Every year the federal government publishes a ‘State of the Forest’ report which, touts itself as “a trusted and authoritative source of comprehensive information on the social, economic and environmental state of Canada’s forests and forest sector for 33 years.” But do these annual reports truly accomplish this promise? This year, 8 environmental organizations released their own report, The State of the Forest in Canada: Seeing Through the Spin, to challenge many of the conclusions in the government’s annual report.
We sit down with the David Suzuki Foundation’s Rachel Plotkin and the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Dr. Julee Boan to discuss the details of this investigation. Why is the government’s annual report inadequate? What is missing, and what are the ramifications?
Read the report here.
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.
Every year the federal government publishes a ‘State of the Forest’ report which, touts itself as “a trusted and authoritative source of comprehensive information on the social, economic and environmental state of Canada’s forests and forest sector for 33 years.” But do these annual reports truly accomplish this promise? This year, 8 environmental organizations released their own report, The State of the Forest in Canada: Seeing Through the Spin, to challenge many of the conclusions in the government’s annual report.
We sit down with the David Suzuki Foundation’s Rachel Plotkin and the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Dr. Julee Boan to discuss the details of this investigation. Why is the government’s annual report inadequate? What is missing, and what are the ramifications?
Read the report here.
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:All right, so people are in for a treat. We are about to play the interview that we had with Rachel Plotkin and Julie Bowen, two of the hardest working women in conservation. They work Rachel's at David Suzuki Foundation and Julie's recently with Natural Resources Defense Council Natural Resources Defense Council. But I've known Julie since I started at Wildlands League, which is over 20 years ago, because she was working for Wildlands League at that time, and she's gone on to work at Ontario Nature, et cetera, and now she's with Natural Resources Defense Council and has a PhD and has done all kinds of amazing things in the conservation world. So I'm really happy that we were able to grab some time with her and with Rachel, and the two of them have been part of the dynamic team across Canada working on Canada's alternate state of the forest report. So I think you need to just buckle up and go on a ride with them, because they're going to fill your boots with as much as you can absorb about conservation and how the state of the forest is across Canada. What about you, kyle?
Kaya Adleman:Yeah, I really enjoyed reading it and I enjoyed having this conversation with them. And also I just want to say you'll learn some, I guess, background information about the two of them and Julie. She has a hobby farm in thunder bay and that's like my ultimate dream in life is to live on a hobby farm and just like take care of animals all day and live in nature.
Janet Sumner:It's, uh, very jealous in that aspect yeah, and actually if you check out her instagram or, I guess, socials, you'll see the the little bouncing uh newborns uh. Well, they don't look like newborns anymore, they're bouncing around little kids. So, yeah, it is interesting to hear about both of them. I had not realized we all had a London connection. That'll come up in the conversation. You'll hear that.
Janet Sumner:But in terms of the report itself, it's speaking truth to some of these issues. I mean, I find this with Canada's supposed species at risk reports that we get out now, which are really just commenting on all the processes that are going on and it seems like they're following that mandate with Canada's state of the forest report, which tells you all the amazing things that are going on but doesn't actually tell you what is happening in the forest or not. Realistically and what I mean by that is, wouldn't it be so much easier, especially now that we've got all this satellite data that's out there, et cetera, et cetera, to start telling us the truth about what's going on in Canada's forest using a higher resolution? I mean, if you've listened to the podcast and you've heard our logging scars work, you know that we've been asking for higher resolution information on the forest. You can use Google, for example, you can see that there's damage out there in the forest and we're not reporting on that, not in any substantive way, and so I find this deeply troubling that the Canadian public does not have the information.
Janet Sumner:This State of the Forest report is an attempt to get some of that out with the limited resources that environmental groups have to offer. Although they've gone in and, as Julie and Rachel will quite rightly point out is, they've done a good canvas of a lot of the science, and they're bringing that to bear because both of them are quite reliant on the science and going to use that to back up their arguments. So I think it'll be a fun conversation to listen in on, and for anybody out there who is doing conservation work, this is a rare treat to get a chance to talk with these two people, as witnessed by Kaya's many, many attempts to get them both on at the same time because they're just always very busy.
Janet Sumner:So, yeah, I think I know for Kaya and many, many attempts to get them both on at the same time because they're just always very busy. So, yeah, I think, uh, I know for Kaya and I it was a real treat to be able to sit down with them.
Kaya Adleman:Yeah, I had a good time.
Janet Sumner:Um, kaya, I'm very, very happy that you've been able to finally nail these two down to a specific time where we could chat. We've been trying for weeks now, it seems, to have Julie and Rachel on the podcast, and I did not want to give up because I knew that they'd be able to say some fantastic things, and I've worked with them for many, many years now and it's very exciting for me to have them on the pod because I think you'll be entertained but also learn a great deal from their years of experience. So I'm super excited about this episode. So thanks for chasing them down, kaya.
