FOREST EYE ANALYSIS: SEEING THROUGH THE SMOKE AND MIRRORS – Forest Eye
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FOREST EYE ANALYSIS: SEEING THROUGH THE SMOKE AND MIRRORS

B.C. deferrals process still allows logging industry access to at-risk old growth forests

DISCLAIMER: This document has been prepared using best practices and due diligence using information available at the date of publication. All information is subject to change. All data is obtained from public and/or government sources including but not limited to B.C. Government data sources. If you represent a company that appears in this material that you believe is not accurately represented, supplemental information can be sent to SRG@Stand.earth.

Authors: Tory Brantner and Angeline Robertson

Key Takeaways 

  • Fifty percent (50%) of the most at-risk old growth forests that the Government of British Columbia announced in November 2021 as candidate deferrals and pledged to protect from logging have not actually been deferred and currently are at risk. 
  • Even in areas that B.C. counts as deferred from logging, referred to as ‘supported deferrals’, Forest Eye has detected 324 instances since January 2020 where forests that are supposedly off limits to harvest were cleared and 17 of these instances happened after the government mapped supported deferrals in November 2023.
  • Instead of implementing deferrals in forests at risk of imminent logging, B.C. has supported deferrals in forests that are not productive enough for commercial forestry, or in parks and other protected areas that are not at risk of logging. The result is that the location of deferrals minimizes the impact on industry access to valuable big-treed old growth.
  • Forty-five percent (45%) of supported deferrals are already protected under current legislation (e.g. parks), compared to 38% under the original candidate deferrals – a shift of ~ 260,000 hectares (ha). This suggests that the government has relied more heavily on existing protections to make the deferrals process look successful.
  • Old growth deferrals in the province have skewed to the Coast and the Northern Interior, and allowed the Central and Southern Interior to face more old growth logging, even as these areas are at the most risk according to Forest Eye data. 

Mapping Old Growth TAP Deferrals 

In 2021, the British Columbia government commissioned an Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel (TAP), a group of experts (including professional foresters and ecologists) tasked with identifying and recommending areas of critical old growth forests for temporary bans on logging called deferrals. This process is part of the province’s Old Growth Strategic Review – a plan released in 2020, which the B.C. government promised to implement in its entirety. The TAP proposed deferrals to temporarily halt logging in these high-value ecosystems as part of a broader strategy to manage and preserve old growth forests. According to the TAP proposal, deferrals are only meaningful when they stop planned logging.1

These proposed deferrals were mapped and first released to the public in November 2021, when the province announced its intention to defer logging in these areas. Despite the B.C. government releasing various figures and values of deferral areas that it claims are temporarily off limits to logging, it has not publicly released maps or spatial data to support these claims or indicate where old growth deferrals are located. As a result, it is not clear where logging is prohibited.

Leaked Map

In March 2024, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) published a “leaked” map from the B.C. government2 showing supported deferrals – where deferrals were approved and logging is temporarily banned. According to the government source cited in the article, this map was created in November 2023. Only 50% of supported deferrals overlap with the candidate deferral areas that were announced in November 2021. That means that half of candidate deferrals identified by the TAP were not supported and old growth forests in these areas are still at risk of logging.

The approved deferrals shown on the leaked map include a significant number of areas like provincial parks that are already protected through current legislation. This is creating a “smoke and mirrors” effect that allows the government to report areas that are already off limits to logging and herald them as part of the deferrals process, even though this old growth is already protected. It would be more beneficial if the government focused on deferring old growth in areas where these forests are not already protected and are still at imminent risk of logging.

Deferrals by the numbers

Around 1,475,756 ha,–or 37%, of the total area of candidate deferrals originally identified by the TAP – are in parks and other protected areas that are already off limits to logging.3 That leaves approximately 2,506,331 hectares of candidate deferrals unprotected, according to the B.C. government.4 Of this, a total of 1,162,036 hectares are reportedly deferred and another 578,490 hectares are outside of the timber harvesting land base – the forest area in B.C. that the province deems suitable for logging. That leaves 765,805 hectares of old growth candidate deferrals available for logging. Over 75,000 hectares overlap with harvest permits, with over 20,000 hectares of candidate deferrals already logged.5 

Figure 1. The breakdown of the B.C. government’s latest numbers on deferrals, showing percentages of old growth that are protected in parks, deferred through agreements,  not suitable for logging. ,or still at risk. Almost 20% of the area identified by the government as the most at-risk and rare old growth left in the province, over 765,000 hectares, is still at risk of logging. Forest Eye has confirmed the loss of over 15,000 hectares since July 2023, while the government has reported over 20,000 hectares of old growth deferrals logged since November 2021, when the deferrals process was launched. 

