Forest Practices in British Columbia

BC’s forest practices like clearcutting and glyphosate spraying put us all at risk of increased temperatures, wildfires, flooding and loss of biodiversity

Significantly British Columbia has a very high number of large clear cuts. Additionally BC has a higher rate of deforestation compared with the Amazon and our forest practices and standards are certainly nowhere near sustainable.

Glyphosate spraying

Logging companies in BC are required to keep competitive species at bay so each year about 10,000 hectares are sprayed with herbicides. Consequently people are becoming more concerned about the effects of glyphosate exposure and spraying of berry and medicine patches important to First Nations people.

Please see the Stop the Spray petitions below to stop herbicide spraying of forests (Calls to Action) .

BC Timber Sales

BC Timber Sales manages about 20 per cent of the province’s allowable annual cut for “Crown” (mainly unceded First Nations’ territory) timber and they are doing an incredibly poor job of managing forests under their care therefore more attention to BCTS is needed. There is a detailed case for why BCTS is not serving the needs of British Columbians.

Raw log exports

British Columbia currently exports a large number of raw logs rather than process them here as timber in BC resulting in significant job losses and deforestation. However by preserving old growth and limiting raw log exports we can protect both old growth and jobs.

Wasteful forest practices

Forestry practices in BC are extremely wasteful, slash piles lay abandoned while trees are cut for the wood pellet industry for biomass burning therefore better use of abandoned slash could be used for wood pellets while protecting forests from the growing biomass industry.

Forest thinning, salvage logging and “fuel reduction”

“Management” of forests is touted as the answer to recent increases in wildfires but is it just an excuse to log? Forest management approaches promoted as “resilience,” “restoration,” “fuel reduction,” and “forest health” often degrade natural systems and reduce carbon stocks. Due to this narrative governments, some industrial forestry-aligned academics and logging companies are advocating for the scaling up of “active management activities” in response to recent wildfires which is worsening already bad forest practices.

Forest thinning

Thinning forests seems like a good idea to many and is being increasingly pushed to combat wildfires but instead of reducing fires it increases the risk through the reduction of the protection of the forest canopy leading to the understory drying out and becoming hotter through increased exposure to sun and wind.

Salvage logging

Salvage logging is marketed as the answer to burned or forests or dead trees as way to ‘prevent’ wildfires but is it?

“One of the major concerns with salvage logging, is the site disturbance caused by the heavy equipment that both disturbs and compacts the soil, which inhibits natural regeneration and often results in erosion and damage to streams. Logging requires additional roads and skid trails to be built that permanently remove land for the forest landbase and pose threats to wildlife. Additionally, logging can encourage the growth of weeds and invasive species.” From Shuswap Passion – Shuswap’s burnt forests – to log or not to log?

WATCH: Conservation North’s webinar Gaming the ecosystem: The truth about salvage logging

Fuel reduction

Increasingly popular bad forest practices include fuel reduction which is said to prevent wildfires by removing flammable materials but is that true?

“A large body of scientific evidence and opinion, including from a growing group of U.S. Forest Service scientists, concludes that thinning—including thinning-plus-burning—and post-fire logging/clearcutting increase overall tree mortality and carbon emissions, make wildfires spread faster and/or burn more severely, and our current funding and management focus on tree cutting and removal in wildland forests is putting nearby communities at greater risk.”

John Muir Project “Fuel Reduction” Logging Increases Wildfire Intensity and Puts Communities at Greater Risk

Biodiversity Loss

The BC government kills wolves to ‘save’ caribou when what they should be doing is to stop logging and other resource activities in areas where caribou live. Meanwhile logging companies are logging spotted owl habitat despite there being only two spotted owls, Canada’s last surviving breeding pair, left in the wild.