We return this week with our own Senior Forest Conservation Manager, Dave Pearce, to cover the wider implications of Wildlands’ Logging Scars report.
In our last episode we learned that Wildlands League’s study showed an average of 14% of the forest is not regenerated after one cycle of full-tree harvesting. While that may not seem like a significant impact to the forest, Dave explains why this isn’t the case. In addition to reducing our resilience to climate change, logging scars spell serious trouble for biodiversity as well. We give context to degradation in Canada’s forests and why there’s a need for higher quality data to better understand the impacts of logging on the landscape.
Check out the Logging Scars webpage to read the report and see the eye-opening images.
Make sure to check out the show notes on the podcast webpage for more links and helpful resources.
You can help this community grow by sharing the podcast with your friends.
We return this week with our own Senior Forest Conservation Manager, Dave Pearce, to cover the wider implications of Wildlands’ Logging Scars report.
In our last episode we learned that Wildlands League’s study showed an average of 14% of the forest is not regenerated after one cycle of full-tree harvesting. While that may not seem like a significant impact to the forest, Dave explains why this isn’t the case. In addition to reducing our resilience to climate change, logging scars spell serious trouble for biodiversity as well. We give context to degradation in Canada’s forests and why there’s a need for higher quality data to better understand the impacts of logging on the landscape.
Check out the Logging Scars webpage to read the report and see the eye-opening images.
Make sure to check out the show notes on the podcast webpage for more links and helpful resources.
You can help this community grow by sharing the podcast with your friends.
Welcome to the Clear Cut. Hi, I'm Janet Sumner, Executive Director at Wildlands League.
Kaya Adleman:And I'm Kaya Adelman, Carbon Manager at Wildlands League.
Janet Sumner:Wildlands League is a Canadian conservation organization working on protecting the natural world.
Kaya Adleman:The Clear Cut is bringing to you the much-needed conversation on Canadian forest management and how we can better protect one of Canada's most important ecosystems, as our forests are reaching a tipping point.
Janet Sumner:So here we are this morning with the second episode of Logging Scars, talking to Dave Pierce from the Wildlands Office and Kaya Edelman, who is my co-host, on the Clear Cut.
Janet Sumner:In terms of how much land is deforested or has been left barren after a clear cut, we can't technically call it deforested even though there are no trees and they're barren after 30, 35 years plus, and that's because of international definitions et cetera. But the real point here is to get into well, what is actually happening in the forest, not just what's happening according to a model. And so this is actually quite revealing about logging scars and it does suggest that we need to take a look at how we do our calculations and how we think about forestry, and then we can't just rely on models that we actually have to get out there and figure out what's going on. But it also represents an enormous carbon loss if those trees are not coming back, if those areas essentially remain barren, and we didn't even do the calculations on what might be happening in the soil carbon or how that might be changing if you're drying out an area, et cetera. So, kaya, I'm looking forward to today's conversation.
Kaya Adleman:Right, I'm looking forward to it as well, and I think what this episode also really gets at for me is how widespread the logging scars is in terms of its implications. Wildlands League did this groundbreaking work and produced this information that 14% on average of the forest doesn't grow back after clear-cut logging has gone through. But what does that mean? And those implications are far-reaching. So I think that's what's interesting about this conversation and, like always, if you're listening to this for the first time, welcome hello, and you have no idea what we're talking about. This is part two of our logging scars episode. So before you dive into this one, go back, check out part one, called what are logging scars, and then check back in with us. All right, I'm excited to get into it.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, let's go.
Kaya Adleman:Why is that finding, though significant in the context of forestry? So that, like after logging, goes through some of the areas where logging has's lost to these landings and to the roads is somewhere in the range of 3% to 6%.
Dave Pearce:Again, my numbers might not be totally accurate, but Ontario's estimates are way low ball lengths. So 14% is a lot different than 3% and it has repercussions for our carbon accounting because those trees are not there, they're not sucking up carbon, they're not storing carbon. Also has implications for the forest industry. So you can imagine when the time comes to harvest those areas again, if they're not correcting their calculation, their yield is going to be at least 10% less than what a company would expect to get. And again, multiply it over the size of the province, that's a lot of. That's a big wood shortfall.
Kaya Adleman:That sounds significant and I can imagine that if a company is assuming that there's going to be forest there to cut down or to harvest trees from and then there's not, they're probably going to say, oh look at this other area where there's untouched forest, why don't I just get the trees from there on my forest management unit?
Dave Pearce:That is a great point, what we are saying. Because of this legacy of logging, scars and other reasons, we want to see the forest industry constrained to areas that have already been logged. And you're right. If they can't get the fiber that they need from those areas when they go back, then there's going to be increased pressure to further expand the footprint.
Janet Sumner:Is it possible to regenerate those places, Dave? Because that's one of the big questions we get asked all the time. It's like oh well, then couldn't we just regenerate those areas, and do you have a theory on that, or what's your thinking?
