British Columbia is one of the most forested places in the world. With 57% of the province being covered in trees, and a much higher percentage than that on the coast, where we are.
We see a lot of trees.
On the surface this forest looks like pristine wilderness, but as we are about to see, not all trees, or all forests, are made equal.
After a few days in the Southern Broughtons, it was time for us to start heading north again. We had just spent six days fishing, exploring and relaxing in the waters where the forest meets the sea. Following a three year rebuild of our sailboat, this week had been exactly what we needed. We could have happily spent a lot more time here, but we had quite a few more places we wanted to explore and the summer was coming to an end. We wanted to see some more of the Broughtons before the weather turned and the winter storms rolled in. So, with full hearts and full bellies, we motored deeper into this beautiful archipelago.
Our next destination would be Napier bay where we planned to harvest food, but before we reached Napier Bay, we planned to stop at Echo bay for a night, a beautiful little stop on the west side of Gilford Island.
This small bay is chalk full of history. It has been a hotspot for millenia, beginning as an indigenous village, then becoming a hub community of settler loggers, fisherpeople and scientists. It is now a privately owned marina and lodging owned by KHFN, (Kwiḵwa̱sut’inux̱w Haxwa’mis First Nation), who are the traditional owners of this land. You can learn more about its indigenous history from these beautiful signs that are places around the property. We didn’t have a ton of time to explore this place the first go around, but we returned to it later in the season and we will show you that in a later video.
After a night in echo bay, we were excited to continue our journey to Napier bay. We took the back way through the broughtons which was new to Logan and I, although Marty and Mae had traveled it many times before.
The wilderness of British Columbia is seemingly endless. Once you get north of Campbell River, all that is visible for miles is sea and trees. At first glance is looks like healthy, happy and abundant nature, but the reality is that a lot of what we are looking at here is actually tree plantations, and not really healthy forest ecosystems at all.
Most of what you see in our videos is second growth forests. Second growth forests can potentially grow into healthy, abundant and diverse forests again, but a lot are genetically modified monocrops, similar to a farm crop. They are designed to grow quickly for fast harvest and are usually harvested every 50-80 years. The fact that they are monocrops also means that other species can’t flourish in these forests the way that they would in a natural forest, and these areas end up looking more like a farmer’s field than a diverse ecosystem.
Over here on the coast, we have a kind of complicated relationship with logging. 75% of BC’s forests have been logged in the past 200 years, meaning that only 25% of our old growth is left, and most of that is small trees in alpine areas or bogs, with less than 1% of the big tree old growth that used to blanket our coast still remaining. In fact, in the forest you have seen in our videos, it's very likely that almost all of it has been second growth. Old growth forests have a very unique environment and energy to them that doesn't exist anywhere else. Each tree is like its own mini ecosystem, caring for and growing unique plants and animals that have a hard time surviving in second growth or newer tree plantings. It breaks our hearts to know that these unique ecosystems have all but disappeared in BC strictly because of logging practices.
Napier Bay is an old logging sort that we had visited a few years ago. We knew there was at least two plant species here that we wanted to harvest from, and we were excited to see what else we could find. These plants were only here because the logging had been here.
Deforestation, even when it leads to tree plantations being replanted, impacts many things including decreasing or destroying biodiversity, destabilizing localized and global weather patterns, increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and increasing temperatures, both globally and locally.
And none of that touches on the effect it has had on indigenous communities through a history of forced displacement and intentional destruction of indigenous villages in order to allow European settlers to access these lands for logging.
But with that being said, we are also well aware that logging plays a daily part in our lives as cruisers. Logging creates roads like this which give us access to berries that only grown in open spaces, as well as to easily walkable roads that make life a lot easier with the dogs. Logging also currently creates more than 55,000 jobs in the province and Logan has held some of those jobs. Logging paid for a lot of our boat because that is where Logan spent the bulk of his career working as a mechanic.
Every animal alters their environment to survive, and obviously humans are no different. We need to log to some extent in order to build homes, make paper, feed fire places, etc,
But the extent to which we have logged and continue to log feels very unbalanced and unsustainable and like something needs to change. Humans are after all the only animal that can say we have altered more than 75% of the land on the planet.
So what do you think? Respectfully, what is the way forward for us as a global population who uses wood for so many purposes? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below, but be respect to one another. We are all on the same team.
References and Extra Facts:
To learn more about old growth logging in BC and the state of our forests, visit ancientforestalliance.org
- World has lost 1/3 of forest cover since ice age, mostly for crop use.
- Last 25 years, most tree loss has been due to forestry followed by agriculture and wildfire
- In north America 56% of tree loss is due to forestry, 42% due to wildfire
- Canada = third highest amount of tree cover in world
- Canada has lost 14% of its tree cover since 2001, with 2023 seeing the greatest loss
- Despite being the 4th largest province or territory in Canada and having the 3rd largest amount of tree cover, we are responsible for the second largest amount of deforestation.
- Forest loss impacts many things including biodiversity, weather pattern stabilization, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and temperatures, both global and local
- Forests also provide or help stabilize drinking water sources for almost half of the world’s largest cities
- It’s not hard to see how forest loss can easily destabilize human societies while completely destroying ecosystems
- More than 75% of the earth’s surface has been altered by human activity
- BC= 944,000 km^2 or 364,000 m^2
- Coastline= just under 26,000 km^2
- Forest= 57% of province
- 14.3 million m^2 of lumber harvested on the coast of BC in 2021 (27% of BC’s logging)
- 75% of BC’s productive original old growth forests have been logged, and 90% of valley bottoms, which hold the largest and most productive trees.
- Second growth is typically cut every 50-80 years
- Old growth sequesters more carbon than second growth
- About 80% of the productive lands in BC’s southern coast, which includes where we are, are second growth
- Europeans have been logging in BC in some capacity since the 1700s, but the first sawmill for commercial logging didn’t appear until the 1860s
Comentarios