Logging in supported deferrals

Forest Eye has also identified 324 instances where logging has occurred in supported deferrals that were supposed to be off limits. In some instances, the deferral area is still partially intact. Sixty-seven (67) of these harvests occurred prior to the November 2021 government announcement of the deferral process and between November 2021 and November 2023, when the supported deferrals map was leaked, another 240 instances were recorded. Since November 2023, there have been a total of 17 instances of logging recorded by Forest Eye in supported deferrals. There are two old growth deferral datasets used in this analysis including Current Proposed Deferrals (as of Aug 2023)6 and Supported Deferrals (as of November 2023)7. Forest Eye estimates that: 

  • Approximately 120 hectares of supported deferrals have been logged since November 2023.8
  • Approximately 80 hectares, or 66%, of supported deferrals logged were identified as priority big-treed old growth.9 

 The map below shows where this logging has occurred. 

Map 1. Forest Eye has detected old growth logging in supported deferrals – areas that the government says are off-limits to logging. While each alert may be for a small area, it is important to remember that most old growth forests in B.C. that are at-risk of logging are small fragmented areas amongst a legacy of clear cuts. These havens are the last refuge of at-risk ecosystems.

Examples of Logging in Supported TAP Deferrals

    1. Interfor logged an est. 27.8 hectares of supported old growth deferrals in November 2023 near Gollen Creek in the Thompson-Okanagan region. [Link to time lapse]

  • Canfor logged an est. 38.7 hectares of old growth forests in July 2023 near Manson Lakes in the Omineca region [Link to time lapse]

    •  

     

    • Sinclar group logged an est. 34.9 hectares of supported old growth deferrals in November 2023 near Chu Lake in the Omineca region [link to time lapse]

    Government shifts in deferrals suits industry demand for old growth

    Candidate deferrals were originally designed to be representative of each ecological zone across the province, also known as Biogeoclimatic or “BEC” zones, in order to ensure that old growth forests of all types were represented in deferrals.10 However, in the leaked map showing supported deferrals, 50% of the old growth areas originally proposed as candidate deferrals have been replaced with different deferrals that were not in the original deferrals map. While the total area of deferrals remains the same (see Table 1), these shifts put an estimated 1,986,000 hectares of old growth candidate deferrals at risk of logging and favour industry access to old growth forests in two key ways.

    1. More deferrals are in areas that are already protected

      2. Forty-five percent (45%) of supported deferrals are already protected under current legislation (e.g. parks), compared to 38% under the original candidate deferrals, suggesting that the government has relied more heavily on existing protections to make the deferrals process look successful. That shift removes an estimated 260,000 hectares of unprotected old growth forests from the deferrals process, leaving these rare and at risk forests open to logging pressure. This is a net loss, since placing deferrals in areas that are already protected does not add any new benefit to old growth protection in the province.

      Meanwhile, old growth forests on less productive sites with smaller trees are over-represented in protected areas because existing government policy limits the impact that conservation can have on industry access to big-treed old growth.11 

    2. Deferrals no longer representative of all forest types

      3. In addition to including forests that were already protected in its supported deferral numbers, the B.C. government has moved deferrals out of regions that are the most economically valuable to the logging industry and into regions with smaller, less commercially viable trees. The deferral areas that were removed were mostly from the Central and Southern Interior, and replaced with areas on the Coast and in the Northern Interior. There was a 37% decrease in deferrals in the Central Interior, a 38% decline in the Southern Interior, a 66% increase on the Coast, and a 195% increase in the Northern Interior. 

      Notably, the CCPA analysis revealed that forests in northeast B.C. were drastically over represented in supported deferrals.12 According to Forest Eye analysis, of the estimated 520,541 hectares of old growth added in the Northern Interior, 95% (est. 496,906 hectares) is in the Boreal White and Black Spruce (BWBS) zone in Northeastern B.C. In the plan designed by the TAP,  an estimated 263,117 hectares of candidate deferrals were allocated to the BWBS, while under the government’s supported deferrals map the amount allocated to the BWBS zone is much larger at 759,023 hectares. The government frames this as an increase in protective measures, but in reality these hectares are not prime targets for industry. In terms of forestry values, the BWBS is described as having a low capacity for producing commercial timber species. The region has a moderate capacity for producing white spruce, aspen, pine, and poplar, and includes large areas that are not suitable for any logging because of an abundance of poorly drained, non-productive wetlands.13

     

    Region Candidate deferrals (ha) Supported deferrals (ha) Loss/gain (ha) Change
    Central Interior 1,808,076 1,132,932 -675,144 -37%
    Coastal 832,242 1,335,732 503,490 60%
    Southern Interior 1,063,391 661,524 -401,867 -38%
    Northern Interior 268,556 789,097 520,541 194%
    Total area 3,972,265 3,919,285 -52,980 -1%
    Table 1. Estimated losses in representation in the Interior were offset by the government with gains on the Coast and in the Northern Interior, skewing old growth representation in the province and hiding the continuation of pressure on interior old growth forests. 

