E-mail A Friend Tell a friend about the information found on this page by sending them an e-mail.   Your Name: Your E-mail:   Type an e-mail address, then click add: Add a Personal Message: (Optional)

September/October 2001 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor’s Notebook Feature: Backcountry beat The Inside Story Reverberations À la carte

A recent national advertising campaign by the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC), formerly known as the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, states "Satellite surveys confirm that across North America, forests have expanded by 20 percent" over the last 30 years. That’s good news. But is it accurate?

Statistics collected by the United Nations for the past decade show no change in forested area in Canada, a marginal increase of 1.7 percent in forested area in the United States and an 11 percent decrease in Mexico.

To explain the discrepancy, FPAC officials say that their number for North America does not include Mexico, and that the expansion they’re referring to is in forest volume, not area. As the trees in second- and third-growth forests mature, the stands thin out and the trees get larger. Every year of growth can mean big increases in volume. In the ad, "‘grown’ would have been a better term" to have used than "expanded," says forester Tony Rotherham, who FPAC referred us to for clarification.

A Canadian Forest Service official says the department assembles volume information from the provinces, but that charting any long-term trends is problematic because of inconsistencies in data collection over time and from province to province.

Recent surveys show that Canadians have a keen interest in the health of our forests. FPAC’s ads, which simply say that our trees are growing, do little to advance public awareness of how this great ecological resource is being managed.

Canadian forest facts

• Canada has 10 percent of the world’s forests by area and 30 percent of its boreal forest.
• Canada’s logging of its old-growth and primary forests has made it the world’s biggest timber exporter.
• In 1998, forest products accounted for $32 billion in trade and 830,000 jobs in Canada.
• Two-thirds of Canada’s 140,000 species of plants, animals and micro-organisms (excluding viruses) occur in the forests.
• Canada harvests 0.4 percent of its productive forest area annually, and fire and insect outbreaks affect 0.5 percent.
• 94 percent of our forests are publicly owned, but 52 percent are under logging tenures.
• Roads, mines and other activities fragment 95 percent of all major forested watersheds.

A clear-cut issue?

On Vancouver Island (left), maps prepared by the Sierra Club of B.C. show 71 percent of the ancient forest has been logged, and only 5.5 percent of the original cover is protected. Many rare species, including northern spotted owls, flying squirrels and grizzly bears, require or prefer habitat in old-growth forests. The David Suzuki Foundation estimates logging threatens 84 percent of the remaining old-growth forests in North America. Global Forest Watch Canada says more than 80 percent of annual harvests are clear cuts and 90 percent of those occur in old-growth and primary forests.

top