Kaya Adleman:Yeah, me too. I mean, they're busy doing amazing work, so I'm excited that we'll have a chance to feature that on our series.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, okay, welcome Julie, rachel, and we're going to start with each of you giving a little bit of an introduction to the work that you do and something that's personal that people can connect with, and something about you. So have at it.
Julee Boan:Hi Hi Janet, hi Kaya. I am a longtime listener to the podcast, first-time guest, so delighted to be here. My name is Dr Julie Bone. I did a PhD in forest sciences. I studied caribou. I work for the Natural Resources Defense Council but I've been in the environmental sector for a couple of decades now. I live about 20 kilometers outside of Thunder Bay on a little hobby farm in the forest. I'm surrounded by forest. Right now I have the great privilege of getting to work in the forest every day and actually we just had in Thunder Bay our real first snowstorm of the year on Monday up to two feet of snow in some places here of the year on Monday up to two feet of snow in some places here and on my little farm. That was the night that one of my ewes decided to have two baby lambs. So on Monday night I was running around in the only snowstorm we've really had this year trying to collect little lambs and rush them up to the barn. But they're doing great. Thanks for having me.
Janet Sumner:That's so fantastic.
Rachel Plotkin:Rachel. Hi, I'm Rachel Plotkin. I'm with the David Suzuki Foundation. Like Julie, I've also been in the movement for over two decades. I'm in my 18th year at the foundation and I worked for six years at the Sierra Club of Canada before that.
Rachel Plotkin:I've worked a lot on trying to protect wildlife habitat and I got my start when I was in my first year of university and I wanted a summer job. I got to work at the zoo in London, ontario, and I was delighted and it took four years for me to realize what a horrible place it was. And I ended up quitting halfway through my last summer because the animals there were so distressed, and decided to try to build a career out of working to protect wildlife in the wild. And unlike Julie, who's surrounded by forests, I am in downtown Toronto, but I did get to experience that first snowstorm, which was also the big first snowstorm in Toronto. I brought my skis out to the Leslie Spit, skied to the lighthouse and had two coyotes run out in the path in front of me. So trying to make the best out of life in Toronto.
Janet Sumner:That's fantastic. I didn't know you also had a London connection. I know Julie does and I grew up in London, ontario. So interesting, three people with a London connection Amazing. So where do you want to start? Um, I know that there was a group of organizations that came together to write a state of the forest report, and maybe I'll just start by saying that canada does a state of the forest report, but this is the alternate, uh state of the Forest report. Maybe you could just talk about how that came into being and what the purpose was.
Julee Boan:Well, as Rachel said, both of us have been working in the interface between science and policy, wildlife and forests for a couple decades and I think the State of the Forest report has been coming out every year that I've been working on policy, and this past year when the report came out was, you know, right on the heels of COP 15 in Montreal, the global biodiversity framework.
Julee Boan:It was running up to the climate conference in Dubai and there was a lot of attention at both of these international conferences being put on forests, in particular in Canada, because we happen to have a lot of forest here. We have a lot of land period. Looking at the state of the forest report that was coming out of Natural Resource Canada, it was really clear that it is not up to the task at hand. At the moment, we're facing biodiversity and climate crises. We are looking to our forests to help us at least solve some of these issues, and yet this report that was coming out from the government, which claims to be an authoritative report, comprehensive, really was only reflecting on five overarching metrics, and very simplistically at that.
Rachel Plotkin:So it wasn't giving us a clear picture at that, so it wasn't giving us a clear picture. I'll just add that Canada has recently committed to halt forest degradation, and one of the things that the State of the Forest report does is masks the fact that forest degradation is happening across Canada in forests that are managed for logging. Our report looked at a lot about what is not in the annual State of the Forest report, and the things that weren't included in the State of the forest report were the cumulative impacts what happens when we log year after year and that builds up, and how that is changing the structure, the function and the composition of our forests.
Kaya Adleman:Yeah, I guess, maybe just to clarify. So the government kind of releases a state of the forest report every year. I don't know, I'm from the state, so, like it, government kind of releases a state of the forest report every year. I don't know, I'm from the state, so it's kind of like the NRCan's version of the State of the Union address that the president gives every year this is how the forests are doing, et cetera. And then your guys' report was to respond to some of the things that are consistently missing in the government's report, right?
