The first major, province-wide analysis on the status of old-growth forests in BC has just been released by an independent science team - and the results are dire.
Read the full, independent research from Dr. Rachel Holt, Dr. Karen Price, and Dave Daust at Veridian Ecological.
“With these brutal results, only willful blindness or extreme greed and short-sightedness on the part of the BC NDP government will result in their continued support of logging the last endangered, high productivity old-growth stands,” stated Ken Wu, the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance’s executive director. “At this point, clearcutting a stand of 500 year old forest giants is like coming across a herd of elephants and slaughtering them all, or harpooning the last blue whales. It’s unnecessary and unethical given how few there are, and given the fact that there is a vast, second-growth forest alternative.”
“This analysis is a key piece of the puzzle to debunk one of the NDP government’s primary excuses to continue old-growth logging – that old-growth forests are still abundant and not at risk. It exposes their spin, where they conflate low productivity sites with small trees with high productivity sites with large trees in order to keep logging the large trees. It’s sort of like claiming that because there are still lots of sardines, we shouldn’t stop fishing endangered giant bluefin tuna”, stated Ken Wu. “The rest of the industrialized world is logging 50 to 100 year old stands of second and third-growth forests, and we must do the same, but sustainably. BC is one of the very last jurisdictions in the industrialized world with these 500 year old forest giants – and also one of the very last jurisdictions with a government that fully supports cutting them down on a vast commercial scale.”
Key points of the report include:
1. There is now a miniscule fraction (2.7%) of the original high productivity old-growth forests in BC where the biggest trees grow (and with the greatest biodiversity levels and most endangered species).
2. The province's old-growth protection levels are grossly inadequate, jeopardizing forest ecosystems across most of BC (ie. placing them at "high risk" of species loss and losing ecological integrity) due to their insufficient scale of protection.
3. BC's accounting system for how much old-growth remains lacks critical distinctions in forest productivity (thus opting to protect sites with small trees instead of big trees) and ecosystem types, resulting in flawed policies with loopholes in forest reserve selection.
4. Most of the small amounts of remaining high productivity old-growth forests are slated for logging - over 75%.
5. We need an immediate logging moratorium of all high productivity old-growth forests, all endangered forest ecosystem types (based on BEC zones), all major intact areas, all exceptionally old forests, and all landscape units (clusters of watersheds) where scant old-growth levels place them at "high risk" of losing species and ecological integrity, while developing science-based regulations to protect old-growth forests systematically.
The BC government is expected to announce its plans around new policies to manage old-growth forests in November, after reviewing the recommendations of the BC Old-Growth Strategic Review Panel which were submitted in April. Conservationists are frustrated at how long the BC NDP government has been dragging-out any action on protecting old-growth forests (while at the same time providing all manner of excuses, rationales, and PR-spin to defend continued large scale, industrial old-growth logging), despite having campaigned prior to the 2017 provincial election that they would manage BC’s old-growth forests based on the Ecosystem-Based Management model of the Great Bear Rainforest agreement (where 85% of all forests are now protected).
55,000 hectares of old-growth forests are logged on average each year in BC, including about 10,000 hectares on Vancouver Island in a typical year.
Old-growth forests are not replicated by the ensuing second-growth tree plantations that they are being replaced with, and which are re-logged every 40 to 80 years, never to become old-growth again.
Old-growth forests are vital for endangered species, First Nations cultures, clean water, wild salmon, carbon storage, and tourism and recreation.
The BC government must also enact incentives and regulations to develop a value-added, second-growth forest industry to support thousands of BC's forestry workers. Second-growth forests now constitute the vast majority of the forests of BC (97% of the high productivity sites with the best growing conditions).
Numerous studies show that protected areas, including protecting old-growth forests, typically results in greater net positive impacts on the economy than the traditional resource extraction industries, when factoring in recreation and tourism, enhanced real estate values near protected areas, clean water and fisheries values (commercial and recreational), non-timber forest products, carbon offsets, and attracting skilled labour (including high tech workers) who relocated to areas with a higher environmental quality of life.
“Today, arguing that logging BC's last old-growth forests is vital for jobs and the economy is like arguing that harpooning great whales is vital for jobs and the economy,” stated Wu. “There are major alternatives, to put it mildly.”
Financial and legal support for First Nations land use plans and Indigenous Protected Areas including Tribal Parks is the key game-changer for actual protection of old-growth forests on the ground in BC.
See the press release by Stand.Earth.
For more info contact:
Ken Wu, Executive Director, Endangered Ecosystems Alliance:
endangeredecosystemsalliance@gmail.com