Sierra Club BC: Forests Minister Ravi Parmar pushing unsustainable logging rates
Media Release
Sierra Club BC: Forests Minister Ravi Parmar pushing unsustainable logging rates
March 31, 2026
Increasing BC Timber Sales logging rate will further threaten old growth, forest health and long-term forestry jobs.

Photo by Mya Van Woudenberg/SCBC.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sierra Club BC Senior Policy & Science Advisor Jens Wieting offers the following statement:
“Sierra Club BC is very concerned about Forest Minister Ravi Parmar’s announcement to increase the volume logged through BC Timber Sales (BCTS) by another 800,000 cubic meters. Such an increase will result in clearcutting thousands of additional hectares of forests—including at-risk old-growth forests recommended for deferrals five years ago that are still being targeted by industry, including by the B.C. government’s own logging agency BCTS.
“Reports and forestry experts, like the members of the Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel, have been warning that B.C.’s forests are already at a breaking point and that current provincial forest management allows unsustainable overcutting across vast parts of B.C.
“The minister claims that the proposed changes to BCTS will support jobs for logging contractors, local mills and value added products, but the government does not explain what steps will be taken to reduce the amount of wood that leaves the province in the form of raw log exports, without processing and adding value.
“Increasing the rate of logging to an even more unsustainable level can only translate into short-term relief for industry instead of a sustainable shift and will result in even more severe long-term pain and ecological, economic and social costs.
“Sierra Club BC is especially concerned about Minister Parmar’s promotion of “salvage logging.” Industrial clearcutting in response to climate change impacts like beetle outbreaks and wildfires has added a second industrial disturbance to already damaged forests in many parts of the province, removing critical habitat like deadwood and compacting soils undermining natural regeneration and slowing ecological recovery. Expanding this practice will further reduce biodiversity, and increase erosion, flooding and drought, amplifying the very climate risks government and industry claim to address.”
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Background
- Closer to the Brink: The state of the forest in BC in 2025.
- The Economic Value of Old-growth Forests in BC: Analysis of Old-growth Management Scenarios in Two Timber Supply Area.
- Intact Forest, Safe Communities: Reducing community climate risks through forest protection and a paradigm shift in forest management.
Media contacts
Jens Wieting, Senior Policy and Science Advisor | Sierra Club BC
jens@sierraclub.bc.ca