Rachel Plotkin:One of the kind of hallmarks of the State of the Forest report is to show how little is being logged in Canada each year. Usually the stat is about 1%, but the report highlights its low rates of deforestation, which is the conversion of a natural forest to another use. But again it fails to look at what are the impacts of industrial logging. Even if 1% is being logged a year of the managed forest, If you move that across the landscape over the period of 100 years, it means that all of those forest management units have been accessed. There's roads in those forest management units. Some might be decommissioned but some remain. There's changes in age class structure because of the way that we're doing logging and because of our rotation ages, and it's impacting wildlife and driving their decline.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, it seems odd to me. I mean, the federal government also produces species at risk reports, or it's supposed to be putting out Section 63 reports on how species are doing and whether or not we've fully protected that. And yet we've got caribou, which is a wide ranging species, goes right across the boreal forest where we're doing a lot of our logging, and it is in trouble. Caribou are in trouble, ranges right across the country in trouble are in the red zone, are faced with extirpation in those areas. Yet at the same time State of the Forest report comes out and says everything's hunky-dory, it's okay, everything's fine, don't worry about it, logging's continuing. And yet I don't understand how those two things can be true.
Rachel Plotkin:And that was one of the objectives of our report was to force an honest conversation about look, not everything is going peachy in the woods and what are some of the ecological impacts and how can we work to change what needs to be changed to have truly sustainable forest management.
Julee Boan:And with this report we chose to take a very scientific approach. So we've looked at hundreds of scientific studies in order to evaluate some of these high level metrics and indicators, to see what's actually happening. And what we were frustrated with is that the state of the forest should be telling Canadians how are forests faring, what are the outcomes, what is actually happening, and instead the report focuses mostly on what are the activities taking place? You know, what are the partnerships taking place, what are the regulations and rules that should be taking place or could be taking place, that are on the books, but we have no idea how they're actually being implemented in the forest. We have no idea what the outcomes of these activities are. And that lack of monitoring and lack of true reporting is even clear with some of the current discussions that the federal government is having around even the definition of degradation.
Julee Boan:Nrcan is claiming that we can't actually evaluate a lot of these metrics because there simply isn't data. So if that is true, then we have an even more serious problem, because there's lots of scientific studies out there and, for sure, scientific research is done in a specific forest, in a specific area, looking at specific indicators, but they are a litmus test for what could be happening across the forest, and those scientific studies as I said, we've cited hundreds in this report are showing indicators where there are problems With the State of the Forest report. As it's published, it's only looking at what is being done, not what is the consequence of what is being done, and that's what the State of the Forest should be about.
Janet Sumner:So it's documenting all the processes that are happening, but it's not telling us what's the result, what actually happens, what can you see? What does it mean for this species? What does it mean for how much area has been logged or how much is still barren after logging? It doesn't tell you any of that kind of factual information. It tells you a very cloudy version of that, because it gives you a lot of information about the processes that are underway. Is that accurate?
Julee Boan:Yes, and even for some of the indicators that it does look at from a fairly qualitative and narrative perspective, it only describes what it considers to be going well. So an example that, in terms of Indigenous rights and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, we know there's been a lot of discussion over the last few years about Indigenous protected and conserved areas and there has been some incredible progress happening in some places in the country. In other places across the country there's been a complete, total failure at advancing IPCAs and working with Indigenous peoples who are interested in conservation, where they lead the governance, where they determine the knowledge systems that will be applied. And if you were just to look at the State of the Forest report, you would think that IPCAs are going well everywhere and wouldn't think there are any barriers to this at all. And in fact there are many barriers, particularly where provinces have been unwilling to come to the table and work with Indigenous peoples.
Julee Boan:Ontario, for example, has received an F from one of the reports that's out on IPCAs with a complete unwillingness to have government-to government discussions around IPCAs. So in a state-of-the-force report we would be looking for the full coverage of what's happening. Where there are success stories, yes, we would be looking for the full coverage of what's happening. Where there are success stories, yes, we should be highlighting those. We should be discussing what's working, but there are some failures that need to be addressed and right now, with no report to show where we are at achieving these goals, we can't improve what we're doing.
Rachel Plotkin:I was really gobsmacked in this year's report, which just was released recently, to read that NRCan states that in general there's a move towards ecosystem-based forest management and, as Julie said, one of the things that the report does is it cherry picks small examples where people might be doing progressive things or things that are more ecologically sustainable, like there's this one community forest in Nova Scotia that's doing selective logging. But what it definitely fails to do is outline the systemic changes that are needed in forestry and to report on those things like is our rotation age viable for maintaining levels of old growth that are natural within the ecosystem? Are species compositions changing from what used to be there to what is more economically viable? How much intact habitat is left? How much primary forest is left, how much old growth habitat is left? All of those values diminish over time with cumulative impacts of logging, but the State of the Forest report doesn't track any of that of the Forest report doesn't track any of that.