Dave Pearce:Well, it's technically possible but there's a, you know, so you could go in again with pretty heavy machinery. It would be very hard to do manually. So you have to go in with something that would penetrate and remove that, logging the slash like the waste wood and uncompact the soil. So it'd be almost an agricultural operation with really heavy machinery to get in there. And so you'd have to open these roads up again, which, you know they're still logging scars and they are slowly healing, very slowly. They won't heal before the next rotation because if they're 30 years old they'll be, um, you know, another, uh, 30 or 40 years. They're going to open up that area to cut those trees that were planted or that regenerated, um, and you know, based on what's happened in the last two or three decades, you're not going to have another forest there. So, anyways, they're slowly healing and it would be a high cost to go in and basically open up the roads just to regenerate it again, and then they're going to slowly heal and then they'd have to come back in with heavy machinery in another, you know, another few decades.
Dave Pearce:So it's quite costly and there has been in some of these cases, there's been some attempt to uh, limit access into these areas to kind of again we talked about it in the in the previous podcast to mitigate some of the impacts of forestry.
Dave Pearce:So they will pull culverts out or they'll pull bridges, uh, to try to keep access to a minimum, to to give a faint hope to these roads, regenerating for wildlife and and uh and uh, protecting, you know, fisheries from, from over harvest or whatever.
Dave Pearce:But um, all to say is there would be an impact to go in and try to regenerate these sites, and then you're already, um 20, 30 years behind the rest of the forest. So, um, there might be some wildlife benefits to having those trees, but they're just going to be starting to store carbon again. You know it's there's a 20 year lag before a planted tree really starts to grow carbon, and then it's not going to be very long after that before these areas are going to be opened up again for forestry, um, if they come back. So there's, um, it's technically feasible, um, it's much better to prevent these scars in the first place uh, than it than it is. And or try to do immediate amelioration while the area is still fresh, then to go back after two decades or three decades and try to fix it.
Janet Sumner:So one of the areas I just want to talk about is that I've often heard the phrase that we're trying to mimic fire, like the boreal is a fire-dependent ecosystem, so go in and harvest and that will be kind of look like a fire. Right, because we're going to harvest big areas like a fire would take out. But one of the big differences between a fire and a forestry operation is that there's a road infrastructure, and I guess this is one of the ways in which logging scars was really a confirmation for us that roads actually are, if not permanent, semi-permanent as an infrastructure in the forest, like once you've gone in and bear cut and certainly with field poultry harvesting used it, you've left behind this road infrastructure, whereas a fire wouldn't leave that. It would go in and take out a certain area. It might be large but it wouldn't have a supporting infrastructure.
Janet Sumner:And I think Anna talked about this in her podcast. Is that one of the reasons that caribou are disappearing off the landscape is because predators have greater access and they get that access. It's facilitated through the road network that's left behind by forestry, whereas fires don't operate that way. Can you maybe just speak to that?
Dave Pearce:Well, yeah, and that's a really good point. So the impacts of these it's not just visual, there's an ecological impact, and I think Justina talked about the functional response of wolves to even if their population didn't go up. They're more effective at scouring the landscape for prey If there's a road network that they can run along. Um, and it takes a long, long time. It was difficult after 20 or 30 years for Trevor to get a truck in to these areas, but it's no problem for a wolf. There's still.
Dave Pearce:We've seen enough of these old logging roads there, so there's growth that would prevent a truck going in. But you look closely and there's kind of a tunnel that's a perfect size for a game to run through, um, under the shrubs and whatnot, or through the, through the shrubbery. So they're still using that. Uh, other animals use it too, because it's just easier to get around that. Uh, other animals use it too, cause it's just easier to get around. So, um, uh, there I would say they are permanent from a, uh, a wildlife, uh, almost a wildlife feature. Uh, after the fact that I've worked in Algonquin park where, um, you know, I've been in in cutovers that have been older than these and the old logging roads and the landings are still around and there's game trails on them now and that's wolves actually use that to run around Algonquin Park as well.
Janet Sumner:That's a whole nother podcast. Dave on logging in. Algonquin Park. We Um, that's a whole nother podcast Dave logging in Algonquin park. We're not going there today.
Dave Pearce:No, no, but it's um, this, this, uh, the footprint of roads is not confined to the boreal. Um, but um, but, and, and it's, and, it's um, and it's impact on wildlife and the wildlife assemblage that comes up, you know that is there after logging.
Janet Sumner:It's pretty much permanent as far as I can see. So 1990 was my very first Earth Day. I was working at Pollution Probe, I was working on issues around waste management and toxics in the Great Lakes and pesticides and all that kind of fun stuff. I hadn't yet graduated to working on carbon or nature or thinking about all the great work that we do in terms of protecting areas at Wildlands Lake.
Janet Sumner:But 34 years later, we still very, very much need an Earth Day, because we need environmental groups and the public, and one of the great things that I've seen happen in my 34 years working on environmental issues is this transition where the public is even more engaged, where we have a democratization.
