Clear Cutting means Saying Goodbye to Ontario's Old Growth Forests

The Ogoki forest in July of 2007 - Jack Pine and Spruce filled with beds of lichen and moss

"Old growth is the ultimate forest - it is where nature has taken it's course and the forest continues to grow"

The average lifespan of a tree species within the Ogoki Forest ranges between 90 and 300+ years. Black spruce living in lowland areas (swamps) can live well past 300 years - surviving wildfires, windstorms and disease; jack pine is considered a relatively short-lived conifer at 140 years. But old trees alone do not make old growth forests. Old growth forest develop when trees live long and die natural deaths, creating a diversity of structures, habitats and ecological conditions.

When a tree is converted to lumber, firewood, paper or other wood products, it is lost from the natural system. But when it dies a natural death in the forest, its body and influence lives on. This makes Ogoki unique from many other Ontario forests becuase Ogoki has only began a cycle of forest management in the last 10 years.

Old growth forests have many values:

• Habitats for forest species and wildlife communities
• Sources of habitat diversity
• Living examples of how natural forests work
• Sources of inspiration and heritage appreciation

But there value extends well beyond habitat for creatures such as the Woodland Caribou. Boreal forests in Canada including the Ogoki forest sustain human life on the planet .

“Canada’s boreal forest builds soil, filters water, captures carbon and produces oxygen. While difficult to monetize the value of such life-giving functions, these life-support services have been quantified as nearly $70 billion worth of life-support services for Canadians annually.”1

In southern Ontario, less than .07 percent of the land base is in stands older than 120 years. Old growth forest remnants are also at risk. Elements of old growth - dead trees, logs and soil diversity provide important ecological services and enrich the habitats for wildlife. But these remnants often do not survive standard logging activities. Boreal forests like Ogoki are particularly vunerable when industrialized activity predominates.

"Boreal ecosystems contain relatively low numbers of species (approximately 100,000 in Canada) and their simple community structures make them vulnerable. Limited numbers of plant and animal species result in a lower information content (i.e. DNA) in an ecosystem. Efficiency is reduced if the information content of a system is reduced. Therefore, removing a few species from a boreal ecosystem that contains only hundres of species may be more likely to degrade vital community and ecosystem functions than the removal of the same number of species from a tropical ecosystem that contains hundres of thousands of taxa. The disappearance of only a few species has been shown to impair the proper functioning of food chains and biogeochemical functions in boreal lakes. Additionally lower biotic productivity of boreal ecosystems increase their recovery time following disturbance."1

A dead tree in a forest opens up new worlds of forest life, first as a dead standing tree and then as a fallen log. Dead trees and fallen logs can easily last as long in the forest as when the green tree was "alive", sometimes longer. Large logs, for example, can last over 100 years on the ground floor before being completely reabsorbed into the eco system.

Dead dying and decaying trees provide habitat for animals such as osprey, woodpeckers, grouse and squirrels. Now imagine what the forest will look like after a clear cut of 10,000 ha...

"It all resembles modern warfare. First they send in the mechanized brigades. Then come the foot-soldiers. Aierial bombardment even has a role. The entire operation is dependent on some of the latest technologies. But the action isn't taking place in a dusty Persian Gulf desert. This campaign is being waged in Ontario's boreal forest, where the pine-scented stillness is usually disturbed only by the strident cry of the blue jay and the loon's gentle call.

The mechanized attack is led by diesel-powered machines called feller-forwarders that look like huge praying mantises. They rumble through dense stands of jack pine, their hydraulic cutting heads shearing off spindly trees and depositing them onto their backs. When fully loaded with tons of pulpwood, the machines groan back to the roadside landing where the trees are limbed and dumped onto waiting trucks for the long voyage to the mill. Every year the trip gets longer as the forest frontier recedes.

The infantry of industrial forestry consists of hundreds of little platoons of tree-planters deployed in the wake of the logging machines. Every spring this small army -- mostly college students from the south along with a few local natives and whites -- fans out across the north, packs stuffed with the tiny seedlings that, it is hoped, will transform the massive clear cuts into productive forests.

Later, small planes will fly over the new plantations, their specially-fitted nozzles releasing a fog of chemical herbicide that, it is hoped, will kill off unwanted hardwood competition and allow the cutover land to support a crop of the spruce and pine whose long, strong fibres have always been the basis for the success of Canada's single most important industry. One of the most popular herbicides among foresters is the old standby 2,4-D, a compound first developed when the US military was looking for more effective chemical weapons during World War II"2

The boreal forest is unlike any other in Ontario - the Ministry of Natural Resources has stipulated a specialized silviculture technique be employed. CLAAG (Careful logging around advanced Growth) is a harvest method that is used in low-land areas of the Ogoki forest where it is felt natural regeneration (as opposed to artificial) is optimal. That means the logging company does not replant - rather advanced growth and seedbeds provided by mother nature are relied upon for natural regeneration. The Ogoki forest plan for 2008-2018 will have 48% of the area naturally regenerated - 52% will be re-planted artificially by forest operations. The 48% figure does include some hardwood - the north west ecozone region where Ogoki sits has 25% of its area covered in wetlands. So it could be reasonably assumed 25% of the entire harvest operation will require CLAAG harvest technique.