    Figure 2. Change in representation by BEC zone. The jump in deferrals (by area) in the Boreal White and Black Spruce (BWBS) and Coastal Western Hemlock (CWH) in supported deferrals hides the losses in the Engelmann Spruce Subalpine Fir (ESSF), Interior Cedar Hemlock (ICH), Interior Douglas Fir (IDF), Montane Spruce (MS), and Sub Boreal Spruce (SBS) zones. 

    In addition, the BWBS is the zone with the highest ratio of remnant old growth. While other zones average 2% by area of remnant old growth, the BWBS has 57%.14 In supported deferrals, there is an 188% increase in area in the BWBS. When the TAP identified old growth for deferral, they recognized that big-treed old growth had different values than old small-treed, lower productivity forests typical of remnant and ancient old growth forest types. Big-treed old growth forests are biodiversity hubs, carbon banks, and climate change refugia that are typically at much higher risk of loss because they are targeted by timber harvesting.15 Due to this logging pressure over the past century, big-treed old growth forests are at risk of imminent and irreversible biodiversity loss.16  For these reasons, the TAP identified big-treed old growth in each BEC zone as a priority, to keep a minimum level of high productivity old forest in each ecosystem to avoid irreversible biodiversity loss.17 This is one of the core tenets of maintaining healthy ecosystems at a landscape level.18

    By shifting old growth deferrals to the North and the Coast, the government has exposed forests in the Central Interior to increased logging risk by reducing deferrals in those regions. These are also the old growth forests with the largest losses by ecological zone due to logging in candidate deferrals, according to Forest Eye (see Figure 2).

    Prominently, the Sub-Boreal Spruce (SBS) zone, spread across the Skeena and Omineca regions, accounts for 44% (~13,000 hectares) of the total old growth loss identified by Forest Eye between 2020 – 2024 (see Figure 3). Under the supported deferrals, that BEC zone lost 362,905 hectares of old growth protections, or about 40% of the candidate deferrals identified through the TAP’s scientific analysis (see Figure 2). 


    Figure 3. Forest Eye data on total old growth forest loss (hectares) by biogeoclimatic (BEC) zone across B.C., showing the majority of losses are in the Sub-Boreal Spruce zone in the Omineca and Skeena Regions of the Central Interior.

    On the Coast there was a 60% increase in supported deferrals, or over 500,000 hectares. The additional deferrals are concentrated on the West Coast of Vancouver Island in Clayoquot Sound, in the Great Bear Rainforest, and on the Northwest Coast of Haida Gwaii. These represent important and groundbreaking agreements First Nations have made to protect their traditional territories. For example, in September 2020, the province implemented a Part 13 deferral in partnership with First Nations in Clayoquot Sound, reaching a voluntary deferral agreement in March 2024.19 The government should support additional deferrals that First Nations want to implement in their territories, but those should be in addition to what is mapped by the TAP so that across the province old growth deferrals remain representative of all forest ecosystems that are at risk from logging.  When representation is not maintained,  important candidate  deferrals mapped by the TAP in these regions can be opened up for logging, such as in the Klanawa Watershed on southern Vancouver Island, where the CCPA reported a 93% reduction between candidate deferral areas and those supported by government.20

    The total hectares of supported deferrals is very similar to that of the candidate deferrals that were originally proposed. An estimated 3,919,286 hectares are included in supported deferrals, while candidate deferrals totalled an estimated 3,982,007 hectares. However, this analysis shows that hidden in those numbers is a major win for the logging industry. The jump in representation in the North and Coast and the subsequent decline in the Central and Southern Interior allows the logging industry to keep cutting down the old growth it wants, while the forests that are already off limits or not commercially valuable are used to offset these old growth losses on paper.

