...Continued from Part one

In an emailed response to a question about whether any changes to the act are forthcoming, a representative from the Ministry of Forests did not answer directly, but told the Narwhal, “Issues raised during the review of the Private Managed Forest Program are being addressed through actions, such as conserving more old forests, including through the $1-billion Nature Agreement and a new Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework,” and by supporting local forestry jobs through support for “made-in-B.C. wood manufacturing.”

The newly re-elected NDP party promised to uphold commitments to the Nature Agreement and biodiversity strategy, as well as to implement protections for watersheds and old growth. However, it remains unclear if the Private Managed Forest Land Act will be amended.

What about privately owned old growth in B.C.?

While B.C. once had 25 million hectares of old-growth forest, ecologists concluded in 2020 that just 35,000 hectares of the largest, most productive trees remained, disputing the provincial government’s estimate of 11.1 million hectares of old growth as “misleading.”

n 2022, private forest manager Mosaic introduced the BigCoast carbon credit initiative, which aims to defer harvesting on almost 40,000 hectares of private land, trading the timber revenues for the sale of carbon credits. The program is on hold pending a technical review, but for now, Mossy Maple Grove and a few other privately-held old-growth stands on Vancouver Island still get a reprieve from logging until 2057.

While BigCoast has come under some scrutiny for its ability to reduce carbon, Wu says the logging deferrals provide a much-needed opportunity to find a longer-term solution. “We don’t think that carbon offset projects are a surrogate for real protected areas. They can be a stepping stone to keep these areas under essentially a moratorium on logging until the private lands can be purchased [for the creation of] new protected areas, including Indigenous Protected Areas,” he said.

And for private forests outside Mosaic’s management, it’s business as usual.

With files from Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood

Updated Feb. 20, 1:00 p.m. PT: This story has been updated to correct the size of the area in which logging will be deferred by Mosaic as part of the BigCoast carbon credit initiative. It is 40,000 hectares, not 400,000.

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