The above photo is of the Ogoki Forest after a CLAAG harvest and was taken by the Audit team in 2000 . Should they all look like this? No - this is a clear example of what should not be done in a CLAAG harvest. The harvest has pretty much wiped out any hope of advanced growth taking off and with it any hope of reforestration. Artificial replanting will be necessary and assuming the licenseholder follows through - it will mean additional cost and effort. The factors affecting the rutting are cited in the auditors report (this is an independant environmental auditor who is hired by the forest operations to audit the license holder as set out by law in the Crown forest sustainability act - it must be done every 5 years). Primarily it boils down to operator error and the forest company choosing to log the forest when the ground is not frozen - imagine a winter thaw and the damage heavy machinery will have on wetlands . The auditor cites the other reason - cost. Buying high-floatation equipment is extemely expensive so the foresty operations rely on bringing in their regular machinery but cutting only when its frozen . Works fine unless you have a winter like last year where the temperatures were so mild. Or a cold winter with a sudden thaw.

The following silviculture standards must be adopted by the Ontario Government for boreal forests such as the Ogoki.

1. Diligently locate and document vital habitats and significant features. Updating NRVIS databases and Wildlife specific databases are critical.


2. Buffer zones (and animal travel corridors) left around water features and critical habitats are to be significant . 13 km buffers around caribou calving lakes, and any natural distribance (road, harvest block) should be mandatory.


3. Roads are to be located so as to avoid crossing navigable waterways and if they are absolutely required to do so, they should be designed to do so only once. Upon discontinuation of use they should be decommissioned, replanted and continued use should be agressively discouraged. Roads that cross known caribou migration corridors (like the Reckett road) must not be permitted - period.


4. When cutting operations begin they must be done utilizing equipment that leaves the smallest footprint possible on the land –the best floatation tires or other such devices should be mandatory on any piece of equipment that leaves the roadbed or landing areas.


5. All log preparation should be done in the field i.e. the tree is cut, topped, delimbed, cut to transportable size –all done exactly where it stood, then once a truckload is gathered, it is brought to the edge of the cut to be loaded onto a truck and hauled out. The current practice of cutting down the tree and transporting the entire tree to a landing, placing it into a pile where it is later topped and delimbed thereby creating huge slash-piles that are later burned, is a horrible practice that leaves an uneven distribution of the biomass (forest building nutrients) concentrated in one location. The current practice is also the cause of severe rutting of the forest floor because of the numerous trips required to bring small numbers of trees to the landing for further processing. By processing trees in situ the number of trips through the field is reduced thereby reducing rutting.


6. Burn it. With all the limbs and tops left in situ a burn over will open seed cones and begin the reforestation process. Because the seeds will not be dropped from their normal height, distribution will be uneven therefore another step is required.


7. Hand plant or better yet aerially seed locations where tree densities are too low –conifer density (not woody stem growth as is the currently used indicator) is a critical part of emulating the fire driven jackpine forest. Observe the conifer tree density in a burn then look at the conifer density in a standard clear cut. In a burn the high density of conifer growth will for the most part preclude competing species from growing in any significant numbers. The open patterned hand planting of an industrial clearcut will actively encourage competing species to grow and will require the application of chemical herbicides to eliminate them. The open pattern of the industrial replant will also not allow the progression toward the correct light and humidity conditions which are essential for the production of the lichen required to sustain caribou populations through the winter. In order to actively emulate a fire driven system, each stage of forest growth must be faithfully reproduced as closely as possible. Failure to allow each progressive stage of the natural cycle to occur (in an effort to artificially increase the rate of fibre growth), will result in an altered eco-system that will not sustain the life that previously inhabited the region –especially the caribou, an indicator of the failure of current practices. Early high density conifer growth and the subsequent process of naturally occurring thinning (a classic example of survival of the fittest) is key to recreating the classic, fully functioning mature boreal forest.

1. The Boreal Below: Mining Issues and Activities in Canada’s Boreal Forest Region, December 2001
2. Jamie Swift has been following the changes in Canadian forestry for ten years. He is the author of "Cut & Run: The Assault on Canada's Forests" (Between The Lines, 1983).
3. Clear Cut Photo courtesy of http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/