Background

The University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre (ELC) report Applying Solutions from the Great Bear Rainforest Agreements to Vancouver Island, the South Coast, and Beyond summarizes the key principles applied in the Ecosystem-Based Management framework in the Great Bear Rainforest and recommends the minimum conservation level in this region as a starting point elsewhere in B.C. This would ensure a base level of protection and, where necessary, require the restoration of old-growth forests.

The key recommendation of the report is to set aside thirty per cent of old-growth by ecosystem and landscape unit (used for planning purposes) in areas that are ecologically similar to the Great Bear Rainforest (such as Vancouver Island, the South Coast and inland temperate rainforests). In those parts of the province where trees typically don’t grow as old as in temperate rainforests, the thirty per cent target should be applied to those forests that are least damaged from industrial logging and have the highest value for biodiversity.

The NDP’s 2017 election platform included a commitment to act for old-growth, promising to take “an evidence-based scientific approach and use the ecosystem-based management of the Great Bear Rainforest as a model.” The amendment process for B.C.’s forestry law gives the B.C. government a generational opportunity to apply a key element of the Great Bear Rainforest solution across the province.

The 6.4 million hectare Great Bear Rainforest is the only major region in B.C. that has science-based conservation thresholds for old-growth forests. About eighty-five per cent of the forest in the region is set aside in a combination of protected areas and stringent logging regulation.

The Ecosystem-Based Management framework aims to ensure seventy per cent of the natural amount of old-growth forest of every type of forest is set aside from logging across the region (a low risk threshold for ecological integrity). Additionally, the framework calls for a minimum of thirty per cent of the forest set aside at the landscape level (the high risk threshold for ecological integrity) to maintain connectivity.

In contrast, across the vast majority of the province, old-growth forests and intact forest landscapes undisturbed by industrial activity have been reduced dramatically. In high productivity forest ecosystems like valley bottom rainforests with very big trees, remaining old-growth is less than ten per cent of its original extent, and an even smaller amount is formally protected.

On Vancouver Island, only about a fifth of the original productive old-growth rainforest remains unlogged. More than thirty per cent of what remained standing in 1993 has been destroyed in just the last twenty-five years (684,000 hectares or thirty-one per cent in 1993 and 469,000 hectares or twenty-one per cent in 2018).

B.C.’s temperate rainforests represent the largest remaining tracts of a globally rare ecosystem covering just half a per cent of the planet’s landmass. Yet the current rate of old-growth logging on Vancouver Island alone is more than three square metres per second, or about thirty-four soccer fields per day.

On average, temperate rainforests store more carbon than tropical rainforests, helping to slow down global warming. When left intact, they are relatively resilient and less vulnerable to climate impacts such as fire and insect outbreaks compared to other forests.

Globally, the loss of primary forests—forests that are largely undisturbed by human activity—is a threat to species, carbon storage, clean air and clean water. In some countries, this is mainly due to deforestation. In other countries such as Canada, this is mainly through the cutting and replacement of rich ancient forests with even-aged young forest.

Read the report: Applying Solutions from the Great Bear Rainforest Agreements to Vancouver Island, the South Coast, and Beyond