Janet Sumner:That's a pretty damning litany of things that you've just listed there. So those are the weaknesses of Canada's State of the Forest report. And let me just be clear that Canada actually benefits worldwide by claiming that they have the most sustainable forestry out there, that we have the best laws, we have all the rest of it. But if we're not reporting and telling Canadians, who expect Natural Resources, canada and or can to be monitoring this and taking care of it, if we don't have the data and we don't get the full truth we only get cherry-picked examples in a state of the Forest report how can Canadians, or even the world, be confident in Canada's forestry?
Julee Boan:This talking point that Canada has the best forestry in the world is always perplexing to me because I actually don't know. Maybe Canada does have the best forestry in the world, but that doesn't mean it's up to the task of what we're asking our forestry to do for forests. We know there are many indicators that some of the values we want to see protected, things we want to see sustained, are failing. They're not being achieved. So that statement's always a bit off to me because it's sort of moot in a way. It could be the best of the worst. We don't know, and that's why we need a report that helps us to understand what is actually happening in the forest and what can we do to achieve the goals we want to.
Rachel Plotkin:And, as Julie mentioned, science has provided quite clear metrics on the ecological health of forests, and that is examining the structure of forests, the function and the composition of species within forests, and those metrics should be used again in a cumulative way, to track how those three core values of a healthy forest are changing over time.
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 Kai and I. The link to do so will be in the episode description below.
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Julee Boan:We were responding to the federal government's State of the Forest report, so we were responding to the issues that they had highlighted, but what was missing from how they looked at that picture? So that includes how biodiversity is faring in forests across Canada. It includes the discussion around forest carbon how are forestry activities contributing to or helping us in this fight against climate change? And we also looked at reconciliation with Indigenous peoples to take a deeper look at how is Canada fulfilling these commitments.
Rachel Plotkin:And our report is called the State of the forest seeing through the spin, because one of the things that the federal government does is just paints an overly rosy picture that everything is going great in forestry, there's nothing to worry about, and you know. It tips its hat a lot of times to things like biodiversity, but it doesn't acknowledge the fact that there are forest dependent species that are declining due to linear disturbances such as logging roads.
Julee Boan:There were eight major environmental groups across Canada, mostly national groups, a few provincial groups that did participate in writing and conceptualizing the report. And conceptualizing the report, I think, for me. I wasn't sure this was going to be what was needed at first, but I knew something was half of the forest and it was interesting to me. Because I've been involved in a lot of forest management planning, I understand there are a lot of different tools that attempt to conserve wildlife values, riparian values and such. So I thought, okay, yes, it's possible. If all those things are tallied up, they do equate to a fairly large number. Now, whether or not those should be considered conservation was what was perplexing to me. Especially things that are seasonal, temporary and will be logged anyways, didn't seem to me to fit into a different definition than conservation. Maybe a sustainable forest management strategy or something like that.
Julee Boan:So, coming out of COP 15 and talking about how to protect biological diversity, I felt it was time to start looking at some of the reports and the structures that are being used by governments and by industry in the international arena, and the State of the Forest Report is certainly one of those reports. It is building on what is called the Montreal Process, which is an international agreement in the forestry realm that has specific indicators around how sustainability of forests can be measured. So it is, in essence, something that is reinserted into the international arena to discuss sustainability in Canada. So just the timing with looking at reports that are out there this one is done every year. We can compare previous years and there was actually one just released last week. So it's an ongoing process that we can continue to comment on.
Rachel Plotkin:I think for me, part of the motivation was to shift the conversation away from deforestation and into the landscape of degradation, especially in light of the fact that Canada has committed to both define and halt forest degradation by 20. It has to define forest degradation sooner, but it has to halt it by 2030. And that's actually an opportunity to have the honest conversations and bring about some of the systemic changes that are needed in forestry, if we can talk honestly about what are the ecological impacts of current forestry practices and what is needed to change. But I think another thing is that you know, julie and I have been working in this forum collaboratively for a long time and a lot of it is fighting industry spin, and that spin has actually changed.
Rachel Plotkin:The spin used to be things like oh well, don't worry, caribou aren't really doing that badly, there's more caribou than deer. Or oh yeah, well, forestry might be impacting caribou, but we still don't know about climate change. Like, maybe most of the fault is climate change and we should not do anything about conservation until we're sure about the impact that climate change is having. But now forestry has moved to an even bolder narrative, which is that they are saying that Canadian forestry can save the world. That's their podcast, that's on the homepage of their podcast and I think that part of it is trying to increase literacy about the spin that comes from our federal government, which is often just repackaging what the forestry industry itself says and trying to show what is left out of those reports and show what is the stories that aren't being told about what's happening in forests across Canada.
