Forests are still falling

Our eyes on old growth in B.C., but there's another growing threat to forests ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌‌

In the last month, we renewed pressure on the government of British Columbia to protect old growth forests in a big way.

Over 13,000 emails were sent to decision makers to share Stand.earth Research Group’s research that exposed industrial logging in old growth forests that should have been protected. We received direct phone calls from politicians telling us they were receiving too many emails, so we think it’s fair to say they heard us loud and clear.

We’ll be honest with you, we may not see the changes we need immediately, but our collective actions have the B.C. government moving quicker than they ever have before on this issue. In the coming month, hundreds of residents will meet with their locally elected representatives to keep them accountable to the province’s commitments on old growth.

But even as we work together for old growth, a growing threat to forests in Canada needs our immediate attention: forest biomass a.k.a, wood pellets.

While eyes have been turned towards the old growth crisis in B.C., the forest biomass industry has been scaling up production. In B.C., most forest-biomass, in the form of wood pellets, takes wood and turns it into fuel for electricity generation in countries like the UK and Japan. You may have seen this video narrated by Emma Thompson that we produced a couple months ago to mobilize the Stand.earth community around this issue.

The forest biomass industry got its start in B.C. by claiming to only use waste wood, but as its export market has grown internationally, the B.C. government has been handing out permits to log primary forests (natural forests that have never been logged) to meet the growing demand. Most of these forests are in the central and northern Interior.

Primary forests in the British Columbia Interior often don’t get the same attention as their coastal cousins, but these rare ecosystems are just as vital for communities, wildlife, and our global climate. But in the eyes of the B.C. government and the wood pellet industry, many of these forests are simply fibre to be extracted.

Forest biomass has been marketed as renewable energy to replace coal overseas, but burning trees for electricity is dirtier than coal when you account for the carbon dioxide emitted at the smokestack and loss of forest carbon from logging. This is especially true when primary forests are logged to manufacture wood pellets. You can replant a tree, but you cannot replant a forest.

The future of the industry – and many of these forests – is now in the hands of UK-based coal giant Drax, a company that has pulled in billions of public dollars in subsidies by retrofitting its plants to burn trees. After acquiring Pinnacle Renewable Energy in 2021 and more recently Pacific Bioenergy’s contracts, Drax now has a virtual monopoly in B.C., which is responsible for roughly 80% of Canada’s pellet exports. Building on this growing scandal, B.C.’s Chief Forester – a senior government staffer in charge of allocating the provincial harvest – just took a new job for Drax.

As bad as this industry is for the climate, it’s equally as worrisome for jobs. The production of wood pellets is highly mechanized. Machines have replaced humans to produce one of the lowest value products one could imagine coming from natural forests. It’s the same story with industrial resource extraction the world over. These communities are bearing the brunt of job losses, as well as the impacts of intensely degraded forests like worsening floods, slides, and megafires.

The future of forests and communities cannot continue to be in the hands of corporate interests. As we face multiple, inter-related crises from job losses to housing to climate-fuelled disasters, we must transition away from industrial logging in old growth and primary forests. This won’t be easy, but we believe in the power of the Stand community and our allies to fight for good jobs, impacted communities, and the climate. And we’ve spent the last year and a half in this battle to protect the last ancient forests in B.C. building a critical mass of people to do just that.

Because of people like you, this community is more than 650,000 strong and growing. Together, we can take on the industry’s latest scam to log forest ecosystems to produce energy that’s dirtier than coal.