Prince George, BC – A northern conservation group has confirmed that BC is currently allowing the logging of primary forest for pellets. Conservation North is calling on the BC government to stop this practice immediately. “These forests are being ground into pellets to be shipped to Europe and Asia for electricity generation. This is fueling the climate crisis and is short-sighted in this time of catastrophic floods and extreme weather,” explains Asta Glembotzki, Conservation North.

Conservation North combed through publicly available data and discovered that logging primary forests for pellets is happening throughout the central interior. “Some people didn’t believe us when we told them that BC is allowing this because the BC government has said from the beginning that only residuals from logging go into pellet plants. Now we have proof that this isn’t true,” adds director Michelle Connolly, Conservation North Director.

Primary forests are forests that have never been industrially logged or disturbed. According to recent studies, only 18% of the Earth’s forest cover is primary, or original, forest. In a promotional video for the pellet industry, BC’s Chief Forester states that logging for pellets is sustainable. The reality is that “primary forests provide irreplaceable wildlife habitat and cannot be re-created by a plantation,” states Jenn Matthews, Conservation North Outreach. “Once a forest is industrially logged, much of its ecological value is gone, along with most of its carbon stores and its ability to regulate ground- and surface-water flow. Allowing the logging of natural forests is most definitely not sustainable.”

BC’s claim to virtue is that these forests are “waste”, “damaged”, or “low-value”. However, “all natural forests experience disturbances like beetles and fire. Using these occurrences, which are an integral part of a forest’s ecology, to justify industrially logging them is a recipe for the wholesale conversion of nature into man-made landscapes,” explains Ms. Connolly, who has a background in natural disturbance ecology.

We learned today that under an obscure crediting program, the BC government actually rewards the biggest logging companies for logging ‘grade 4’ trees (typically considered by the industry as low-quality trees; for example, an old growth western red cedar with some heart rot but incredibly high wildlife value) for pellets. This perversely incentivizes the logging of more primary forest by stating that for every ‘waste’ tree cut and delivered to a pellet mill, the company can then go back into the forest and cut another tree for lumber, effectively, in some cases, doubling the number of trees they are allowed to cut.

“In order to prevent ecological collapse of these incredibly rare ecosystems here in central BC, we need a moratorium on logging primary forests and a government subsidized, just transition to second growth logging,” explains Jenn Matthews. “The BC government should not be enabling and accelerating this collapse by issuing licenses to cut primary forest and subsidizing more unsustainable logging.”