B.C.’s precious old-growth giants are still being logged and burned to make electricity

Two new reports find B.C.’s old-growth forests are still on the chopping block despite claims to the contrary by the provincial government and a U.K.-based corporation.

Government data leaked to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) shows B.C.’s Ministry of Forestry rejected more than half the proposed logging deferrals recommended by an expert panel with a mandate to protect important old-growth forests.

The CCPA report analyzed and mapped the leaked data, which originated in a password-protected file on a ministry file-sharing website and was shared anonymously with the think tank. The analysis shows ministry personnel removed 55 per cent of the areas of large old-growth trees the panel recommended be protected from logging.

“It really does kind of underscore how the Ministry of Forests, for decades, has effectively been captured by the industry that it regulates,” said Ben Parfitt, resource policy analyst with the CCPA B.C. and author of the report. “Large numbers of old-growth forests with the very best trees are being lifted from deferral status and more deferrals are being moved to forests that have much smaller, less commercially desirable trees,” Parfitt told Canada’s National Observer in an interview.

BC United MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie Mike Morris said it's “alarming” that “there's bureaucrats within the government [who] would manipulate data like that.”

“Are they doing it at the request of the minister or are they doing it on their own volition? I don't know,” he said, adding the government needs to be held accountable.

Morris said these are his personal views, not his party’s position. Morris advocates for forestry reform and said it's “heartbreaking” the government hasn’t recognized the “clear and present danger” of primary and old-growth forest loss caused by the last 60 years of clearcutting.

Minister of Forests Bruce Ralston said the leaked data “confirms what we have been saying all along — that 2.42 million hectares of old-growth forests are deferred or newly protected since November 2021.”

“This includes 1.23 million hectares of priority at-risk old-growth identified by the Technical Advisory Panel,” said Ralston in a statement emailed to Canada’s National Observer.

The panel’s mandate was to provide science-based recommendations on which old-growth forests should be protected. In 2021, the panel submitted a map to the province recommending it defer logging for about 2.6 million hectares of forest that were, in the panel's view, most important to protect.

Ralston said some First Nations supported those recommended deferral areas, while others wanted “alternative old-growth land” to be deferred instead. He did not specify which First Nations.

Parfitt described the Ministry of Forests’ decision to remove and add certain deferrals as a “shell game.”

“What's being shifted back into the logging column is, generally speaking, big trees and what's being shifted into deferred status is generally small trees,” said Parfitt.

Morris thinks this is perhaps something the Office of the Ombudsperson should look into.

The province is “taking action on all the recommendations of the Old Growth Strategic Review,” said Ralston. “Deferrals are one step we are taking to conserve our oldest and rarest forests.”

“The [BC] NDP keeps claiming that they're different and that they paid attention to their expert panel” and announcing they won’t log old-growth, said federal Green Party Leader Elizabeth May. “How dare they continue to lie to people and think that voters are going to believe them?”

If deferrals are only “one step” the province is taking to protect old-growth forests, what other tools are there? Parfitt asked. “Because if you don’t defer logging of these forests, nothing will be left.”

Logging these “irreplaceable” old-growth forests does long-term damage, both in terms of carbon emissions and the more obvious impacts to ecosystems, said May.

“It's really contempt for the public trust.”

B.C.’s old-growth forests continue to fuel a biomass power plant in the U.K., according to a new investigation by Conservation North, the Bulkley Valley Stewardship Coalition and Biofuelwatch UK. It found Drax Group — a U.K.-based power company and wood pellet producer — “continued to source logs from old-growth as recently as January 2024,” said Len Vanderstar of the Bulkley Valley Stewardship Coalition.

“What is also upsetting is the fact that these forests are a significant component in carbon capture and should not be used to generate electricity in the name of climate change mitigation,” said Vanderstar in the March 11 press release. The groups behind the investigation say the U.K. government should stop giving sustainability subsidies to Drax, which operates the world’s largest wood-fired thermal electricity plant in Yorkshire, U.K., and is considered a renewable energy company. Natural Resources Canada considers forest biomass a renewable feedstock for energy production as long as it comes from a sustainably managed forest and regrows over time. Many environmental groups disagree.

When contacted about the investigation, a spokesperson directed Canada’s National Observer to a web page with public statements on its website that say the company is “confident our biomass is sustainable and legally harvested.”

“In October 2023, Drax made the decision to stop sourcing wood fibre directly from harvest sites which overlap with Old Growth Deferral Areas,” reads the statement, attributed to a Drax spokesperson. “Fibre that Drax has sourced from publicly owned forests in British Columbia has been designated as being available to harvest legally and sustainably by the Government of British Columbia, alongside First Nations.”

The investigation analyzed publicly available data, including the provincial government’s Harvest Billing System, and cross-referenced those findings with recent satellite imagery — or an in-person visit — to confirm whether cut blocks had been logged.

This isn’t the first time Drax’s sustainability claims have been called into question. In October 2022, a BBC investigation found the company sourced some of the biomass it burns to create electricity from whole trees in B.C.’s primary forests — not just sawdust and waste wood, as the company claims.

“Logging in British Columbia is not a climate solution in the U.K.,” said May.

The federal NDP did not make an MP available to comment on the leaked data and Drax investigation. Multiple federal Conservative MPs did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.

The federal government has pledged to protect 30 per cent of Canada’s lands and water by 2030. B.C. has since said it will protect 30 per cent of its land by the end of the decade, but the leaked data calls that commitment into question, said Parfitt.

“If what is on the forest ministry map becomes policy, it will actually undercut the ability of the federal and provincial governments to up protection of threatened landscapes in British Columbia,” he said.

Natasha Bulowski / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer