Protecting old growth

British Columbia is home to some of the last endangered old-growth forests on Earth and they are an essential part of the foundation of life in B.C. They provide our communities with clean air and water, shelter endangered species, support B.C.’s billion-dollar tourism industry, and are culturally important to many First Nations.

Despite repeated promises from the provincial government to protect these at-risk ecosystems and reform forest stewardship, old-growth forests in B.C. are being decimated by continued industrial over-cutting, climate change-fueled wildfires and slow conservation progress. We need to protect what’s left before it is too late.

The recent wildfires our province and the rest of Canada have been grappling with remind us how important it is to change the way we manage forests in B.C. Old-growth forests are not just massive carbon sinks that help clean our air, they are also ecosystems that act as giant sponges and create their own microclimates that both prevent and lessen the impacts of forest fires and drought.

We need to protect our old-growth forests, not just because they are globally rare but also because our health and the lives of countless species depend on them.