Janet Sumner:It's one of the things that I was so pleased that you were doing this report was because I think there was a sense, and maybe it was a moment, but where eight environmental groups all had the same conclusion, which was we're just bloody well tired of the federal government putting out, year after year, a report that tells everybody everything's a-okay and the state of the forest is fantastic, yet at the same time, we're seeing these other indicators with species at risk declining, et cetera, and so it just felt like there was this huge burst of energy from the environmental groups wanting to say you know what? We actually need to write down the truth. We actually need to record and put on the record what's really happening. And for me, when I read it and looked at it, like Julie mentioned, it referenced so many other studies and it was shocking to me that you know I mean, these environmental groups are not wealthy groups, it's not like they have industry backing and money but they're deciding to put their efforts and your hard work into this and yet they are able to uncover all of this science and put it to good use and reveal the true state of what's happening.
Janet Sumner:And it is shocking to me that our governments are not providing this information, whether it's at the federal level or provincial level, because the provinces are responsible for regulating forestry. Yet the federal government does a state of the forest report. I'm assuming they rely on provinces and territories to tell them what's happening in their areas, but it I think I think Canadians are not being well served by the State of the Forest report and I applaud you both for the work that you did on this report and I was very pleased to see all of the references and how that can really help Canadians be able to go and dig further and find out what's going on in their neck of the woods.
Rachel Plotkin:One of the reports that had the biggest splash kind of came out when we were wrapping up our State of the Forest report, which was a paper by Mackey and colleagues that looked at the cumulative impacts of logging in Ontario and Quebec. It really validated everything that we were digging up in our research. His report looked at again what are the cumulative impacts of logging year after year in Ontario and Quebec and what he documented was that the levels of old growth were decreasing and that the fragmentation because of logging roads was driving caribou decline and that most of the caribou populations in Ontario and Quebec were facing a trend of downward decline because of the habitat fragmentation due to logging activities. And it got into the New York Times. So it was like it was oh and after the New York Times it was like running in local papers just week after week after week. So it really kind of opened the gates of changing the narrative.
Julee Boan:Like. We published our State of the Forest report in January of this year, but Rachel and I have continued to accumulate more science and possibly will update it or, at the very least, update sections of it, because we're finding more and more and more science out there that is supporting that forestry across Canada is, at least, far less sustainable than it's being promoted and the situation is worrisome and we need to be having good metrics and sound data and solid, clear, transparent reports on what's happening if we're going to address these issues to address these issues.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, and I think for everybody who's listening to the podcast, one of the great things that we'll be able to do is, in the show notes, people can. There'll be a link to the State of the Forest report, seeing Through the Spin and any other documentation that you want to provide, and so, people who are listening, if you want to dig into the details, find out more about the science that's going on and what is truly happening in our forests, you can rely on us to be able to publish that and you can access it. Maybe we can dig a little bit deeper no-transcript is about the forest carbon.
Julee Boan:So a couple of years ago I remember attending a meeting with Dr Matthew Bramley, who had done a deep dive into the National Inventory Report so those are the reports Canada has to submit every year to the UN on greenhouse gas emissions and reductions and in his presentation he unpacked all of these numbers and he said forestry is a high emitter of GHG. And I remember thinking that can't possibly be true at the time because we had been facing a narrative for at least a decade that forestry is just simply carbon neutral. It kind of gets a free pass in the climate change discussion and, if anything, actually it can solve the climate crisis. And no real serious critique of any of that and because of some of the assumptions that have gone into the way that we account for forest carbon, that's played out in multiple reports and multiple assessments and even like created some incentives in policy and how we manage forests. That all comes back to a situation that is not what it's been portrayed to be. So that was really interesting to me to understand that and unfortunately Dr Bramley passed away in 2022. But researchers from UFT, unb, guelph and myself actually took the work that he had done forward to make sure that this really got into the conversation around forest carbon At the end of 2023,. We did publish all of those results in a peer-reviewed journal called Frontiers.
Julee Boan:We know that there's carbon emissions because the trees are taken out of the forest for logging and then we can minus from that carbon that's being stored in wood products and the regeneration that's happening in trees that are growing after logging and when.
Julee Boan:Looking at those numbers alone, the emissions are actually exceptionally high around nine, around 90 megatons on average per year, which is similar to energy, agriculture and other high emitting sectors.
Julee Boan:And the reason why this is like is portrayed this way is basically the uh canada up into two types of forests the managed forest and the unmanaged forest. And in the managed forest, yes, there are forest tenures, there's logging, but there's also big parks. There's also areas that have fire suppression and there's a huge amount of forest that has never been logged, may never be logged, but it is technically in the managed forest and that area where those forests are that haven't been logged or have been fire suppressed or are in parks, have actually stored and sequestering carbon. Those have been used. That sink has been used to basically as a green veil over what the forestry emissions are. So for me anyways, digging into that and understanding a lot better, both through working with those scientists as well as writing the State of the Forest Report was, was really shocking to me, and I think it's still a conversation that isn't really being had in the in the public sphere, and we need to be talking about it more.
