Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Five years have passed since the provincial government’s Old Growth Review panel published its report on BC’s old growth forest management. Sierra Club BC recently commissioned two of the panel's three scientists to do a study on how their recommendations were carried out. In today's interview, Karen Price talks about their report ‘Closer to the Brink.’

“We need to shift the paradigm because we all depend on the Earth and we need to start putting ecosystems and human communities ahead of industrial profits. To do that, we need to protect big tree forests. That's my bottom line. That means supporting nations in their planning and it means working towards protecting 30% of each ecosystem by 2030 and 50% by 2050,” she explained.

The 30% by 2030 goal was adopted by the 188 nations that signed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022. Canada was one of them. While the Kunming-Montreal Framework did not specifially endorse the 50% by 2050 goal, it does state we need to “substantially increasing the area of natural ecosystems” by 2050. One of the better known advocates of a 50% goal is the late Edward Osborne Wilson, a foundational figure in modern biology. Wilson stated the next big thing will be global biodiversity loss. “If we protect half the Earth’s land and sea and manage sufficient habitat to safeguard the bulk of biodiversity, living Earth can continue to breathe.” 

Karen Price: “The forests in BC play a really important role in both the climate and the biodiversity crises. People have probably heard about nature-based solutions. Our forests are some of the world's best options for nature-based solutions to both climate and biodiversity crises.”

“Our trees in BC and particularly our big tree old growth are the best carbon bank that we have. Terrestrially, we need to be storing carbon and some of these ecosystems can store more than a thousand tons per hectare.”