Media Release: BC Timber Sales Review Protects Destructive Status Quo Over Old-Growth Forests

BC Timber Sales Review Protects Destructive Status Quo Over Old-Growth Forests, Conservation Groups Condemn Latest Phase of BC NDP Government Policy Backsliding

Victoria, BC – The Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) and Endangered Ecosystems Alliance (EEA) are criticizing the BC Timber Sales (BCTS) review report, released September 23, for failing to recommend any measures to protect old-growth forests. In the latest example of the BC NDP’s continual backsliding on old-growth policy progress since re-election, the report outlines an expanded timber extraction agenda that conservationists warn is unsustainable and accelerates the loss of irreplaceable ecosystems.

The provincial BCTS review, launched in January 2025 and led by a three-person task force (George Abbott, Brian Frenkel, and Lennard Joe), produced 54 recommendations aimed at creating a stronger, more resilient forestry sector. This included a section on the protection and management of future forests.

While the report briefly acknowledges that forest stewardship should follow the guidance of the Old Growth Strategic Review (OGSR), none of its 54 recommendations directly address the escalating old-growth crisis. Critically, the report overlooks key forest management issues, including the need for the government’s own agency to lead by example and protect at-risk old-growth forests, as well as to address economic barriers through conservation funding to support First Nations-led old-growth deferrals and Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs) within BCTS operating areas.

“The BC Timber Sales review report only pays fleeting ‘lip service’ to the BC government’s old-growth commitments, while its consequential recommendations are devoid of any mention of old-growth forest protection. Instead of protecting old-growth, this review will largely protect the destructive status quo of old-growth logging, putting irreplaceable ecosystems at risk while claiming to champion forest stewardship,” said TJ Watt, Campaign Director of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “If BC truly wants to chart a stronger, more resilient future for forestry, it must first confront the very practices that created the current crisis — its own unsustainable history of overcutting the biggest and best old-growth stands. BC Timber Sales, their own logging agency, is the easiest place for them to do this.”

AFA and EEA’s submission to the BCTS review in April 2025 recommended that cutblocks be prohibited in all at-risk old-growth forests identified by the independent Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) within BCTS operating areas, and conservation funding be dedicated to help First Nations secure the deferral and long-term protection of these old-growth forests. Instead, the report released in September recommends doubling BCTS timber sales volume from 4.5 million cubic metres in 2024 to 9 million cubic metres by 2029 — placing the remaining old-growth forests within BCTS operating areas at imminent risk and directly contradicting another report recommendation to move away from volume-based forest management to an area-based approach.

“For the BCTS review to deliver no recommendations around protecting old growth just weeks after the 5 year anniversary of the Old-Growth Strategic Review is especially alarming given BCTS’s track record of clearcutting some of the most magnificent forests in Canada, like those in the Nahmint Valley, where I continue to document near record-sized trees being felled,” said TJ Watt, Campaign Director of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “The cutting of monumental, centuries-old trees cannot be allowed to continue. BC’s forestry sector must rapidly move away from old-growth logging and invest in sustainable, value-added, second-growth practices to achieve the BC government’s promised ‘paradigm shift’. And there’s no better place to start than with the government’s own logging agency.”

Below is a brief summary of the recommendations submitted in April by AFA & EEA to the BC Timber Sales review process regarding priority old-growth deferrals:

1. Prohibit cutblocks in all at-risk old-growth forests identified by the BC government’s own science panel.

2. Direct conservation funding to support First Nations-led stewardship and Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs) within BCTS operating areas.

3. Use field verification to identify and defer at-risk old-growth forests missed in the TAP mapping process – allow additions, not just subtractions, of technically misidentified stands.

4. Require “like-for-like” replacement deferrals within the Timber Harvesting Land Base, where old-growth timber sales have already been completed and/or become logged.

5. Default to honouring deferrals until First Nations have made decisions, rather than allowing logging to proceed by default.

6. Ensure transparency by publishing all deferral additions, removals, and replacements in a timely and publicly accessible manner.

While foregrounding their concerns, AFA and EEA acknowledge some positive recommendations in the report, including supporting smaller value-added operators and increasing commercial thinning of second-growth stands to support forestry jobs. However, they caution that without distinguishing between old-growth and second-growth forests in the Annual Allowable Cut, some measures to enhance wood products manufacturing risk deepening BC’s dependency on old-growth logging rather than helping the industry adapt to the changing forest profile.

“The BC government has the best opportunity and obligation to implement bold policy changes right now with their own logging agency, BC Timber Sales, that reflects the Province’s stated commitments to conservation,” said Ken Wu, Executive Director of the Endangered Ecosystem Alliance. “Strengthening old-growth protections would send a powerful signal that the government is serious about ending the destruction of irreplaceable ecosystems and transitioning to a value-added, second-growth industry. Conversely, if BCTS continues to auction off some of the most endangered old-growth forests in the province and ramps up unsustainable overcutting, it will severely undermine public trust and the province’s credibility on its environmental leadership, rekindling the War in the Woods. Eby and Parmar are at a crossroads — they can pay hollow lip service to conservation as cover to pursue the destructive status quo of liquidating the last old-growth giants as demanded by the Conservative Opposition, or they can pursue an alternative, sustainable vision and have a backbone to take a win-win path of old-growth protection and developing a value-added, second-growth forest industry. They need to understand we’re not going to tolerate a continuation of the status quo and that there are consequences for their policy decisions.”

Here is a broader list of AFA & EEA’s old-growth policy recommendations for the BC government.