Janet Sumner:That's happened because of the internet, because of AI, because of all of these ways in which we can now see into the world and see what's going on, and so I'm more encouraged than ever that the public and the people are paying attention and are hungry for information, and if you're hungry for information, you want to be listening to the podcast and you want to be supporting the podcast, so anything that you can do on this Earth Day to help us keep the podcast going would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much for listening and tell all your friends about it. Thank you, okay. I was just going to ask about edge effect. This is something that I had no idea about until I joined Wildlands Lake and Dave taught me a lesson on edge effect. Go, dave, tell everybody about edge effect.
Dave Pearce:Well, edge effect is where you have the edge of the forest right and there could be a natural opening or it's it's more it's it's more problematic if it's an artificial opening of disturbance and um, so you can imagine a forest was covered, an area, and then you have a road going through and now you have two edges of the forest where it was complete forest cover before and, uh, that part of the forest is opened up to many things sunlight, wind, um, it's more accessible to predators, um, and so it'll dry out the forest more than a closed forest would be. Uh, there'll be different species growing there because the sunlight can penetrate, um, you know, well, beyond the exact edge of the forest, cause the, you know, the morning sun shines through on this side and the afternoon sun shines through on the other side, and you get, you get light penetrating well beyond the edge of the road into the forest. And the same with predators, um, that are. It makes predator, it makes it easier for predators to move along the road, but also to make forays into the, into the forest, off the road. So you can imagine a wolf or a wolf pack traveling along a road.
Dave Pearce:Uh, it's pretty easy going relative to going through the bush and then they see or smell a caribou you know, maybe you know up to a kilometer off the road, and then they can peel off and and uh go after that caribou which you know, maybe you know up to a kilometer off the road and then they can peel off and and uh go after that caribou which you know they wouldn't. It wouldn't be as easy for them to see. So there, yeah, there's multiple, I guess, impacts uh from an edge effect point of view, of roads and cutovers too, but uh, as we've seen, I mean, the cutovers do grow back. Uh, as we've seen, I mean, the cut cutovers do grow back uh to one extent or another, but it's the roads and landings that are really uh persisting.
Kaya Adleman:Wow, the presumption of regeneration that exists in the Canadian forest management frame. But what about from a climate standpoint? Or perhaps from a policy standpoint?
Dave Pearce:You want me to go yeah go for it.
Dave Pearce:Okay. So I mean, yeah, so you've got trees that have been removed that are not growing back at the same rate as the rest of the cutover area, so those constitute additional carbon debt because there's the trees. There aren't trees there sucking up carbon that would have been there Right. And so and Trevor, you know, found out, there's 14% of the clear cut on average isn't coming back. Um, that's, you know, 14%, uh, less, less carbon being absorbed by trees compared to what, uh, what would have been there, uh and um, and so there's a real, real impact on uh, on the environment. There's more carbon as a result of these areas. There's more carbon in the atmosphere than there would have been.
Dave Pearce:But there's also a glaring hole in Canada's accounting and maybe Janet can speak to this a bit more but where they're not considering this. And so Canada is supposed to be reporting on the carbon, you know, gains and losses caused by Canadian activities, and they're not reporting on this particular one and many more. There's others that kind of fly under the radar too. So we're doing worse, I guess, as a country, than we think we are because of these types of um miscalculations. And then there's the actual, actual impact, and then uh, additionally um, and this we haven't quantified this.
Dave Pearce:In a sense you can kind of quantify the CO2 equivalent because you know how much, how many trees should it should be there and and you can kind of and we've done the the calculation how much uh, co2 equivalent um is in the atmosphere. That shouldn't be. But then there's the methane uh portion because of all this um decomposing wood, that's um, the, the deeper stuff is decomposing in the absence of oxygen and the result of that is a methane production. You think of a stinky old, like a swamp or a bog. If anybody's delved into the muck there or even pulled their boot out of a deep hole in the mud, it smells because there's methane and associated sulfur stuff. You can't actually smell the methane, but it's the associated sulfur that goes along with it that you smell, but anyways the methane production. And methane is even worse than CO2 in terms of trapping heat in the atmosphere.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, just to add a little bit to what Dave was saying. The reason we don't account for it is because under the international agreements, canada admits to almost no deforestation and that's because when we look at the forest and it's being used for forestry, if you go in and you clear, cut that forest, it is still going to be used for forestry at some point in the future. So you haven't changed the actual land use on it, even though you've maybe taken all the trees off it, maybe even you've regrown some of those trees, but you've got 14% of it on average. As this logging scar study and you can go see all the math it goes anywhere from as little as 10%. That's been what I would call sort of de facto deforestation, because it's still barren or largely barren. That forest is not coming back anytime soon, as Dave has, you know, explained.