Janet Sumner:And that has made me insane over the years, because I've always felt that forestry was underreporting in terms of its carbon and it was getting shielded by a lot of very creative math. And so we do a deeper dive on that in the podcast and people can listen to other episodes and we'll actually have Brendan Mackey on future episodes to talk both about his report and also to talk about carbon accounting. So look forward to actually opening up that box a lot more to talk about it. And Matthew was a great scientist and fantastic to work with and none better to look at the carbon accounting numbers because he was a mathematician in his heart. Rachel, was there something that you worked on or that you saw in the State of the Forest? Seeing through the spin report that you went, wow, that either confirmed or really shocked me.
Rachel Plotkin:I think, just seeing the new one, one of the things that the federal government loves to do is have a bar graph where it's just completely even and it shows the amount of forest cover from 1920 to 2020. And it's just a straight line. It's just such a gross oversimplification of the state of the forest. For one thing, it masks the fact that areas that have been clear-cut, even if they were clear-cut yesterday, count as forests. That's not the fault of our federal government per se, because that's using internationally agreed-upon definitions. But it certainly masks the fact that not all of that is actually forest cover at present, forest cover at present. And again it hides behind the low levels of deforestation, although it also doesn't account for all of the deforestation that does happen.
Rachel Plotkin:I think the thing that I really noticed this time in the most recent State of the Forest report is that they really just include all of the language of the things that we're pushing for and say that it's done. You know, they're like we care about forest biodiversity and are working to protect species at risk habitat and it's like well, where Caribou are declining in almost every province except for three of them, and they don't even. You know, sometimes they'll say like oh, here's a specific project that someone is doing, like looking at caribou poo or something you know like they'll tip their hat and mention caribou but they never talk about the very significant and unavoidable issue that industrial logging is impacting caribou decline and, as Julie mentioned there, you know there are a number of Indigenous people that are meaningfully employed by logging but they, you know, they tip their hat towards things like the United Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, without recognizing that free, prior and informed consent isn't a part of current forest management planning processes and should be.
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Janet Sumner:So essentially, they have this bar graph that says from 1920 to 2020, we haven't lost any forest, it's all the same. We've all got forest. But that's going by this international definition under LULUCF land use, land change and Forestry or something. I can never remember that acronym and we're going to put it in so that everybody can see it. But essentially it's called Lulu CF and it means that if you have a bunch of trees standing today and you cut them down but you don't convert it to a different land use, like it's not going to be a shopping mall, it's not going to be a new city, it's not going to be a shopping mall, it's not going to be a new city, it's not going to be a housing development or whatever, but it's it's. It's barren, it's clear cut, and you're going to cut it again in 80 years because, or a hundred or whatever it is, because it was a forest and it eventually will be a forest or it'll be trees. We're still going to call it forest area. So, therefore, Canada has not lost any forest area.
Janet Sumner:Now for me and this is something that makes me a little bit crazy or a lot crazier is we all have in the back of our heads, this ticking clock that says by 2050, we've got to solve the climate crisis and by 2030, we have to have made huge strides on biodiversity loss. So if you cut a tree today, or clear cut an entire area, that area is not going to re regrown by 2030. It's not going to be regrown by 2050. So, for all intents and purposes, the general public sees no trees. That means no forest. It doesn't mean, oh, it'll eventually be a forest in 100 years. It means no forest. And yet we mask that in our very reporting to the public by saying, nope, we've still got the same amount of forest. So that's what you were saying with that. That's a pretty shocking reality.
Julee Boan:So essentially, as long as a forest is not a parking lot or a field of corn, it's still a forest and still included in this sort of overall tree cover over time. But one of the studies we cited in our State of the Forest report was research that's been done on the East Coast in Acadian forests. So what that study showed was that over the decades of logging that they looked at, the forest had changed. There was forest still there, but it had changed so substantially that at least nine species of birds had declined by 30%, which is enough to put those birds up for potential status under Canada's endangered species laws. So a significant decline. But what was really interesting about what they showed was that the tree cover had not changed at all. In fact it had increased slightly during that time. So when we're only looking at whether there are trees or not trees which is really what the deforestation conversation is about it's a very poor metric for how biodiversity is doing.
Rachel Plotkin:Our organizations aren't opposed to logging. We criticize forestry. It's not without recognition that it could be done better, and I think that's again. What we're trying to do is open doors to have conversations about what systemic changes can occur in forestry so that it is ecologically sustainable and not leading to degradation, and those things are the things that aren't being reported on. So that includes, like what protection measures can we put into place in our forest management planning to ensure that the intact and unfragmented habitats that species like caribou need are maintained, that levels of old growth are maintained again to support the species that depend upon them?
