Policy interventions and competing management paradigms shape the long-term distribution of forest harvesting across the landscape

Abstract

Industrial economic models of natural resource management often incentivize the sequential harvesting of resources based on profitability, disproportionately targeting the higher-value elements of the environment. In fisheries, this issue is framed as a problem of “fishing down the food chain” when these elements represent different trophic levels or sequential depletion more generally. Harvesting that focuses on high grading the most profitable, productive, and accessible components of environmental gradients is also thought to occur in the forestry sector. Such a paradigm is inconsistent with a stewardship ethic, entrenched in the forestry literature, that seeks to maintain or enhance forest condition over time. We ask 1) how these conflicting paradigms have influenced patterns of forest harvesting over time and 2) whether more recent conservation-oriented policies influenced these historical harvesting patterns. We use detailed harvest data over a 47-y period and aggregated time series data that span over a century on the central coast of British Columbia, Canada to assess temporal changes in how logging is distributed among various classes of site productivity and terrain accessibility, corresponding to timber value. Most of this record shows a distinct trend of harvesting shifting over time to less productive stands, with some evidence of harvesting occurring in increasingly less accessible forests. However, stewardship-oriented policy changes enacted in the mid-1990s appear to have strongly affected these trends. This illustrates both a profit-maximizing tendency to log down the value chain when choices are unconstrained and the potential of policy choices to impose a greater stewardship ethic on harvesting behavior.

Estimating the amount of British Columbia’s “big-treed” old growth: Navigating messy indicators

“…Intact old-growth forests are vanishing worldwide (FRA, 2020) with dire implications for biodiversity, carbon storage, and ecosystem resilience (Foley et al, 2005;Luyssaert et al, 2008;Bradley et al, 2016;Frey et al, 2016;Law et al, 2018;Watson et al, 2018). Big-treed forests face the highest risk because they are targeted by timber harvesting and under-represented in conservation areas that typically avoid areas of high land-use conflict (Venter et al, 2014;Polak et al, 2016;Benner and Lertzman, 2022). Developing appropriate indicators of big-treed old growth is critical to understanding the status of these ecologically important at-risk ecosystems as a basis for improving management (Gorley and Merkel, 2020;Price et al, 2021).…”

“…Interior forests include rolling subboreal conifer-deciduous mosaics in the north and open grasslands dotted with widely spaced conifers in the south (Biogeoclimatic Ecosystem Classification Program of British Columbia, 2012). Over the entire province, valley bottoms typically grow bigger trees quickly, while slopes support trees that become more stunted with elevation (Biogeoclimatic Ecosystem Classification Program of British Columbia, 2012;Benner and Lertzman, 2022).…”

“…About one-fifth of BC's forests (11 million hectares) are classified as old growth using provincial age-based criteria (BC Government, 2022a). Because harvesting targets highproductivity, big-treed, forests, these remaining areas of old growth are biased towards smaller-statured forests that grow at high elevation, in low-productivity coastal bogs, and in remote northern regions (Price et al, 2021;Benner and Lertzman, 2022). Although large areas of low-productivity old growth remain, some of the most productive big-treed old-growth ecosystems, including Coastal Douglas-fir and inland temperate rainforest are on the verge of extirpation (DellaSala et al, 2021).…”

“…Forest harvest targets big-treed stand (Martin et al, 2020;Price et al, 2021;Benner and Lertzman, 2022). BC is currently updating regional land-use planning without an agreed-upon metric of big-treed old-growth forests.…”

“…Available indicators, calibrated to improve consistency, agree that BC's big-treed old growth ecosystems are at high risk. Current management policy will result in further threats from timber harvesting (Price et al, 2021;Benner and Lertzman, 2022). The provincial government has committed to changing its old growth management paradigm (BC Government, 2021a) to address carbon storage, climate adaptation, biodiversity conservation, and reconciliation with indigenous people.…”