Kaya Adleman:And that's the assumption right under the international agreements is that the forest grows back. Therefore, you don't have to count it against your carbon emissions. Therefore, you don't have to count it against your carbon emissions.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, but it's also the assumption that you would still have to count it if, for example, you turned it into a shopping mall, maybe trees around it, because it's not a different land use.
Janet Sumner:And so, for example, in a place like Brazil, they're often cutting trees down to turn it into agriculture, or maybe it's a city or a shopping mall and that's a different land use. So they have to claim it. Canada, we don't have to claim those because it hasn't changed land use and also because it was cut down as part of the logging operations, it's assumed that regeneration will be successful. In fact, we model that. We model it as if it's going to come back. I think Ontario admits to maybe 3% to 7% that might be attributable to landings and roads and, as I said, our math looked at it and said it's more like 14%. That's a big difference. And I'll just speak to something that I worked on. We had looked at one of the places of a forestry company who's actually very progressive. We can stay out of this area and we wanted to understand a little bit about how much would be preserved if that didn't happen, if you didn't have that logging scar there, if that 14 percent wasn't logged. And I think the area they were willing to stay out of was something like 450 000 hectares. And then then you know Trevor, when he and I talked about this, the subject he said well, we will have to discount the water, of course, because that's not going to come back. So we did a rough estimate of that being about 150,000 of the hectares, and so that meant 300,000 hectares that you wouldn't be harvesting and it was phenomenal when it came back. It was like 13 megatons CO2 over a 20-year period. You would avoid releasing into the atmosphere by not logging there, and that's just based on having a 14% barren footprint from roads and landings. So it's not insignificant and we're not counting it. It's not included in our math. We don't admit to that as deforestation, although Trevor and I both agreed it's actually in the document. We call it de facto deforestation because it's essentially like most people would think deforestation is there's no trees. So that's why we call it de facto deforestation, even though the international definition is a land use change. For us it's like well, it's barren, it had trees on it, now it's barren. So from our perspective that's de facto deforestation. And so that 14% really is a massive carbon loss, and one that is going well under the radar carbon loss and one that is going well under the radar. And it's unfortunate because I actually think if companies were given the choices and they could say well, you know, we're going to change our practices and we would realize this because we met with several companies after we did this study and presented the findings of this study and they, without a doubt, looked at us and said, well, that's not happening in my forest, because they believe that when they're cutting, that the regeneration is going to be successful. In fact, in fact, they go out and they test whether or not it is at the stage of what I call it's called free to grow. Right, dave, it's, it's, it's like, basically, it's reached a certain height, it can now grow.
Janet Sumner:And and we, we talked to auditors and auditors said well, you know, we kind of we wondered about those roads and landings, but we just sort of assumed it was going to come back. So that's what's so groundbreaking about the work that Trevor did, that he just wouldn't let go of it because he could see it and he just wanted to know what it was. And, as I said, dave and I were both of the opinion like, well, you know, it probably probably comes back, but this is the first time somebody looked at it and said, you know what, based on almost 300 sites, this is not coming back. Now, some of them might be successful, but we've got, on average, 14 percent. It's not, it's essentially barren. After 30 years. That was a game changer for me, I know, for dave, for the entire organization. We just were like wow, that's something that people are not talking about. Want to add anything there, dave?
Dave Pearce:yeah, well, you talked about the sort of the bureaucratic loophole. I guess that prevents these areas from being counted as deforestation. But then there's also the resolution of the imagery that Canada uses right to assess for deforestation. So I kind of dug into Trevor's report a little bit and he talks about the deforestation interpretation guide that um, uh, is used by uh, NRCan, natural Resources, canada to assess deforestation and so there's a provision in there, if it's, if it's big enough and they can see it and they can measure it, they could count it as deforestation.
Dave Pearce:But because they use landsat imagery that only the pixels are uh, 30 meters across right and and uh, so that means, um, when they look at that lens, these individual scars, the road and the landing, they don't show up because they're too small, it's just a blurry something, you know. It's a light colored blurry, whereas when Trevor was looking at high resolution aerial footage, I mean it's very obvious aerial footage and it means very obvious um, and so they're just not looking at it, um, you know, kind of using the right lens and I think, uh, I was interviewed once about this and it was, and I was, you know, it's similar to coming in out of a cold weather and coming into a hot uh, you know uh or a warm and moist environment and your glasses, my glasses, fog up. I wear glasses so I can't see. Right, I can see that there's a couch over here or whatever, but I can't see if there's a cat on the couch, which I've sat on the cat a couple of times.
Janet Sumner:I said you're a good family man, Dave. I didn't know you were going to talk about your cats that way.
Dave Pearce:But Family man, Dave, I didn't know you were going to talk about your cats that way, but I mean yeah.
