Carbon sinks at risk
One year of logging old-growth rainforest on Vancouver Island and the south coast eliminates B.C.’s progress in reducing annual emissions, a new Sierra Club BC report shows.
The report, Carbon at Risk: B.C.’s Unprotected Old Growth Rainforest, found that old-growth logging in southwest B.C is responsible for releasing approximately 3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, nullifying all of the province’s progress in reducing annual emissions. Read the report.
Read the story in the Vancouver Sun.
“We blew B.C.’s entire carbon savings for a year because the B.C. government doesn’t have a plan to protect the rare old-growth forests of Vancouver Island and the South Coast.” said Sierra Club BC’s forest and climate campaigner, Jens Wieting.
Sierra Club BC is also concerned about legislation introduced to enable a shift from volume-based forest licences into area-based Tree Farm Licences, without addressing the critical needs for carbon sinks and species habitat. The change in the Forest Act is supposed to secure access to timber for the industry in the Interior but could get applied in other parts of the province.
“Keeping more forest carbon on the ground and ensuring more species adapt to climate change should be central to any change of forestry legislation. Instead, this change is now being driven by a myopic focus on feeding sawmills.” Wieting said.
Learn more about the risks of proposed changes to the Forest Act.
Carbon dioxide emissions from logging old growth contribute significantly to the massive increase in overall emissions from BC’s forests. Learn more.
Sierra Club BC’s analysis identifies approximately 1.5 million hectares of old-growth forest in the Vancouver IsIand/South Coast area that are currently unprotected. Within this area, there are 600,000 hectares of relatively productive stands, with significant carbon storage capacity and a higher likelihood of getting targeted for logging. These forests alone store the equivalent of 13 times B.C.’s annual emissions.
The new report highlights the carbon stored in unprotected old-growth rainforest on Vancouver Island and the southern B.C. coast. It estimates the ongoing carbon loss due to logging in this part of the province. The report demonstrates that one year of logging in this region (2011) resulted in the loss of carbon storage equivalent to the 3 million tonnes in B.C.’s annual emission reduction achieved in 2010.
Watch our interactive presentation about forests and global warming.
