Reform the logging industry to slow climate crises in B.C., expert says

The logging industry and clear cutting of old growth forests are partly to blame for the severity of the flooding crisis in B.C., a conservationist says.

Experts have long warned that clear-cut logging majorly affects the environment around it, including the stability of slopes, how fast water is absorbed into the ground and the disruption of vast root systems that hold soil in place. Without forests, heavy rains can wash sediment into water systems, choking them and causing them to overflow rapidly, which leads to flooding.

Peter Wood, conservationist and forest management expert with Canopy Planet, said on CTV’s Your Morning Monday that the connection between the logging industry and what is unfolding in the province cannot be denied.

“Healthy mature forests with a well-developed canopy and a rich understory kind of act like a giant sponge, it absorbs and releases water slowly – kind of ‘everything in moderation’ if you will,” Wood said. “The root structures holding soil to steep slopes, they’ve been in development for thousand of years.”

Wood said that logging has been shown to have acute impacts on the environment, such as landslides that are triggered by harvesting and roadbuilding on steep slopes, as well as impacts on the watershed level in the province, where the logging industry impedes the ability of the forest to moderate the flow of water.