Kaya Adleman:So the resolution issue, yeah, I mean if you, even if you ever just look at a picture that has terrible resolution and you zoom in on your computer and then you start seeing the pixels, like that's what it looks like. If you see the government imagery, it looks like a bunch of pixels that are just a singular color that you can't decipher. Or if you look at a higher resolution imagery, you're able to see more specific things at the same level of zoom. I have this screen background, or my screensaver on my laptop is a photo, is a screen grab, of the Sopranos which we were just talking about, and it's Tony Soprano looking at lawn furniture at the famous Fountains of Wayne Garden Store garden store in New Jersey rip, it's out of business.
Kaya Adleman:But also, um, the inspiration for my favorite band name, fountains of Wayne, shout out, but it's terribly pixelated. Like it's horrible. If you see, if you watch it like on crave or on HBO, it looks amazing, like the visuals look amazing, but because it's a screen grab that someone took, probably just from watching it on their computer or something, it looks terrible and I don't know why. I have it on my laptop but it makes me happy. So, even if it's terrible resolution. So that's all to say. The government of Canada looks at forestry like looking at this terrible picture of Tony Soprano shopping at a garden furniture store.
Janet Sumner:That's our Soprano moment we actually had this conversation before we started. And Kaya has another claim to fame, which is what's near your family home. Kaya, what were you telling us before?
Kaya Adleman:The famous Holston's Restaurant. It's not a diner. I wouldn't define it as a diner, contrary to popular belief, but it's the restaurant. That's from where they shot the final scene of the Sopranos. They have really good ice cream floats, so I would recommend. Yeah, that's what they're famous for is their ice cream and their chocolate and fudge, but Tony Soprano goes there for some reason to eat onion rings and then the series is over. Won't spoil it for anyone.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, and just to make note, I called that the golden age of television, which Dave correctly said. No, that was actually the honeymooners. So just to dive deep into the differences there, but yeah, so we had a bit of a soprano's moment before we started this. No, I think that's a really important piece. Is the? Is the resolution? Um, and just to be very uh precise about that resolution, uh, trevor's work in logging scars looked at essentially a resolution of 40 centimeters, so so under a meter, and the federal government resolution when looking at the state of Canada's forests is 30 meters. And these roads are how wide, dave? What would you say?
Dave Pearce:Well, they're less than 30 meters across.
Janet Sumner:So you can't see them.
Dave Pearce:Yeah, they can't see them. You can see a bit of a smudge. Do we have show notes?
Janet Sumner:Yeah, we'll have show notes and we'll include anything you want to in those show notes.
Dave Pearce:Well, you know the famous image, the aerial image at 40 centimeters and then the Landsat sort of superimposed over it.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, it's great because it looks like those old-fashioned coke bottles, like if you were to look through those it just kind of looks like this fuzzy green. You can't really tell what it is yeah so you might have included in that.
Kaya Adleman:Earth day is upon us by the influx of green messaging likely flooding your social media feeds, and some of this messaging may be mentioning Canada's forests, which has, as we know, become an increasingly popular flashpoint in the greater environmental discourse. The language surrounding Canadian forests can be confusing, though, like what does sustainable mean in the context of our forests? What is the difference between deforestation and forest degradation? That's why, on the Clear Cut, we're committed to weeding through the words and connecting with experts to unpack the issues facing Canada's forests.
Kaya Adleman:As listeners, you've become instrumental in bringing us these important conversations. Like what does a transition of the fiber economy look like, and should we really be considering biomass fuels a climate solution? There's a lot more beyond the tree line, with warnings that an even worse wildfire season is coming this summer and Canada's slow progress towards meeting its 2050 climate and nature goals. Your support keeps us bringing these critical issues to life. You can show your love for the podcast by giving us a donation, linked in the episode description below, leaving us a review or sharing the podcast with your friends From all of us at Wildlands League. Thank you.
Janet Sumner:So where I wanted to go next with this or where I wanted to ask your question was oh, maybe I'm just going to recount the day. So I remember one of the best things about my job is I get to work with some incredibly bright people and I get to ask questions that just are bugging me or that I think, oh, I'd really like to know the answer to this, like to know the answer to this. So one day I was in the office and we used to have a great big table in the middle of our central office and a big screen so that we could look at things on the screen, and Dave and Trevor were on Google, I think it was, and they were looking at maps of the forest, et cetera, and I decided to ask this question. That was just. I just had to know the answer.
Janet Sumner:I said so we can see this footprint, like you can see that signature. You can see lines in the forest. You can clearly see these scars that go across it. You can see it, and we had looked at almost 300 sites in Ontario, and so one of the things that I wanted to know that day was can you see this anywhere else in Canada? Well, didn't Dave and Trevor's faces light up and they were like, oh yeah, and they started using Google just to fly over Canada and say, well see, you can see it here, you can see it there, you can see it here, you can see it there, and you know, then they gave me explanations of why it looks slightly different here but more pronounced there, et cetera. And so, dave, can you maybe because I found it fascinating to basically be able to go and use Google and basically go find that footprint, dave, can you tell us a little bit about that day, because I found it fascinating.
Dave Pearce:Well, I, just as you're starting to tell the story, I just thought I'd open up Google Earth and see and I haven't.
