VANCOUVER — The worsening effects of climate change are compounding the historical loss of British Columbia’s old-growth forests, says the co-author of a new paper that shows decades of logging on the province’s central coast targeted the highest-val
"History tells us that we have really depleted these high-value elements of the landscape, and that we can't keep going," said Ken Lertzman, professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University's school of resource and environmental management.
The paper published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences examined more than 150 yearsof logging across 8,550 square kilometres of forests around Bella Bella on B.C.'s central coast. "Any kinds of decision-making today really have to be understood and have to act in the context of the reality of this depleted landscape," he said.
As of last spring, the province had deferred logging across a total of 1.87 million hectares of old-growth, including 1.05 million identified by the expert panel. The paper examines how policy changes can lead to"a greater stewardship ethic" in harvesting behaviour by linking shifting logging patterns with changes introduced with B.C.'s Forest Practices Code in 1995.
The agreement is also an example of conservation financing, or funding initiatives that spur local economic development while aligning with stewardship goals.