Janet Sumner:So the State of the Forest report, Seeing Through the Spin, is about uncovering some of the truth, and the truth is to understand what's going on, but also to understand what we can improve so that we could have more sustained forestry and jobs if we start to fix some of these challenges. Is what you're saying?
Rachel Plotkin:Yeah, I think sometimes Julie and I are hesitant to use words, like you know the absolute truth. But I think what the State of the Forestry Report does really well is it shows what questions are not being asked by the federal government when it's looking at how it evaluates forestry in Canada today.
Julee Boan:I want to be really careful about suggesting that simply tweaking and making incremental changes to practices is going to address the issues we face. I would say that I think the entire way we go about managing forests is actually incorrect and it is ripe for conflict. So, basically, what has happened is there's most of the managed forests which is where most of the people are and a lot of biodiversity is in Canada, are part of the forest management planning process, and that varies across provinces and jurisdictions. But fundamentally that's a process where forests are seen as providing wood to mills and that triggers a planning process whereby a company or a tenure holder needs to go out and get wood to mills and also address a range of social and environmental values. So there's been this hierarchy that's developed. That that's why we're out there quote managing these forests to get woods to mills and to mitigate the impacts on other users. And, for sure, like those regulations and policies, they change over time, they're re-evaluated, but the fundamental essence of why we're even out there doing the management is problematic. It creates, first of all, it creates a hierarchy where you have the wood interest on the land first and foremost, has the highest interest and everyone else falls below that interest and what's happened is then, in a planning process we'll have, you know, a forest technician will have may have just graduated a few years from university knows how to use a model to develop wildlife.
Julee Boan:Quote wildlife habit in the habitat, in this framework of forestry, is considered equivalent to a biologist who has spent decades studying that species. Is considered equivalent to a biologist who has spent decades studying that species. Is considered equivalent to a trapper who has been on that land base their entire life. And the decisions that are being made are coming from that framework. What we need is to fundamentally rethink If we expect our forests to do what we're expecting them to do.
Julee Boan:We need to fundamentally rethink our relationship with forests. We need to fundamentally rethink about how we plan forests and we should be out there planning at a watershed scale from the environmental, social perspective of what those forests are, and work back from there and decide in which areas how much fiber should be available and be basing our economy around that rather than having it go the other way around. And I think with that is why there's been so much conflict over all these years. And I would say, even though there's more and more models available, there's more and more mapping available. The window for people to actually participate and meaningfully influence how forests are managed, I would say, is shrinking.
Janet Sumner:That's a great conversation starter piece there, julie, because just having done this podcast for almost a year, we've had conversations like with Francois, who's the head of FSC Canada, and he talks about, instead of trying to maximize the amount of fiber to the mill, start thinking about, as you suggest, what can the forest provide? And then working from that perspective and starting to diversify even the types of species that we're talking about, etc. And what we have right now, what you're talking about, is this hierarchy where it's not even just a hierarchy of getting fiber, but it's maximizing the amount of fiber to feed the mill and that has a certain demand or draw. And I think in BC, even their sustainable forestry is about sustaining the yield, it's not about actually having sustainable forests, so it's a very different perspective.
Rachel Plotkin:Rachel, you look like you want to jump in on that. It's not only BC that defines sustainable forestry as sustained yield. I think that has been the premise of the concept of sustainable forestry in Canada. Is that forestry is sustainable if we are regrowing the amount that we log every year and it does not have any anchor in ecological integrity and maintaining ecosystem health?
Kaya Adleman:Are we even regrowing the amount that we log every year? I can't imagine that. That's that sounds very difficult to do.
Julee Boan:We might be able to regenerate every tree that is logged, but the forest that comes back is not just about the trees, it's everything else planted two, three, four, five times as many trees as we cut, but how many actually survived?
Janet Sumner:What came back? What is the success of regeneration? Now, I'm not suggesting that regeneration isn't successful. I know that there are some fantastic areas of Canada where we've had incredible regeneration. I know that growing aspen, for example, in Alberta, works quite well. But, to Julie's point, it doesn't necessarily bring back the forest, it brings back trees, and sometimes we're planting to bring back merchantable timber and not necessarily the full diversity of species. And again we just don't have the data, we don't know.
