Ontario must act to prevent hidden deforestation, environmental group says

Thousands of hectares of boreal forest in northwestern Ontario havebeen laid to waste by the forest industry but remains unaccounted for under Ontario's forest management and climate change plans, according to a new report from the Wildlands League.

The environmental group released an online catalogue on Thursday of nearly 300 sites that have remained barren for up to 30 years. The total deforested area amounts to about 650,000 hectares or roughly 1.5 times the size of Lake Nipigon, according to Trevor Hesselink, director of policy and research for the Wildlands League.

The sites,which Hesselink calls logging scars, are left on the landscapeby access roads and heavy equipment use. Those areas fall outside of Ontario's forest management planning regime.

"With our report and this online tool, we really want to underline that this is a public forest that we all rely on either directlythrough employment, or indirectly in terms of climate change," Hesselink said. "And if we're going to use it sustainably, we need to be aware of the [forest industry's] full impact."

Barren land a 'blind spot' for provincial regulators

Ontario disputes claims that logging scars are a problem. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Natural Resources andForestry said provincialregulations requires thatall harvested areas of the forestbe regenerated.

The ministrysays between2009 and 2013, just nine per cent of land designated for forestry was deemed "not free to grow" or unable to regenerate.

A ministry spokesperson said that land is reviewed by forest managers.

But the Wildlands League said the problem of barren land in the boreal forest is a "blind spot" for the provincial regulators, currently amounting to about 14 per cent of northwestern Ontario's public forest.

The group is calling on the provincial government to increase environmental protectionsby including logging scarsin their climate change calculations.

According to Hesselink, Ontario isignoring the lost potential that the barren land has to capture carbon, as the province has already missedout on about 16.5 megatons of possiblecarbon sequestration. That amount growswith each year of more activity and lost growth.

If those impacts were attributed to theforest industry, it could no longer claim it is carbon neutral, said Anna Baggio, the conservation director for the group.

The Ontario Forest Industry Association said it would wait to see the Wildlands League's online catalogue of logging scarsbefore considering a response.

'More and better environmental protections' needed, say First Nations

Meanwhile,Baggio saidOntario is moving "backwards" with its environmental oversight.

The province announced earlier this month that it is "modernizing" regulationsby removing environmental oversight for forestry from the Environmental Assessment Act and incorporating it in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.

"We're sounding the alarm that this is only going to put more pressure on the forest," she said. "There will be less forest."

First Nations have also raised flags about that change.

"At a time when the whole world is facing unprecedented climate change and biodiversity loss, development must be supported with more and better environmental protections, not fewer," said a release from Fort Albany First Nation.

The Cree community is calling on the government to repeal the changes and partner with First Nations to develop new legislation.

The Wildlands League initially released it's report on logging scars in December 2019, highlighting 27 sites. Hesselink said the new searchable catalogueof 291 sites responds to criticism that he was "cherry picking" the databy focusing on the worst areas. Each site is evidence of systemic logging-related deforestation, he said.

The disruption of the pandemic provides "a tremendous opportunity to rethink how the forest industry works," Hesselink said.

He hopes the online catalogue of logging scars inspires people to take advantage of the science available "from their desktop" to become engaged as"citizen scientists monitoring the environment" and considertheir place in it.