While the debate rages about the recovery plan for our woodland caribou, and in order to make informed and balanced decisions, we must also weigh the environmental impacts that the establishment of protected areas will have in huge forest areas.
First, the greatest impact of these measures will be to reduce the annual allowable cut by hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of softwood. Thus, millions of board feet (board feet) will be withdrawn from the supply of lumber, from certified forests, on the Quebec and northeastern Canadian and American markets.
Also, the reduction in forestry supply sectors (without compensation measures) will have a major impact on high value-added products such as our engineered wood. Indeed, Quebec is increasingly producing this “key” material for the shift to carbon neutral buildings from black spruce from its boreal forests. For example, it is by substituting engineered wood, a “carbon-negative” material that sequesters carbon dioxide, for steel and concrete, that we can have a real impact in the fight against climatic changes.
As for traditional lumber, demand will be met in part by substitute products such as steel studs and concrete walls.
Other substitutes include lumber from eucalyptus plantations in Brazil, where huge Amazon forests are being destroyed.
It is difficult, however not impossible, to accurately measure the environmental impacts that the establishment of huge territories under protected areas will have, but we cannot claim that there will not be any or that they will be negligible. . Moreover, environmental groups, such as Nature Quebec, have refrained from even mentioning its existence, just as they avoid mentioning that the intensification of silvicultural work, to increase the production of wood on the territories ” remaining”, could be part of the “solution”.
Their “solution” (increasing protected areas without intensifying forestry) is not optimal, neither in terms of environmental protection nor in terms of sustainable development. In fact, our wood industry is a powerful lever in the fight against climate change, and both Nature Quebec and CPAWS are careful not to talk about it. They prefer to attack the credibility of the Boreal Forest Alliance. It is difficult to criticize them for a lack of partisanship or an increase in objectivity.
It remains to be hoped that the caribou recovery strategy will be balanced: listening to indigenous and forest communities while substantially maintaining our timber production considering its positive impacts in the fight against climate change and in terms of the creation of collective economic wealth. It is risky, even illogical, to want to move towards carbon neutrality by slashing our production of lumber and engineered wood.
