Cayoosh Mountain, part of the Coast Mountain range in B.C., seen here on May 30, 2019, is home to flower-filled alpine meadows, extensive old-growth forests, cascading wild rivers, spectacular peaks and some of the most productive salmon rivers.Melissa Renwick/The Globe and Mail
John Vaillant is the author of The Golden Spruce and The Jaguar’s Children. Harley Rustad is a journalist and author of Big Lonely Doug.
When settlers first arrived in what is now British Columbia, they sincerely believed the forest primeval went on forever. We know now that it doesn’t. Look out the window on any commercial flight between Victoria and Fort St. John and you’ll see a moth-eaten patchwork of heavily logged forest, veined with roads and scarred by landslides stretching from the Pacific coast deep into the Interior.
On Sept. 11, the B.C. government released an independent report on the state and management of the province’s old-growth forests. Optimistically titled A New Future for Old Forests, with hopeful language such as “paradigm shift” and “actions needed now to prevent irreversible loss,” the report appears to herald a turn toward conservation before profit, ecosystems before industry, and Indigenous stewardship.
The government laid out some big numbers to go with these lofty goals: the logging of approximately 350,000 hectares of forest in nine zones will be “deferred,” but only for two years. It kicks the can down the road.
As usual, the devil is in the details: Of that amount, less than half is actually old growth, and experts say the vast majority of these deferred areas weren’t threatened to begin with. These are just two of several tactics used by government and industry to obfuscate the issue. Another is lumping high-value, high-biodiversity valley bottom forests – where the biggest, oldest, most valuable trees are found – together with bog and subalpine forests that may qualify as “old growth,” but are valueless to the timber industry.
These shell games are played on purpose, and they have worked to the industry’s advantage for decades.
Numbers matter, and so do clear, honest definitions. The B.C. government proudly claims that 13.2 million hectares of old-growth forest exists across the province, and boasts that half is off-limits to logging, in parks or other protected areas. But ministry math is a dark art: The shifty baseline they are using represents the amount of old growth that currently remains, not the vast amount that has already fallen to axe and saw, never to return.
According to government data, 140,000 hectares – nearly 200,000 soccer fields – of old-growth forest is felled across B.C. every year. And yet, by the province’s calculations, the more old growth that is cut, the greater the “protected” percentage will become, until it equals 100 per cent – because that will be all that’s left.
The reality on the ground is bleak – for our ecosystem as well as for the industry. Of the 13.2 million hectares of all kinds of old forest, a separate independent report from April determined that more than 97 per cent of the big, iconic trees we commonly picture when we think of “old growth” have been felled. And if we’re talking about the most productive forests, the best of the best, a minuscule 35,000 hectares remain.
It’s not just the old growth that’s disappearing: Over the past decade, six forestry jobs have been lost in the province every single day. Investment in a transition plan has been called for since the 1980s, and is needed now more than ever – not just to save the last vestiges of intact primeval forest, but to save the jobs.
There are, in fact, two threatened ecosystems here. Both need saving, but to do it, we must move beyond the old battle lines and tired language: Cutting old growth saves jobs! Saving trees will kill the industry! This is a false dichotomy. The industry knows it and our government knows it. Let’s be clear: There is no shortage of wood or trees in B.C. There is enough second- and third-growth forest to sustain a disciplined industry for generations.
What’s become painfully apparent over the past decade is this is about more than disappearing sawmills, or disappearing caribou habitat. Human beings – our own neighbours – are being driven from their homes by fire and floods in ever-increasing numbers. Intact, biologically diverse forests resist and recover from these increasingly destructive forces better than clear-cuts and monocrop forest blocks do. Biologists know that age and diversity breed resilience. And we know it, too: Old folks aren’t just tough, they are necessary to our survival.
It’s worth asking ourselves: In what other industry would we allow 97 per cent of the oldest and best to be taken? For that matter, in what other society would this be allowed? This isn’t a gold mine, after all; this is an ecosystem.
We’ve seen where that approach got us with the Atlantic cod. It’s happening right now with the Pacific salmon, and it has already happened with original coastal Douglas fir. We have laws protecting particularly large and old fish; we have laws preserving heritage buildings; many First Nations communities in B.C. have closed entirely to protect their elders from COVID-19.
For millennia, the abundance and diversity of coastal and inland forests have fed, clothed, housed and nurtured us. What remains of these elder forests represents an irreplaceable source of historical knowledge and biological complexity that cannot be measured in dollars, jobs or hectares. Most British Columbians understand that the time for mincing words and playing with numbers is long past. We don’t need another false deferment; we need a law from the next B.C. government to protect the fragile remnants of our irreplaceable forest heritage.
Call it the Elders Act.
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