Dave Pearce:I haven't quite landed on it, but it would literally pretty much take that amount of time that you told the intro to for me to find a site, uh, anywhere in Ontario or Quebec that has that signature, uh footprint, because logging poultry logging was so, was so ubiquitous.
Dave Pearce:I don't know what the stats are now Like I said, I think and I hope they're moving away from it to more cut to length, but it's still. It's still used a lot in Canada and over the last 20 or 30 years was the predominant method of clear cut harvesting in the boreal forest. So, um, yeah, and that, and the clear cut harvesting in the boreal, you know, is all of Northern Ontario, all of Northern Quebec, uh, the Northern prairie, so-called prairie provinces, which are more than half forested, um and uh, and the interior of BC they use the same, they um would use full tree harvesting and all those areas. So the potential for that footprint and to be able to find those sites, you know, again, it would take me five minutes to find a site that had that Just randomly kind of scrolling in an area that I know has forestry going on in the boreal.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, did you look at it? Oh yeah, as well yeah, it's uh.
Kaya Adleman:It's pretty crazy to look at um and I, I believe, if I'm correct, I the the satellite imagery um the time scale or if you know how, like google earth works, um, they, it's a mosaic of different satellite images that are is available. So it would be harder to do just using um, the google earth satellite or the google earth software to do a logging scars, ask uh project, but it gives you a good uh baseline for for the extent of the footprint, for sure.
Janet Sumner:You can find the signature, but you can't necessarily do the Because you don't know where the cut block ends and you can't sort of, you can't get that denominator, as Dave was saying, and you don't necessarily know when it was cut, so you can't say that's existed for 20 years or 50 or whatever it is right, like you can't do that?
Dave Pearce:yeah, because you don't know. So I just found one, and it's a new one. It looks like it was just. I mean, you know the image is. I don't know when the image was taken, but whenever the image was taken it was freshly cut and it looks like it was a winter harvest up in you know, uh, kind of a wet area in northern ontario where they do winter roads. But you can see the line of the road and then you can see like masses of of. They look like logs that have been run over by a machine because they have mud on top of them. This is how good the imagery is. Um, and that is like that's a baby logging scar. Now, how long it's going to persist, I don't know, because maybe winter roads are a little bit. You know they've got a lighter touch on the foot, on the on the landscape. You know they've uh, that's what we've been told, but it would be interesting. But you definitely can find them. That's how long it took me.
Janet Sumner:It took me less than five minutes to find one.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, so if you're out there and you're listening to this and you want to go see Logging Scars, you can definitely see.
Janet Sumner:We've actually got a map on the Logging Scars website and you can actually see the ones that we looked at. You can even find I think it's got the GIS points for most of the ones that we have and you can click on those and then see the Google imagery. But if you want to go for a tour around Canada now you've seen what they look like you can actually use Google to find those Logging Scars across Canada and you have to get into a certain resolution before you can see them. So, but I invite our listeners to to go and take a tour of Canada looking for these logging scars and maybe start out with logging scarsca, just to to get yourself oriented, because that will give you an approximation of how, what, what to look for on the landscape and how you can see them, et cetera. You won't be able to necessarily do the math because you can't draw that line of where the harvest block was or things like that, but you can certainly.
Janet Sumner:Well, you're saying you can Dave.
Dave Pearce:Not for all of them, but for some of them, no, I mean for some of them. You can. I mean it's not as precise because Trevor was again, he was being very diligent and saying you know, this is where I think the line would be, and let me sort of verify that and calibrate it based on actually being on the ground. But you can kind of you can do the rough math, especially with Google earth. You know it's got the tools. You can.
Dave Pearce:You can throw a, um, uh, a polygon down around the perimeter and it'll tell you what the area is of the whole cutover. And then you can kind of go well, there's the road and the landings. I'll just take that, I'll put another polygon and then that gives you that area and you just divide the uh, the scars, by the total area and then that gives you your, your proportion right there, um, so again, you could do in five minutes you could have a. It would be rough, I wouldn't, I wouldn't publish that, but it's a rough estimate and hopefully with AI and better technology, you know, we'll be able to, either through machine learning or crowdsourcing, be able to replicate this and get a bigger sample size.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, to replicate this and get a bigger sample size. Yeah, it was interesting to me. The criticism that has been leveled by some of the industry association has been oh well, they cherry-picked the sites. And I always find that a funny criticism because it didn't say our calculations were off, it didn't say our methodology was how.
Janet Sumner:It said we cherry-picked, and I found that interesting because we did almost 300 sites and then ground truth, a representative sample yeah, and I don't know anybody who's ever done more than that or looked at even at least that and yet, um, the criticism is that we, we cherry picked, um, and, as I say, you can use Google Earth to go and see all of these sites. It feels like the defense of this is rather weak, or the defense of those who would think differently is rather weak and, as I said, canadians should know this. This is our forest. We're handing out 10 years on our forest and this is how things are being cut and this is the de facto deforestation or the legacy of logging and I'll just make one more point that you and trevor have presented to natural resources uh, canada and our can, right?
