B.C.'s old-growth protections come under renewed scrutiny
Forests ministry denies reports of old-growth being used for fuel
B.C.'s forests ministry has denied reports, published by the BBC and others, that old-growth trees from the province are still being burned as pellets for fuel in the U.K.
The province also pushed back on environmentalists' claims that a leaked old-growth forests map suggests it is playing a "shell game" to allow the harvesting of old-growth trees meant to be protected.
"Whole forests of any kind are not being turned into pellets by the forest sector," said a Ministry of Forests spokesperson in a March 8 email. "Reports that whole forests and quality sawlogs are being turned into pellets by the forestry industry are simply false."
Instead, the ministry said, all wood pellets in B.C. are made "almost entirely from waste fibre" such as sawdust, shavings, and leftover wood from logging, which would otherwise have to be burned.
But a forest ecologist in Prince George, B.C., said despite claims to the contrary, the province is failing to uphold its commitment to preserve swaths of old-growth trees.
"It's actually thousands of load of logs ... coming from cut blocks containing large areas of old growth forest," said Michelle Connolly, director of Conservation North, in an interview with CBC's Daybreak North on March 4.
It's just the latest scrutiny of B.C.'s promise to protect old-growth forests. Controversy resurfaced last month when Conservation North co-authored a report alleging U.K. biofuel company Drax Group has continued burning logs and forestry waste from B.C.'s rarest old-growth forests.
The report's authors allege nearly 40 per cent of the areas Drax sourced its wood from last year were old-growth forests, about half of which were within areas the province had temporarily halted logging, known as priority deferral areas — which the province deem the most at risk.
The report comes nearly nearly two years after investigations by CBC's The Fifth Estate and BBC's Panorama revealed Drax's operations depended on logging in rare old-growth areas in B.C.
Last month, BBC published a new article, reporting the company's alleged practice has continued.
Drax defends its B.C. wood sourcing
The fibre Drax produces at its 12 pellet mills in B.C. are burned to produce fuel for electricity in its U.K. power station, roughly 250 kilometres north of London.
The company says on its website its converted North Yorkshire coal plant generates 14 terawatt-hours of energy a year, about a quarter of all electricity generated in B.C. in 2023.
In an email, Drax sustainability director Joe Aquino said the firm is "confident" its "biomass is sustainable and legally harvested." He said it only uses sawmill residue, and waste left behind from logging, including tree tops and branches.
"If we don't exist, that material gets left in the roadside and it gets disposed of through incineration," Aquino told CBC's Daybreak North on March 6. "If we don't exist, then sawmills have no outlets to send that material."
B.C.'s Ministry of Forests said what Drax is doing is legal and does not harm protected old-growth forests. A ministry spokesperson said Drax trades "quality timber, from their timber license area, to a sawmill in exchange for mill residuals" to turn into fuel pellets.
The province defines old-growth trees as those at least 140 years old in B.C.'s Interior, and 250 years old on the coast.
In 2021, the B.C. government introduced a process to temporarily stop logging in selected old-growth forests known as deferral areas, "a temporary measure to prevent irreversible biodiversity loss."
Deferral areas are protected from logging for a period of two to four years, during which the province plans to develop new strategies that put ecosystems' health before timber management, according to B.C.'s Old Growth Strategic Review,
The ministry says 2.4 million hectares of forests have been deferred so far in partnership with First Nations.
'Erroneous truck loads'
According to Aquino, last October Drax stopped getting its wood fibre directly from logging sites that include deferral areas, "in response to policy changes" by the province.
"What Conservation North was bringing forward was prior to October 2023," he said.
But the group's report concluded the company was still sourcing rare old-growth logs three months later.
"We anticipated Drax would say that, and extended the analysis into this year," Connolly wrote in an email to Daybreak North in response to Aquino's statement.
Conolly said the group used B.C.'s Harvest Billing System database to assess how much biomass arrived at Drax's pellet mills from B.C. forests.
In an email, the company acknowledged nine truck loads with wood from old-growth deferral areas had been "mistakenly delivered" to its pellet plants since October.
"For context this was nine out of almost 8,000 truckloads delivered to Drax's pellet plants" between November and January, the company wrote in an email.
"The erroneous truck loads were identified internally at Drax shortly after delivery," the company said, adding it's worked "to reduce the risk of this happening in future."
But Connolly said Drax is only a small part of the problem; other companies harvest the timber that Drax relies on for wood pellets.
"The real problem is that old-growth priority deferral areas are being logged for other products as well," she said.
Leaked map raises allegations of ministry bias
Those concerns were echoed by Ben Parfitt, a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), who said the wood-pellet controversy highlights a larger issue around how removals are made from old-growth deferral areas.
"There has been logging that has happened in some of the deferral areas," he said.
He alleged the province has long been biased toward the logging industry, and in a report published last week argued the Ministry of Forests wants to allow even more logging in old-growth forests.
Based on government old-growth mapping data sent anonymously to the CCPA, Parfitt said officials "behind the scenes" removed 55 per cent of the old-growth deferral areas recommended in 2021 by the Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel (TAP), a provincially appointed group that includes foresters and biologists.
According to a statement from Minister of Forests Bruce Ralston, some deferral areas were removed after consulting First Nations.
"Some First Nations support TAP-identified deferrals," Ralston's statement said. "Others have said that based on their expertise, alternative old growth land outside of TAP areas should be deferred instead.
"Some First Nations don't support proposed deferrals and prefer to continue forestry activity in their territory."
According to Parfitt, some of the removed areas held some of B.C.'s biggest trees, which the TAP had warned were at the highest risk of being logged.
The ministry said tree size isn't the only factor considered when "determining the ecological value of an old-growth forest deferral." The province also considers how big such a deferral area is, whether it's near a waterway, local species or rare habitats.
In the meantime, the province says it is taking action on all the recommendations of the Old Growth Strategic Review.
"We will keep working alongside First Nations, communities, advocates and the sector," Ralston's statement said, "to conserve more ancient forests for our children and grandchildren."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With files from David P. Ball, Nicole Oud, Megan Turcato and Daybreak North