Trip to the Boreal Forest
It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.” – Rachel Carson, Silent Spring.
The forest
October 4 to 6, Canbury took a group of investors to the boreal forest, to help understand the complex dynamics of industry-driven degradation, conservation, policies, and their own role in protecting Canada’s forest. The trip was in conjunction with the launch of the report, “The Degradation of Canada’s Boreal: Laws, Lobbying, and Links to Degradation”, developed ahead of PRI’s annual conference, PRI in Person 2024 in Toronto, Canada. The intention was to highlight the importance of the often-overlooked forest, and the role that companies and their trade associations have in influencing forest-related policies.
The described forest is one of the several we had the chance to see on the trip – this one just happened to be the bleakest. The irony of it, as we were told, is that this forest is in fact gold-standard certified, meaning, the products coming from this forest can be labelled as ‘sustainably sourced’ (or equivalent).
In the writing of and interviewing for the report, there was a key area of contention that came up time and time again: definition. I.e. what does it mean to sustainably manage a forest, at what point is a forest degraded, how much land does a species need to be protected…. Already, you can begin to imagine the problem this creates in policymaking and the real-world implementation of policies. Now we were coming face to face with a consequence of it.
On paper, this managed forest ticks the boxes, in that there are the sufficient number of trees left-over to mimic ‘natural disturbances’ such as wildfire, i.e. it’s not a clearcut forest… except, is this what a burnt forest would look like? Are the left-over trees the fire-resistant ones? Are the regenerating trees those that would naturally grow after a fire? All good questions that we were asking, standing in this forest.
Accompanied by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), we were explained that this forest was likely cut a year prior, the trees leftover were the less desirable pieces of wood, and the sprouting vegetation was poplar, a tree that if left without competition would spread and takeover, and would therefore need to then sprayed with glyphosate (a herbicide, once known under the brand as ‘round-up’, that has come under fire for pollution, ecosystem, and health concerns). The debris is left-over wood from the cutting, and the track, is one of many across the boreal forest that’s not accounted for in deforestation metrics.
The trip
Over the course of the weekend, we saw a variety of other landscapes – and heard from a range of voices.
At the start of the trip, we were hosted by Clean Air Metals, a platinum and palladium mining company in the development stage – and learnt that with the global price on metals, despite industry-leading sustainability efforts, metals are priced the same as companies with no sustainability measures in place – unless the end-users (e.g. the car companies) demand differently. With the Nature Conservancy of Canada, we learnt how road and tracks (‘linear features’) to places like mining and forestry sites impact woodland caribou populations – and therefore the importance of preserving large pieces of continuous forest (‘intact forest’), and how they specifically prioritise this in their conservation efforts. Up in Armstrong, we stayed with long-time environmentalists, Margaret and Bruce at their lodge – Margaret, who was instrumental in the writing of Ontario’s Crown Forest Sustainability Act, and Bruce who back in the 70s, enabled the initial banning of DDT upon reading Carson’s Silent Spring.
Through many a conversation and direct observation, the experience provided a comprehensive, firsthand look at the complexities of managing and conserving the forest. It highlighted the need to strike a balance between conservation and industry practices and underscored the importance of bridging the gap between policy and practical implementation.