A new peer-reviewed scientific study suggests logging practices in Ontario are unsustainable and out of line with the province’s own strategy for sustainably managing forests.
It’s no surprise to David Flood, a registered professional forester for more than 30 years, who has long thought Ontario was permitting too many trees to be cut down.
Flood is from Matachewan First Nation in northeastern Ontario, home to much of the province’s boreal forest. There, Flood’s community has watched as forests became smaller and more sparse over time, threatening the natural habitat for caribou and martens, two species that rely on mature forests for their habitat.
Flood is the general manager for Wahkohtowin Development, a decade-old social enterprise held by three First Nations — Chapleau Cree, Missanabie Cree and Brunswick House — to strengthen Indigenous participation in forest and land management across their territories.
“We’ve felt for a long time that there is overconsumption going on,” Flood said in an interview with The Narwhal.
The Ontario government has a forest management planning manual that directs forestry companies to determine sustainable levels and practices for logging, he said. But that leaves a lot “open to interpretation.”
“The way these plans run do not benefit habitat and animals and ecosystems that we rely on,” Flood said.
In January 2021, Flood reached out to three scientists to dig into the data on forest management in northeastern Ontario: Jay Malcolm, a professor emeritus with the University of Toronto’s Institute of Forestry and Conservation, Julee Boan, the partnership director with the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Justina Ray, the president and senior scientist of the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.
Their study, published on Wednesday, confirms what Wahkohtowin Development has been witnessing for years: forest degradation has reached concerning levels in the pursuit of maximizing logging activity. The researchers looked at 7.9 million hectares of forest spreading south from around Hearst, Ont., including eight different areas of managed forest — an area just smaller than Lake Superior, if you were to drop the largest of the Great Lakes onto land.
The scientists found habitat for species, including caribou, has plummeted, and just over 20 per cent of the forest has been standing for more than a century.
The findings come as many voices, including First Nations and scientists, have expressed concern about the environmental impacts of Ontario’s Bill 5 and the federal government’s Bill C-5. Both pieces of legislation allow elected officials to exempt certain development and mining projects from laws that would minimize harm to natural habitat. Flood and the scientists worry Ontario’s forests will be even further diminished.
“We did the analysis and showed there’s a negative impact on our forests and there’s still a do-nothing attitude,” Flood said.
Study finds northeastern Ontario lacks old-growth forests and caribou habitat
Ontario’s forest management strategy is rooted on the principle of natural disturbance emulation — a technical term for the practice of clear cutting forests to mimic events that occur naturally, like wildfires and windstorms. These natural disturbances are important for forests to regenerate, preserving their biodiversity. By mimicking them through logging, the idea is to replicate these benefits while reaping the reward of timber.
The problem is, that balance appears to be off. The study finds the rate of forest degradation is much more than what natural cycles allow.
“In other words, we are logging way, way too much,” Malcolm, the lead researcher, told The Narwhal.
The study looks at forest health between 2012 and 2021, comparing it to the state of a naturally disturbed forest and a forest managed to remove as much timber as possible. It offered several insights. Based on natural forest cycles, around 53 per cent of Ontario’s boreal forest should be more than 100 years old; the scientists found only 22 per cent of the area studied had been undisturbed for a century.
Based on natural forest cycles, the scientists expected 76 per cent of the boreal forest they studied to be marten habitat; instead only 36 per cent of their habitat remained, and even that was in a fragmented state. “There were little bits here and there that the marten couldn’t possibly live in and run across,” Malcolm said. “It couldn’t. It just can’t.”
And then for caribou, the findings were “the most devastating,” Malcolm said. Only 12 per cent of their habitat remained, versus the 76 per cent that would be present in a natural forest cycle.
“It’s all just so far in excess of what’s sustainable,” he said.
Malcolm said Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources doesn’t look at nature empirically. It uses computer models to design forests and then tries to emulate them, he said, adding that this approach is “leading them astray” because it’s not grounded in the reality of forests today.
As the government gets ready to embark on a review of its forest management rules, Malcolm and his colleagues believe “the tools the government needs to fix this are not in their toolbox.”
Instead of allowing companies to maximize timber, the study’s authors believe Ontario should look to implement sustainable harvesting practices like cordoning off some spaces from logging, pushing for partial clear cutting — meaning leaving some trees in an area standing — and forcing companies to move to different areas every few decades to let forests recover.
“We’re not trying to say: don’t log,” Malcolm said. “We’re trying to say: log in a sensible way.”
Ontario’s minister of natural resources did not respond to the Narwhal’s request for comment by publication time.
First Nation awaits response from Ontario over forestry lawsuit
Flood said the latest study is the “most recently available science” to back up what his people have been seeing and arguing for years. “[The study] totally matches what’s happening on the ground,” he said. “This is why the forest isn’t the same as it was 150 years ago.”
In 2022, Chapleau Cree First Nation, Missanabie Cree First Nation and Brunswick House First Nation jointly filed a lawsuit against the provincial government claiming the province had “undertaken and authorized forestry and related activities … which have significantly diminished the nations’ ability to exercise their Treaty Rights and maintain their way of life.” This includes their rights to hunt, trap and fish, and to access the forests and waters for spiritual and cultural practices.
In their statement of claim, the three nations argue the province’s forest management rules had failed to measure and mitigate the cumulative impacts of logging activity by permitting unfettered spraying of herbicides, including glyphosate, which the World Health Organization says is probably carcinogenic to people.
“We can’t eat the berries after they’ve sprayed the forests,” he said. The chemical also threatens the health of moose, who shelter in the edges of the forests where herbicides are most commonly sprayed.
The lawsuit also states the province exempts forestry companies from environmental oversight, including through the assessment process and species protection laws. The nations claim these failures “constitute a persistent pattern of error and indifference” that has harmed their way of life.
The nations are still waiting for the province to respond to their statement of claim and subsequent evidence filings. No court date has been set.
“We need better mechanisms,” Flood said. “You can’t just clear the way.”
---
This story is available for use by Canadian Press clients through an agreement with The Narwhal. It was originally published in The Narwhal, a non-profit online magazine that publishes in-depth journalism about the natural world in Canada. Sign up for weekly updates at thenarwhal.ca/newsletter.
Fatima Syed, The Narwhal
