a profound betrayal of trust in First Nations, the public and future generations,\u201d Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the climate crisis deepens, allowing these irreplaceable forests to be logged is reckless and short-sighted.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018The deferrals failed\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2021, Daust and co-author Karen Price, an ecologist, were among a five-person panel that mapped and recommended 2.6 million hectares of at-risk old growth forests be deferred \u2014 a temporary status that would keep them from getting cut down as longer-term land use planning decisions took place.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was intensely disappointing to see how badly they failed,\u201d Price says. Their report found that in four years, around 113,000 football fields worth of old-growth deferral zones were logged. Wildfires deepened the loss further, burning almost the forest equivalent of 206,000 football fields. Drawing on the province\u2019s forest inventories and GIS mapping software, the report identified the highest deferral logging rates in the dry interior regions and in sub-boreal forests\u00a0in the province\u2019s central interior.<\/p>\n

\"AB.C.\u2019s old growth forests are unique, rare and non-renewable, according to two foresters who were commissioned to write an old-growth strategic review for the provincial government. The foresters recommended immediate logging deferrals in old-growth forests at the highest risk of biodiversity loss. Photo: Taylor Roades \/ The Narwhal <\/p>\n

The trees were able to be logged because the province made deferrals optional, pending approval from First Nations. But groups like the BC Assembly of First Nations and the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs described<\/a> the province\u2019s approach as a \u201chot potato,\u201d passing difficult decisions to First Nations without involving them in the decision-making process or providing adequate transition funding to support potential revenue shortfalls.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Price says B.C.\u2019s approach to deferrals and the still-nascent change they were meant to precipitate are telling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis analysis confirms what we suspected,\u201d she says. \u201cThe paradigm hasn\u2019t shifted.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem with planted forests\u00a0in B.C.<\/p>\n

Core to the forest industry\u2019s long-term conundrum is that, so far, it isn\u2019t logging the vast blanket of planted forests it has created.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For one thing, these forests are young, with around 80 per cent less than 40 years old, according<\/a> to the Ministry of Forests, meaning the majority of the province\u2019s logging happens in unlogged forests. But even when they mature, they may prove to be shoddy stand-ins for the forest they replaced.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Price describes planted forests as towns with only \u201cone type of people with one type of skill.\u201d Lacking the forest equivalent of doctors, teachers, artists and farmers, their lack of genetic and structural diversity succumbs more easily to disease and disturbances like fire and adds fewer nutrients to the soil. They tend to grow smaller, weaker trees. It\u2019s a bad situation for industry and for ecosystems.\u00a0<\/p>\n

B.C. has never analyzed how much unlogged forest \u2014 also known as \u201cprimary\u201d forest \u2014 it has left. Instead, it divvies up its forests into two main categories: old-growth trees that are beyond 140-250 years, depending on their location, and everything else. \u200b\u200b<\/p>\n

In other words, the forests B.C. categorizes as \u201cold growth\u201d are generally considered \u201cprimary,\u201d but \u201ceverything else\u201d includes primary and planted forests.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Price says there are reasons to pay attention to that broader category of primary forest and how much remains.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For one thing, that\u2019s because unlogged forests in B.C.\u2019s classification system lose \u201cold growth\u201d status when they\u2019re burned in a wildfire or beset with pest infestation like the pine beetle, events that set back their official age clock as if they were just clear cut. But the likeness stops there, says Price. \u201cNaturally disturbed forests still have functionality that plantations do not,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AIn July and August 2024, 20,000 hectares of B.C. forest burned in the Argenta Creek Wildfire. Wildfires and other disturbances such as pest infestations cause forests to lose their old growth status in the eyes of the province, even if they have never been logged. Photo: Louis Bockner \/ The Narwhal<\/p>\n

In a changing climate, those wildfires and pest infestations are growing more frequent \u2014 almost four per cent of the province\u2019s remaining old growth burned in the last four years, according to Price and Daust\u2019s analysis. In the last decade, fires across the province burned seven times more than historic average. Meanwhile, companies are ramping up<\/a> wildfire salvage logging in burned forests. Companies also target primary forests when logging for biopellet producers like Drax, which export wood pellets to places like the U.K. and Japan, where they\u2019re burned for electricity. All told, Price says pressure on non-old-growth, primary forests is increasing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How much of B.C.\u2019s old-growth forests are left?<\/p>\n

For the first time, Daust and Price provide data on the kinds of primary forests that remain. Their findings indicate a shrinking map of primary forest, particularly in easier-to-log areas and in the bigger-treed stands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They found a third of B.C.\u2019s forests have been degraded by planting or deforested to make clearings for things like private land, pipelines and roads. The remaining two-thirds is primary forest, but much of that is located in the province\u2019s northern regions, where trees tend to be smaller and difficult to access. They also found large tracts of primary forests, including those with bigger trees, in limited protected areas and in small patches next to degraded forests.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That patchy picture is an ecological problem, Daust says, because each ecosystem type requires a certain threshold of intact, unlogged forest to thrive. When those thresholds are crossed, generally considered to be anything less than 30 per cent of what was there originally, ecosystem collapse begins to loom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe continued decline of primary forest indicates our inability to have an industry that is sustainable on a set footprint,\u201d Peter Wood, a lecturer and coordinator in international forestry at the University of British Columbia says. \u201cWe\u2019ve always been able to go a little further\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides the ecological consequences of exhausting primary forests, Wood says Price and Daust\u2019s report has a stark message for industry too: \u201cThere\u2019s actually very little left in terms of the really economically viable primary forest.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wood laments what he sees as an information \u201cvacuum\u201d obscuring the supply challenges behind the industry\u2019s growing crash. \u201cWhy are we only getting this from an NGO report?\u201d he says, noting announcements like this week\u2019s mill closure<\/a> in 100 Mile House shouldn\u2019t come as a surprise. \u201cThis is stuff that I would hope government should be not only aware of, but should be communicating to the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Price and Daust hope the industry\u2019s current crisis moment accompanies a turning point, aligning it with the kinds of forestry ecosystems can sustain, and including efforts to restore the province\u2019s vast and struggling planted forests, and to protect 30 per cent of the province\u2019s ecosystems by 2030.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, despite its purported commitments to paradigm change, Price says B.C.\u2019s forest management continues to harbour major blind spots about ecosystems and what they need to thrive.\u00a0\u201cIf you have an ecosystem perspective, all these things fall into place nicely,\u201d she says. \u201cThe government doesn\u2019t have that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"B.C.\u2019s NDP government has recently lent a steadying hand to its beleaguered forestry sector, pausing stumpage fees, expediting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-278588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}