** SEND a MESSAGE Below!
BC’s old-growth forests are vital to support many unique and endangered species, First Nations cultures, B.C.’s multi-billion-dollar tourism industry, and to provide clean water for communities and wild salmon. In addition, and they store more carbon per hectare than even tropical forests do.
But their large-scale industrial clearcutting continues, with about 55,000 hectares of old-growth forests – an area the size of about 5 cities of Vancouver – being logged every year in BC. On Vancouver Island already 80% of the productive old-growth forests have been logged, while a recent scientific study found that across BC only 2.7% of the original high productivity (sites that grow the largest trees) old-growth forests still remain.
The unique features of old-growth forests take centuries to develop — in a province where the forests are re-logged every 50 to 80 years. As a result, old-growth forests are not a renewable resource under B.C.’s system of forestry and are not replicated by tree-planting.
With so little left, to continue logging the last giants is akin to slaughtering the last herds of elephants or harpooning the last great whales.
Old-growth logging in most of BC is unnecessary and unethical, given that second-growth forests dominate more than 80 per cent of B.C.’s productive forest lands and can be sustainably logged. Indeed, the rest of the western world is focused on logging 50- to 100-year-old second- or third-growth trees. B.C. is one of the very last jurisdictions on earth that still condones and supports the large-scale logging of 500 and 1000-year-old trees.
This will not last. The transition to an exclusively second-growth forest industry in B.C. is inevitable, when the last of the unprotected old-growth stands are logged. Conservationists are just advocating that the governments implement the incentives and regulations now to complete this second-growth transition as quickly as possible, before the last endangered old-growth stands are gone.
*** Update ***
Under pressure, the BC government began embarking on a potentially new policy direction regarding the fate of BC’s endangered old-growth forests in September of 2020.
The Old-Growth Strategic Review Panel, an independent panel created by the province in 2019 to gather public input on how to manage BC’s old-growth forests, has made a series of strong recommendations (Sept., 2020) to the BC government to immediately place a moratorium on logging old-growth forests with the biggest trees (high productivity old-growth forests), in the most endangered forest types, and in larger, more intact areas (known as “hot spots”).
The province has so far (May 2021) failed to implement the panel’s recommendations to stop logging in the scarce, high productivity old-growth forests (the “ecological heart of BC’s remaining old-growth forests” where most endangered species and the largest trees grow) and in the most endangered ecosystem types, and instead has enacted logging deferrals for 9 important “hot spot” areas of the province totalling about 200,000 hectares of BC’s 13 million hectares of old-growth (out of hundreds of such “hot spots” across the province - also take note that only a small fraction of the old-growth are high productivity stands). These deferrals are a step in the right direction but fall far short of the moratoria that is needed - and time is short for our last big-tree ancient forests.
The BC government under pressure committed to implement all of the Panel’s 14 recommendations during the October, 2020 provincial election, but have not met the expected timeline nor the correct targets for old-growth logging deferrals. Most importantly, they have also not committed any funding for First Nations Indigenous Protected Areas and land use plans that protect old-growth forests, nor to funding the purchase of old-growth forests on private lands, such as those on eastern Vancouver Island. This funding is critical to ensuring the protection of old-growth forests in BC on a major scale.
In short, the BC government’s old-growth policy direction shows promise, but has major critical glaring omissions that fail to safeguard vitally important endangered old-growth forest types in BC.
It will take a massive, sustained, broad-based movement to steer the BC government’s new old-growth policies in the right direction.
PLEASE SPEAK UP and SEND a MESSAGE below!
YOUR MESSAGE WILL BE SENT TO: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault , BC Premier David Eby, Green Party MP Elizabeth May, Federal Leader of the New Democratic Party Jagmeet Singh, Leader of the Conservative Party Pierrie Poilievre, BC Green Party MLA for Cowichan Valley Sonia Furstenau, BC Green Party MLA for Saanich North Adam Olsen, BC Leader of the Official Opposition Shirley Bond, BC Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy George Heyman, BC Minister of Forests, Lands Katrine Conroy, Minister of Land, Water and Resource Stewardship Josie Osborne, BC Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Murray Rankin, your own Member of Parliament, and - if you live in BC - your own MLA.
For more information:
See an important article on the centrality on how the BC government must finance old-growth protection HERE
A new media release by the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance on the BC government’s policy direction (Sept.2020) HERE
An Op-Ed by the EEA's Ken Wu in the Times Colonist.
And in the Vancouver Sun