Nearly 25 per cent of Interior Wet Belt forests logged according to new study

Apr 13, 2022 | 10:03 AM

PRINCE GEORGE—A team of scientists from across the globe has published a new peer-reviewed study about the importance of protecting British Columbia’s interior wetbelt (IWB).

Scientists from the University of Northern British Columbia, Griffith University in Australia, the Conservation Biology Institute in Oregon, Wild Heritage in Oregon and Conservation North were part of the study, underscoring what they call the seriousness of BC’s emissions tied to the logging of old-growth forests.

The IWB is a largely forested area of 16.5 million hectares along the western flanks of the Canadian Rockies and northern Columbia Mountains that contains rare old-growth spruce forests.

“The region contains underappreciated carbon stocks that can help Canada meet its climate and conservation targets. In their natural state, these forests constitute an irreplaceable natural climate solution, but we’re turning them into lumber and threatening to turn them into pellets,” said Lead researcher Dr. Dominick DellaSala.

The Government of Canada has pledged to protect 30 percent of its lands and waters by 2030 in order to mitigate the climate crisis. The study used data collected in the field, as well as government datasets to estimate how much carbon is contained within unlogged old-growth spruce, redcedar and hemlock forests, and how much has been emitted to the atmosphere by clearcut logging.

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Dr. Art Fredeen, a study co-author at UNBC added, “The Interior Wetbelt contains some of the most carbon-dense forests on the planet.” He noted that, “if we summed up all of the carbon from historically logged timber in the IWB it would exceed BC’s total greenhouse gas emissions for 2019, 9 times over. Instead of increasing the BC’s carbon debt by further logging old carbon-rich landscapes, we should be conserving them.”

The study reports that nearly 25 per cent of the entire IWB has been logged and the majority of that has been in the last 50 years. They say that due to multiple reasons they believe the province is under-reporting logging-related carbon emissions by as much as 75 per cent.

by Thomas Doucet

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Nearly 25 per cent of Interior Wet Belt forests logged according to new study

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