What are Old Growth or Ancient Forests?

Ancient (or old growth) forests refer to forest areas that are relatively undisturbed by human activity. Ancient forests vary significantly in age and structure from forest type to forest type and one bio-geo-climatic zone to another. Ancient forests share the following attributes:

• they have not undergone any significant industrial activity
• they are naturally regenerated and dominated by a range of indigenous tree species,
• their tree size, age and spacing vary widely
• their accumulations of dead standing trees (snags) and fallen trees are much more frequent than in younger forests
• they trees that are large for the species and site combination
• their canopy has many openings and the forest floor is lush with ferns, berry bushes, mosses etc., and they have multiple canopy layers.

Why Ancient Forests are So Important

Ancient and endangered forests provide clean air, water and soil to Canadians every year while performing the following ecological and social functions:

• climate regulation — carbon sequestration
• habitat for old growth dependant species
• bio-diversity
• water regulation
• soil creation
• source of medicinal plants and compounds
• cultural and spiritual
• future economic options
• recreation

Backgrounder:
Ancient Forests around the World

Globally

• Only 20% of the world’s original ancient forests remain in tracts large enough to maintain their bio-diversity (World Resources Institute, 1997)
• 39% of these surviving large tracts of ancient forests are endangered by human activities, with industrial logging posing the greatest threat
• Seventy-six countries have already lost all their original forest cover and 11 hold on to fewer than 5%
• Three countries – Brazil, Canada and Russia – contain nearly 70% of all remaining frontier forests.
• Northern Canada is home to 25% of the world’s remaining frontier/ancient forests
• These forests are refuges for biodiversity and are vital for the survival of plant and animal species, aboriginal cultures, and climate regulation – they store more than 430 billion metric tons of carbon*
• Globally, seventy-one percent of the world’s paper supply is derived from ecologically valuable, biologically diverse forests rather than from tree farms.

British Columbia's Temperate Rainforests

• Temperate forests are the most endangered forest type on the planet (World Resources Institute, 1997)
• Temperate rainforests only ever covered 0.2% of the world’s land surface (Ecotrust and Conservation International, 1992)
• Temperate rainforests are truly ancient forests and contain some of the world’s oldest trees.
• BC is home to a quarter of the world’s remaining ancient temperate rainforests (WRI)
• One out of eight animal species in BC is at risk of extinction, according to the BC Ministry of Environment. Logging was identified as one of the primary contributing causes (BC Ministry of Environment, State of the Environment Report 2000).
• BC’s Ministry of Forest data states that the rate of logging in BC is unsustainable (BC Ministry of Forests).

Brazil's Tropical Rainforests

• Between 1500-1970, only 1% of the Amazon’s tropical rainforests was logged
• Between 1970-2000, 13% of the Amazon’s tropical rainforests have been logged (World Resources Institute, 2000).
• The Amazon’s tropical rainforest is home to over 30,000 species of plant life, including many important medicinals.
• Tropical deforestation rates exceeds 130,000 square kilometers per year (World Resources Institute, 2000).

The Boreal Forests of Northern Canada and Russia

• Boreal forests account for a quarter of the world’s remaining closed canopy forests (Natural Resources Canada/Canadian Geographic, 1999).
• Boreal forests store 30 % of the carbon in the world’s terrestrial ecosystems (Sandberg,D., U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2000).
• Canada is home to a third of the world’s remaining boreal forests, they cover 35% of Canada’s land mass (Natural Resources Canada/Canadian Geographic, 1999).
• Since the late 1980s over $13 billion of new and enlarged pulp and oriented strand-board mills have been built and thousands of kilometers of seismic lines laid in the boreal region. These activities have severely fragmented wildlife habitat (Boreal Forest Network, 2000).
• A 1998 Canadian Federal Government Report identified commercial logging, mining and hydro-electric generation projects as the largest human threats to the bio-diversity of North America’s boreal forest ecosystem ("Ecological Assessment of the Boreal Shield Eco-zone", Environment Canada, 1998).

Recommendations by the World's Scientific Authorities

• The World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development called for a halt to the further destruction or degradation of the world’s remaining primary forests (World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development, 1999).

• In 1998, forty-five prominent international scientists called for a precautionary approach to the management of temperate rainforests and a moratorium to logging of BC’s temperate rainforests. Esteemed boreal scientists are calling for an end to industrial logging of the boreal forests also.

• In June 2000, over four hundred esteemed international scientists including National Geographic’s Explorer—in—Residence, Dr. Wade Davis, biologist Dr. EO Wilson, ecologist Dr. Thomas Reimchen and geneticist David Suzuki called for the immediate cessation of industrial scale logging in BC’s temperate rainforests.

• In 2000, the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation called for a halt to all further development on the Central Coast of BC that potentially impacts salmon streams until current low productivity conditions end. (Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, State of Salmon Conservation in the Central Coast Area, 2000).

• "new ways must be found to slow and ultimately reverse forest decline, and Canada has a special responsibility because it still has 20 to 25% of its primary forests"(Ola Ullsten, Co-Chair of World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development, 1999).

British Columbia's Ancient Rainforests - A Global Treasure !

* FRAGMENTING FORESTS THE LOSS OF LARGE FRONTIER FORESTS: World Resources 1998-1999, by staff of World Resources Program, 1998. Can be accessed in full at http://earthtrends.wri.org
† Toward a Sustainable Paper Cycle: An Independent Study on the Sustainability of the Pulp and Paper Industry, 1996