“We have nothing like the timber resources we once thought we had. Our production capacity is being reduced alarmingly… Our most valuable areas are being overcut. Our production… must of necessity fall off sharply during the next few decades if prompt measures are not taken to forestall it.”
Former Chief Forester of British Columbia C.D. Orchard wrote those words in 1938. Yet 87 years later, the Council of Forest Industries, logging company executives and the Business Council of BC continue to argue that bureaucratic red tape is crippling the province’s logging industry. While it’s true there’s too much red tape in forestry, it’s the kind being used to lay out more road lines and cut block boundaries that we should be worried about.
If the situation was ‘alarming’ in 1938, it’s truly terrifying now: many ecosystems contain less than 10% of the old and primary forests that they used to. Old and primary forests support the highest levels of biodiversity, store the most carbon and make landscapes more resilient to wildfires. They’re also the forests that typically grow the biggest, most commercially valuable trees. The B.C. logging industry was built on its access to these once plentiful old and primary forests—as they disappear, so too does the industry’s competitive advantage.
Companies like Canfor, West Fraser, Interfor, Tolko and Western Forest Products are well aware of this fact. Having logged many of B.C.’s last old and primary forests to depletion, they’re now moving their operations to more profitable lands in the southern United States, like Georgia, Arkansas and Louisiana. There, milder climates and fertile soils mean plantations can reach a harvestable state for lumber in as little as 20 years (compared to, at minimum, 60 to 80 years in B.C.’s interior). Cheaper labour costs, tax breaks and the abundance of private land in the US South are also contributing to this exodus.
In August, Canfor signed a US$73 million deal to acquire forest operations in Arkansas. Less than one month later they announced the closure of their Fort St. John and Vanderhoof mills, resulting in 500 lost jobs. More than half of Canfor’s operations are now in the US South, and other B.C.-based companies are making similar moves. West Fraser has invested more than US$4.5 billion in operations outside of Canada since 2000; Interfor has invested over US$864 million in US sawmills since 2013; Tolko has disclosed investments totaling US$400 million since 2018.
These investments were all funded by profits from the liquidation of forests that took hundreds or sometimes thousands of years to develop. The province and forestry industry have treated B.C.’s forests as ‘fibre baskets’ — low-value producers of cheap (2x4s) lumber — for far too long. Now, B.C. mill workers, loggers and forest-dependent communities such as Houston, Vavenby and Vanderhoof are paying the price for that greed.
The question we’re collectively faced with today is: do we allow business-as-usual to continue, or do we demand change? Depending on how we answer that question, we will arrive at one of two possible futures.
In the first, business-as-usual scenario, our old and primary forests continue to be logged at such a rate that ecosystems can’t recover. Multinational companies make short-term profits and their shareholders are pleased with their healthy returns. But in the not-so-distant future, those returns diminish, companies can no longer find primary forests to log, more-and-more mills close, companies fully move to the US South, and B.C. communities are left reeling. Forestry workers continue to lose their jobs, many old growth-dependent species are likely lost forever, and our landscapes become far more vulnerable to the growing impacts of a warming climate.
In the second scenario, we shift to a more holistic view of forestry, one in which ecosystem health is valued alongside economic sustainability — and the interconnectedness of the two is widely acknowledged. We log forests selectively, ensuring our old and primary forests remain standing to sustain healthy wildlife populations and functional ecosystems. In turn, our communities are safer from wildfires and have more secure sources of clean water in the face of climate change. Our highly skilled forestry workers use their intimate knowledge of the land to restore the damage that’s been done.
We’ve got a lot of work ahead to ensure we move towards this future. Premier Eby and Minister Parmar must redistribute forest tenures—from the large operators that are leaving B.C. behind, to small operators who add more value to our communities. Premier Eby must deliver on a Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health law. The province must bring meaningful reform to our broken forestry regulations and timber supply review processes. And as a public, we must demonstrate our support for these actions.