Dave Pearce:yeah? And to who else have you presented to? But you've been taken very seriously, right oh?
Janet Sumner:absolutely.
Dave Pearce:Some of the industry folks have come back with, like you said, rather lame criticisms. But within NRCan, what's been the response?
Janet Sumner:No the response from NRCan was yeah, they replicated the study, which was great from our perspective. We were confident that we'd done a good job and I remember the day we were in there and we presented it was taken very seriously and in fact they replicated and said we might have been a bit more conservative than we needed to be. So I thought that was interesting and I'm hoping it gives Canada the impetus or the desire to actually get. And what I've been asking for for some time is, you know, based on this study, it would be really helpful if Canada could do a mapping of Canada's forests at a higher resolution, ie, instead of using 30 meters, I've been asking for 4 to 10 meters, and that would allow us, and then it's not just based on our opinion, then it's. You know, the federal government can do a 4 to 10 meter resolution map of Canada's forests and all Canadians can know what's the footprint in the forest, all Canadians can know what that looks like, and even forestry companies, because the other thing about this is, if those trees are not there, when and dave, you can speak to this when you do the forest model, like when you.
Janet Sumner:We talked about this in the beginning. Dave has experienced in running the swam model and he'll tell you what that stands for, because I always get it wrong. Um, but that is a black box of basically being able to run a forestry model and figure out how many trees you're going to have to cut. Well, if you're missing 14% of your trees so they're essentially those areas are barren that's going to reduce the fiber when you get out there to cut. So it's even helpful for the forest industry to know exactly what's not there. And wouldn't it be great if we had that four to 10 meter resolution and then people could actually see what was not there? And wouldn't it be great if we had that four to 10 meter resolution and then people could actually see what was going on? Dave, do you want to speak to that?
Dave Pearce:Well, yeah, my recollection of SWAM and just force management. They would assume a certain amount would be lost to the roads and maybe to the landings, but it's way less than what, uh, trevor, um, um discovered. So around two, three percent, right. So they, they would say, oh well, we're gonna, we're gonna lose two to three percent percent of of the cut block to a road, roads and landings, when it's you know, it's an average of 14. So there's, there's going to be at least 10 less wood out there than they, they think when, they, when, uh, the companies go back yeah, so I'm hoping canada steps up and does that.
Janet Sumner:Uh, four to ten meter resolution. That would be a benefit to everybody. It would allow us to look at that. And also something you said before we started the podcast. We were talking about degradation. Can you just speak?
Kaya Adleman:to that I was going to ask about that yeah, yeah.
Dave Pearce:Where do you want me to start?
Janet Sumner:Well, I think your comment to us was and this was part of our discussion because you know, we've got several episodes that we're in production with and one of the things that's come up is the European Union is looking at procurement policies that will talk about where fiber comes from and they don't want to take it from places that have deforestation or degradation.
Kaya Adleman:And so Canada has to.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, go ahead, Guy.
Kaya Adleman:Just to define what a procurement policy is. It's the EU saying they're not going to import fiber products into the EU based on certain criteria.
Janet Sumner:Right. So this degradation definition is really important, and Dave's remark to us before the mic started recording was that logging scars are probably one of the clearest examples of degradation. Give us your take on that, dave.
Dave Pearce:Yeah, I mean, it's undeniable. And when we set this up we talked about our sort of our skepticism of of trevor's concerns. We knew there were problems with forestry. I don't want to underplay that. We kind of knew in general that you know, um, caribou were disappearing, other species were having trouble, um, we thought we were at the time in the early 2000s.
Dave Pearce:Uh, that, uh, you know, um, we were over harvesting and um, but this actually um illustrates one of one of the mechanisms of of the damage right and and is a clear example of damage of long lasting. Once you go into an area, um, you know, at least in the examples, that we've seen the trevor ground truth and and you know, saw remotely, you've got 14 of that land is not coming back. The roads are essentially permanent. There's been a change not only in the carbon regime and the carbon cycle, uh, the natural carbon cycle, but also in the flora and fauna and species at risk are are suffering like like caribou, uh, because these areas are degraded to the point where they'll they will no longer support caribou, and justina talked, uh in previous episodes. Justina Ray talked very eloquently about how that works, but the logging scars are a very clear indication and example of that degradation and that damage.
Janet Sumner:So that's a lot. I think we might have exhausted logging scars.
Dave Pearce:Yeah, think so I'm gonna sit down you're gonna say oh, you're standing are you standing up yeah, yeah, oh, my goodness, just in two hours of you standing way to go, kaya, I've been lying down. This is a. This is a. This is actually my couch back here. I've just put it back. You're not going to record this part right.
