Canada’s logging industry is devouring forests that are crucial to the fight against climate change
Canada has long promoted itself globally as a model for protecting one of the country’s most vital natural resources: the world’s largest swath of boreal forests, which is critical to combating climate change.
But a new one study Using nearly half a century of data from the provinces of Ontario and Quebec – two of the country’s top commercial logging areas – shows that tree harvesting has caused serious damage to the boreal forest that will be difficult to undo.
Researchers led by a group from Griffith University in Australia found that since 1976, logging in the two provinces has led to the removal of 35.4 million hectares of boreal forest, an area about the size of New York State.
Although nearly 56 million hectares of established trees at least a century old remain in the region, logging has destroyed this forest, leaving a patchwork of isolated trees that have created a landscape less able to support wildlife to harbor wildlife, according to the study. . And it has made the country more susceptible to wildfires, scientists say.
Although Canada claims logging companies meet high standards, scientists involved in the peer-reviewed study, which was published in the academic journal Land, said their findings show the country is allowing unsustainable practices that have deeply damaged the forest.
Scientists not involved in the study said it provides a groundbreaking insight into what decades of commercial logging has done to the boreal forest, which refers to northern forests composed mainly of evergreen trees.
“This is the first time we have such a clear picture for two of Canada’s largest provinces,” said Christian Messier, a professor of forest ecology at the Université du Québec à Montréal, who was not involved in the study. “I think the approach, the methodology, was the most novel aspect of this paper.”
Under Canadian forestry standards, logging companies can clear large areas of all trees and vegetation and are required to replant the land or demonstrate that the forest will regenerate naturally.
But, scientists say, without the thick bark of older trees, younger trees are more vulnerable to wildfires, and logging companies typically replant species that are more suitable for the timber industry than species that can withstand fire.
“The Canadian government claims to have managed the forest according to the principles of sustainable forest management,” said Brendan Mackey, lead author of the study and professor and director of a climate research group at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. “But the idea of sustainability is really linked to maintaining and maximizing timber production and ensuring the regeneration of commercially desirable trees. This has many consequences for biodiversity.”
Canadian officials did not directly answer questions about the study’s findings, only providing a written statement that broadly cited the country’s efforts to preserve the boreal forest.
That policy focuses on “conservation, recreation, habitat, water quality, economic development and the relationship that Indigenous peoples have with the land and forests,” according to the statement from Carolyn Svonkin, spokeswoman for Canada’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources.
Peter Wood, a forest management lecturer at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver who was not involved in the study, called the findings “shocking,” adding that they highlight “what is at stake if we focus our logging efforts on some of the these older and more intact areas. ”
The vast and ecologically vital boreal forest extends across North America, Northern Europe and Siberia, but most of it is in Canada.
The boreal forest is not only an important natural habitat for many animals and plants, but it also traps enormous amounts of climate-warming carbon dioxide. It is estimated that the world’s boreal forests collectively contain 703 gigatons of carbon in trees and soil. By comparison, the world’s tropical forests store about 375 gigatons of carbon.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who took office eight years ago promising to aggressively tackle climate change, has long promoted Canada’s boreal forests as essential to the world’s well-being.
“Canada is home to one of the largest contiguous forests in the world and we have a responsibility to protect it,” Mr. Trudeau told the 2021 UN Climate Summit. “We have seen the impact of rising global temperatures – they have risen twice as fast in Canada as elsewhere in the world – in those forests. We have a responsibility to be stewards of them.”
To conduct the research on Quebec and Ontario’s boreal forests, researchers obtained publicly available inventories of harvested trees from the provinces and linked them to maps and satellite images to get a detailed picture of the cumulative impact of logging.
“This study clearly shows that where logging has occurred, there are fundamental features of the forest that have not returned,” said Jennifer Skene, climate policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which helped fund the report’s research.
Replanting land after felling older trees produces younger forests that are ecologically degraded, Professor Mackey said. They retain less carbon, are generally more vulnerable to disease and insect pests, and are poor habitat for the many animals and plants that rely on old forest homes to thrive or, in some cases, survive.
As part of the study, Professor Mackey and other researchers looked at the effects of logging on large groups of woodland caribou – animals that require large areas of older forest and are affected by human disturbance. For example, logging roads make it easier for predators to hunt caribou, researchers say.
Of the 21 herds in the boreal regions of the two provinces that researchers studied, 19 were at high or very high risk of becoming unable to sustain their populations.
While in other parts of the world deforestation or the removal of trees for uses such as agriculture and livestock has become a major threat, in Canada the challenge is different.
“There has been no deforestation in that sense,” Professor Mackey said. “But ecologically speaking, there is a high level of forest degradation.”
“You still maintain forest cover and you can still maintain the forest over time in terms of land use,” he added. “But you have compromised some aspect of its ecological quality.”
And most ecologists see the decline as the result of the kind of large-scale clear-cutting that is almost the universal method of logging in Canada.
“Forest degradation is the most important metric for Canada because it really reflects more of what is actually happening,” Mr. Wood said. “Canada has downplayed the impact of the forestry industry.”