Rachel Plotkin:Even when you picture a forest that's been replanted, then right away you can imagine that the forest that grows is even age stands and you lose the diversity of age classes within a natural forest and you also lose, in many places, species composition. I tree planted in Northern Ontario. I was given my two species of trees to plant and I was told if I see a species that's growing that's not one of those two, then I should pull it out because it's not the most economically viable species. So what we're left with, even though forests do regenerate, and I've driven around with loggers who say, like what are you enviros going on about? Look at that area, it was logged 40 years ago and now look, it's green, Like it's a completely renewable resource and it's ecologically sustainable. But again, the species that are there might be different than what were there before. The age classes are different and there's, in most areas that have been logged, logging roads remain that completely disrupt predator prey dynamics.
Janet Sumner:Yeah, I think that's a good point about the age class. When you get essentially one age class, then different ages of trees are used by different species, and so then you start to mess around with the actual species that exist in that ecosystem.
Rachel Plotkin:And you're also fragmenting the nutrient cycle things like nitrogen and carbon, which, if a tree is left to grow old and die and fall over, in addition to providing habitat and providing a source for new saplings to grow from it, also contributes to a nutrient cycle in the forest that is removed, if trees are removed from the managed area.
Janet Sumner:Hey, do you have anything else you want to say about the state of the forest seeing through the SPIN report?
Kaya Adleman:Yeah, I think one thing I'd like to add just to that is if there were like I mean, I know that we have, there's the three section, or the sorry, the four sections forest segregation, biodiversity, climate impacts and indigenous rights, like, what are the, what are some, what are, like, the key takeaways from someone that might make them interested in reading, reading the report.
Janet Sumner:What's the top line message?
Rachel Plotkin:Our federal government is gearing specific questions that it can answer and make itself look good, and avoiding all of the questions about indicators that would point to the forest degradation that is occurring in forests.
Julee Boan:If we are going to continue to expect our forests to deliver climate change solutions, protect, halt and reverse biodiversity loss, provide jobs, provide all sorts of things for us, we need transparent and accurate accounting from our federal government. This report should not be a public relations pamphlet to share with the public. It should be an honest accounting of what's happening with forests what's working, what's not working, what are we missing, what do we not have data for? If we don't have good information, then the chances of having good policy come out at a critical time in our history are almost nil.
Janet Sumner:I think Julie says it all at that conclusion. If it is just a public relations pamphlet, which is you know what she's calling Canada's State of the Forest Report, one could argue that it's just all the good stuff and good process, but not giving you the details on what's truly going on in the forest, and I mean the data, the details how much is disturbed. It is just revealing to me that we have caribou ranges that are in trouble in all but three provinces, and yet the State of the Forest report tells us that everything's just hunky-dory. So how are those two messages, which are coming out in separate reports, the same? And that's the difficulty that I have, that it doesn't add up, and so I think she's very right to call it out a public relations pamphlet. And if you don't have good data, you can't be making assertions that, yes, our forestry is best in the world and we're doing all these amazing things. And how can you actually implement policy if you don't have good data?
Kaya Adleman:Yeah, I mean, and that was said to like, does Canada have the best forestry in the world? And that might be true to some extent, but compared to what? Like what are you stacking up that assertion against, especially now as we're starting to see more and more of the conversation being centered on degradation, as opposed to deforestation, which Canada conveniently has nearly 0% deforestation every year, and we talked about this on our Logging Scars podcast as well how the impacts of full tree harvesting in that wildlands league study that was released in 2019 really did show that there is that there is a mark that there is a consequence to the ecosystems, to carbon values that existed on those forests before they were logged.
Janet Sumner:So, um yeah, areas, areas are barren, 35 years old, right, so it's it. You can say it's still a forest because it's under forestry management, but there are no trees on those areas that once had trees, and those are visible. You can see them, and that is I mean. Yes, let's call it degradation if you wish, but we still need to measure it, we still need to know what's out there, and right now, canada is not reporting on those because, based on their resolution, they can't see them.
Kaya Adleman:Yeah, because Canada only maps forests at a 30-meter resolution, maps for us at a 30 meter resolution and how can you? See logging roads that are 10 meters wide if you're only seeing things that are 30 meters wide, yeah, or large, any.
Janet Sumner:Anyway, a depressing uh conversation, or maybe an enlightening conversation about canada's alternate state of the forest reports. What is it seeing through the spin? And? Yes I think that this was a good conversation to have with them.
Kaya Adleman:I love julie summary and, uh, some some great uh comments in there about caribou coming up in our next episode, so yeah yeah, um, and if you want to check out the state of the forest in canada, seeing through the spin report yourself, um, it has its own website, which is really convenient. It's stateoftheforestca. You can go there, read the report, read the background of the report, see all of the wealth of scientific information that's in there.
Janet Sumner:I'm also encouraged by the fact that both Julie and Rachel are going to be updating this on an ongoing basis as new science comes out, as new reports come out. They'll be updating the State of the Forest report, which people should keep checking out. Yeah, good conversation.
Kaya Adleman:Yeah, yeah, thank you.
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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.