Janet Sumner:Okay, so we've finished two episodes now of Logging Scars. We've learned that when you go in to do full tree harvesting into a forest or certainly in the northwest of Ontario what happened was we see a footprint that essentially is the legacy of the access of full tree harvesting into an intact oil landscape. And that is, you get the roads that you needed to drive the heavy machinery in to get at the trees, the heavy machinery in to get at the trees, and then, as the harvesting occurs, you're dragging those full trees to the roadside, delimbing them, taking the tops off, et cetera, and piling some of the unmerchantable trees or the trees that you can't sell and you're putting them by the roadside and those are building up what are called the landings. That's where the trees land as you're processing them and you leave the forest and you do massive regeneration and a lot of the regeneration works and it gets to that state of free to grow. And what we were assuming and what many people were assuming not just foresters or industry or auditors, et cetera, but also many environmental groups we were assuming, okay, the regeneration from the air looks pretty good, but what?
Janet Sumner:Trevor was just a dog with a bone about and he couldn't let it go was he wanted to figure out what was going on in this forest and why. From the air, you could see these long lines with areas of regrowth that were not occurring, sort of either brown that were not occurring, sort of either brownish or light green, because they might have a lot of berry bushes on them, etc. And then when he got down onto the ground, he could really start to see that these landing areas sometimes the debris pile was 10 feet high and you had this rutting in the roads that was not coming back and it was compacted and compressed and the landings were smothering the regrowth for trees, even if regeneration had been successful in all the adjacent areas and it looked like a robust number of trees coming back. And so all of this leads to all kinds of challenges in the forest, and for me, what it also says is what else don't we know? What else don't we know in terms of the forest across Canada and I think I talk about this in one of the episodes is just that if you do a Google flyover and you know what to look for, you can go to forest management units.
Janet Sumner:You can actually see that the forest is not coming back. It may not be the same quantum of area Like in this we found it was 14% on average wasn't coming back, but it was anything from like 10% to 27%, depending on the forest management unit. So as we look across Canada and we look at whether it's full tree harvesting or partial tree, we do see a footprint in the forest that remains and you can see that on Google Earth. You can go take a look at it. But it suggests that Canada needs to actually figure that out If we really truly want to be responsible about our forestry and figure out what is the footprint, what is the carbon impact?
Janet Sumner:What is the impact to species? How much disturbance have we actually increased? How much is not coming back? I mean even the caribou. Science suggests that after 30 or 40 years that once you've let an area be regrown, that those areas will come back and be caribou capable is the terminology I've heard. But if you've still got that disturbance profile or you've got that access for predators, that's going to keep caribou away from those areas. Even if you've been able to regrow trees and I keep talking about it as regrowing trees because you're not regrowing a complex ecosystem like a forest and check out our conversation with Michelle Connolly, if you want to hear any more about that, in terms of the complexifying agents of insect outbreaks and fires, but that forestry is actually a simplifying of the forest and it takes that complex system and simplifies it. Anyway, I've gone on enough, but that is that is what I take away from today's conversation and the previous conversation.
Kaya Adleman:Yeah, I mean I guess just to add to that, in addition to the many takeaways from logging scars, from the carbon impacts to the impacts to biodiversity, caribou impacts to forestry, like if these areas aren't growing back, are we going to have to go into more new intact areas to get our fiber supply from. And I think what's also interesting is this argument of if logging scars exist, then is there more of a need to go in to do regeneration, and the possible consequences of that, as Dave was mentioning having to drag out heavy machinery back into that area continue to smother the soil. For me it strengthens the need for a precautionary approach when it comes to forestry. Also, logging scars draws attention to the need for better data and oversight of what's going on in Canada's forests on behalf of the government. Logging Scars is a small snapshot into what's going on in Canada's forests but, like we talked about on the episode, this pattern is seen on Google Earth satellite imagery across Canada. It's actually been mentioned by a few of our guests before on previous episodes. So Canada only maps at a 30 meter resolution and logging scars is definitely an argument for a greater resolution of what's going on in the forest. Of those takeaways, that was a big takeaway for me and I think just generally like logging scars is such a referential work.
Kaya Adleman:When you talk to environmental organizations who work on a variety of different issues somewhat related to forestry, logging scars is always brought up. You mentioned Wildlands League logging scars. Oh yeah, you guys did that logging scars work. I always refer to that, and so I really encourage everyone who's listening to this to go to logging scarsca and take a look for yourself. The images are really, really great. In addition to being very thorough in his scientific methods, trevor is also a very great photographer. The photo of his partner, victoria, like just standing next to that huge pile of slashes Pretty, pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, all right, thanks, kaya, all right, thank you.
Janet Sumner:If you like listening to the Clear Cut and want to keep the content coming, support the show. It would mean a lot to Kaya and I. The link to do so will be in the episode description below.
Kaya Adleman:You can also become a supporter by going to our website at wwwwildlandsleagueorg. Slash the clear cut and also make sure to leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming platform. It would really help the podcast and stay tuned for new episodes by following us on social media.
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Kaya Adleman:See you next time.