Announcements

Jul 26 2016

Announcements

Sierra Club calls for a moratorium on old growth logging

Here's a Vancouver Sun article by Stephen Hume also based on the new Sierra Club mapping on how much old-growth remains: Forest scientists like Jim Pojar say this forest should be considered the remnant of a dwindling non-renewable resource because the life cycle of these forests is so long that it will take 40 to 50 human generations before they recover to their original state. Even then, he says, they won’t be anything like the forests that exist today, nor will the communities of plants, insects, birds and animals — about 400 species — that rely upon them. Meanwhile, the Sierra Club study points out, even as the remaining rainforest vanishes under the chainsaw, the rate at which it’s being cut has increased by 12 per cent. And, it says, re-planted forests that won’t mature for another 250 years are already being logged after only 50 or 80 years as immature second and third growth. Pojar, a forest ecologist who wrote the well-regarded guide, Plants of Coastal British Columbia, was an ecologist and researcher with the B.C. Forest Service for years. He recently authored a major study for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society on climate change and its implications for biodiversity and conservation policy. “Given the amount and pace of climate change, all B.C. forest stands older than 150 years are non-renewable resources, and some of them should be removed from the timber harvesting land base,” says Pojar. “If logged they will not be replaced either naturally or artificially by mature and old stands with similar structure and function, even if they are allowed to grow old. “Even if allowed to grow old they will not recover to the primary condition,” he says, “which is why I maintain that recovery of old growth forest is now an inappropriate, anachronistic concept, given rapid climate change, system unpredictability and scientific uncertainty.”

Jun 9 2016

Announcements

Old-Growth Maps

In our campaign to protect the old-growth forests of Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland, there has been a huge amount of misleading PR stats thrown around by the logging companies and BC government in the media recently to make it sound like lots of old-growth forests remain and much has been protected - this is completely false. They are including vast tracts of stunted, low productivity bog and subalpine stands with low to no commercial value along with the productive stands, and also attach stats from the northern coast (ie. the Great Bear Rainforest, where much more old-growth remains and much more has been protected due to the concerted efforts of enviro-groups) to the southern coast (where very little has been protected, relatively little old-growth remains, and where the forests are much grander with different ecosystems). The fact is that 75% of the productive old-growth forests have been logged on the southern coast, including over 91% of the high productivity, valley bottom old-growth forests where the largest trees grow, while only 8% of the productive forests have been protected in parks and Old-Growth Management Areas. Take note too that of 5.5 million hectares of original old-growth forests on the southern coast, 2.2 million hectares are considered low productivity (ie. bogs, high altitude, steep rocky slopes with stunted trees, etc.) - and if you go to the northern rainforest, most of the landscape is low productivity old-growth forests (or alpine rock and ice). See the stats and the "before and after" maps here, based on BC government and satellite data: https://ancientforestalliance.org/ancient-forests/before-after-old-growth-maps/