The Environmental Costs

The government policy that resulted in BC forestry being centered on the overcut is based entirely on economic principles and virtually ignores larger ecological issues. What remains of British Columbia's original forests is rapidly disappearing resulting in the loss unique ecosystems that have developed over thousands of years. In British Columbia, 90 percent of logging occurs in these old-growth forests.

The way the Ministry of Forests determines the AAC is the reason this unique environment is being destroyed so rapidly. The current rate-of-cut creates no incentives to use more ecologically sound forestry methods. As a result, clearcutting is still the preferred method of harvest. Clearcutting accounts for 89 percent of all forestry activity. Basing the provincial rate-of-cut on an artificially inflated AAC means the Ministry of Forests cannot fully implement even conservative measures of environmental protection. The province's Forest Practices Code (which is expected to be weakened) and BC's parks service cannot adequately protect the habitat of many endangered species, and vital BC icons like wild salmon.

Rehabilitation of salmon habitat destroyed by industrial logging practices will cost up to $4 billion. Such costs are not accounted for in industry and government audits of the forestry sector. The David Suzuki Foundation believes that these types of environmental costs must be factored into the decision of where and how to conduct forestry.

The Pacific Salmon Forest

The areas that are now under greatest threat from industrial logging are coastal valley bottoms which contain some of the finest temparate rainforest remaining on Earth. Coastal valley bottoms are the area of greatest biodiversity in BC, home to grizzlies, salmon, and the majority of wildlife living on the coast. There is a fascinating inter-relationship between the pacific salmon and the plants and animals in these valley bottoms that is being studied by Dr.Tom Reimchen. The forests found in these coastal valley bottoms are the most highly valued by logging companies because they are the most easily accessible and contain the most valuable trees.

View a short film of the rainforest featuring an interview with David Suzuki  
Of  the 353 rainforest valleys in BC, only 69 remain intact today. Existing government plans have targeted half of these few remaining areas for road-building and logging within five years. This situation is especially grave on Vancouver Island where of 90 primary watersheds only five have not been logged.

Hasn’t BC created parks to protect the environment?

A review of the province's Protected Areas Strategy states, “Existing protected areas tend to over-represent alpine ecosystems and under-represent mid- and low-elevation ecosystems.” In other words, the creation of parks in BC is protecting rock and ice and not the last remnants of temperate forest.



Of BC’s parks, over 66 percent are in alpine or sub-alpine zones leaving the coastal temperate rainforest ecosystem grossly under-represented in BC's park system.


For example, Coastal Douglas Fir represents only .06 percent of protected areas in BC — a mere 2.7 percent of its original range. In 2000, BC reached its goal of protecting 12 percent of the land base in parks and protected areas. While this may be impressive on paper, the reality is that the government is primarily protecting areas that are not commercially viable for industrial logging in the first place.

Due to their dependence on old-growth forests, caribou, marbled murrelets, spotted owls, marmots and goshawks rely on the decisions of the Ministry of Forests for protection. The marbled murrelet, for example,  needs large mossy branches in order to nest, and these do not exist in second-growth plantations. The Vancouver Island marmot is close to extinction with fewer than 30 remaining in the wild. This problem is deepened by a lack of federal legislation for wildlife protection, which leaves the Ministry of Forests as the “steward” of wildlife values.

While pacific salmon are not listed as endangered, 142 distinct runs of salmon in BC and the Yukon have gone extinct and logging is cited as a major factor.

Ecosystem-based planning A growing number of ecologists and economists around the world believe that to maintain sustainable human cultures and their economies, human activities must be based upon protecting ecosystem functioning at all scales. A landscape-level ecosystem-based plan is one way to meet this objective. Ecosystem-based planning does not start with a target for production (be it cubic metres of timber, person days of recreation, or tonnes of salmon), but instead seeks to understand the landscape and site level ecology of the study area and predict how human uses and economies can coincide. An ecosystem-based plan identifies and quantifies these variables, and makes it possible for all forest users to carry out planning in an appropriate and professional manner. The Silva Foundation of British Columbia is a world leader in ecosystem-based planning. According to the Silva Foundation, ecosystem-based planning:

looks first at whole forest landscapes and whole human communities;

protects large ecosystems and provides for strong local economies;

works to protect, maintain and restore forests;

emphasizes what to leave in the forest to maintain the ecosystem, not what to take to maintain economic growth;

recognizes that the forest sustains us, we do not sustain the forest. See more on our solutions page.

See more on the Overcut