    Conclusion

    By failing to protect all candidate deferrals and instead shifting supported deferrals to less commercially viable forests, while also counting more land that was already protected, the B.C. government has engaged in smoke and mirrors tactics to make the deferral process look more successful than it really is. The intent of the deferrals recommendation in the Old Growth Strategic Review was to temporarily pause logging of at-risk old growth forests so that these crucial ecosystems remained standing while a new paradigm for old growth forest management was developed. In mapping candidates for deferral, the Technical Advisory Panel noted whole ecosystems in B.C. with insufficient old growth to meet minimum thresholds for ecological integrity. The deferral process was never a fix-all process for old growth protection, but rather an urgent tool to temporarily reduce risk in forests that have already been catastrophically degraded by the logging industry and successive decades of timber-centric forest policy.

    Instead of honouring the commitment to using deferrals as a tool to reduce risk, the very same forests that the recommendation aimed to support are those that are still being logged. While progress has been made, this bait and switch tactic needs to stop – and the government must be more transparent and accountable to its commitments. The province’s November 2021 deferrals map should have been updated for the public as supported deferrals were announced, not leaked to the public and exposed for its inadequacies. 

    Endnotes

    1. Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel (TAP). 2020. “OG TAP Old Growth Deferral: Background and Technical Appendices”. Government of British Colombia. Accessed June 5, 2024. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/farming-natural-resources-and-industry/forestry/stewardship/old-growth-forests/og_tap_background_and_technical_appendices.pdf
    2. Parfitt, Ben. 2024. “Leaked data reveals new threat to B.C.’s old growth forests.”. Policy Note; Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). March 7, 2024. https://www.policynote.ca/old-growth-leak/
    3. British Columbia Data Catalogue. “Generalized Forest Harvesting Restrictions.” Government of British  Columbia. Accessed June 5, 2024. https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/generalized-forest-harvesting-restrictions.
    4. British Columbia Ministry of Forests. “Old Growth Numbers: Deferral Maps”. Government of British Columbia, 2022. Accessed June 5, 2024. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/farming-natural-resources-and-industry/forestry/stewardship/old-growth-forests/deferral-maps/og_numbers.pdf. 
    5. British Columbia Ministry of Forests. “Deferrals TAP Harvest Summary”. Government of British Columbia, 2022, accessed June 5, 2024, https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/farming-natural-resources-and-industry/forestry/stewardship/old-growth-forests/deferral-maps/deferrals_tap_harvest_summary.pdf.
    6. Government of B.C. 2024. “Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) – Priority Deferral Areas”. B.C. Government Data Catalogue. Accessed June 5, 2024. https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/old-growth-technical-advisory-panel-tap-priority-deferral-areas
    7. Parfitt, Ben. 2024.
    8. Research conducted by Stand.earth Research Group on data collected through Forest Eye, based on data sets downloaded from the B..C. government Data Catalogue: https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/. Methodology available here: https://stand.earth/forest-eye/about/methodology/.  Note: The areas for the Supported TAP Deferrals overestimate the amount of area protected for deferral. This is due to each polygon in the Supported TAP Deferrals dataset having a % of how much each polygon is deferred. These range from 50% of the polygon being deferred to 100%. For simplicity, this analysis assumed 100% of every polygon in the Supported TAP Deferral dataset as being deferred as it’s not clear which part of the polygon is protected or available for harvesting if less than 100%.  
    9. Research conducted by Stand.earth Research Group on data collected through Forest Eye, based on data sets downloaded from the B..C. government Data Catalogue: https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/. Methodology available here: https://stand.earth/forest-eye/about/methodology/.
    10. Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel (TAP). 2020. 
    11. Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel (TAP). 2021. p.3.
    12. Parfitt, Ben. 2024.
    13. DeLong, C., Annas, R.M. and A.C. Stewart. “Chapter 16: Boreal White and Black Spruce Zone”.  p.237- 250. https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/pubs/docs/srs/srs06/chap16.pdf in Meidinger, D. and J. Pojar. 1991. “Ecosystems of British Columbia”. BC Ministry of Forests, Victoria, BC. 330pp. 
    14. Research conducted by Stand.earth Research Group, based on: Government of B.C. 2024. “Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) – Priority Deferral Areas”. B.C. Government Data Catalogue. Accessed June 5, 2024. https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/old-growth-technical-advisory-panel-tap-priority-deferral-areas
    15. Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel (TAP). 2021. p.3.
    16. Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel (TAP). 2021. p.3.
    17. Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel (TAP). 2021. p.7.
    18. Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel (TAP). 2021. p.7.
    19. Government of B.C. 2024. “Old Growth Deferral Areas”. Accessed June 5, 2024. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/forestry/managing-our-forest-resources/old-growth-forests/deferral-areas
    20. Parfitt, Ben. 2024.