Replanted Is Not Restored: Forest Succession Around Port Renfrew

Date prepared: 2026-06-03

Why this matters

When old forest is logged, the public is often told it will grow back. It does grow back as trees. It does not grow back as the same forest, not on any timescale that helps the people, fish, and animals alive today. Old-growth structure takes centuries to build. Managed second growth is usually cut again long before it gets there. So a cutblock that was old forest becomes a young plantation, then a stump, then a young plantation again. Under normal short-rotation management, it does not return to old forest.

This note lays out that argument, separates what is established science from what the local data shows, and records what we still cannot measure locally so it becomes a research and records target.

How to read the claims here:

• Established science: general, well-documented, cited.
• Screening fact: computed from official local data, real but not a legal or field-confirmed result.
• Local-data gap: something we cannot yet show locally, listed in data/succession/research-backlog.csv.
• Question: what the gap should make the public ask.

First, second, third growth: what the words mean

• First growth / old growth: forest that has never been industrially logged and has developed old-growth structure. On the wet B.C. coast the province treats stands as old growth at about 250 years. [Established science: BC Government, Old growth definitions and values.]
• Second growth: the stand that grows after the first harvest, usually replanted as an even-aged plantation.
• Third growth and beyond: what grows after the second stand is cut, and so on through each rotation.

The key point is in the ages. Coastal old growth is defined at roughly 250 years. Coastal second growth is typically logged at about 50 to 80 years. [Established science.] So under standard management the forest is re-cut three to five times before a single stand would ever be old enough to be called old growth again. The old forest does not come back. It is replaced by a cycle of young stands.

What is lost between generations

Old growth is not just older trees. It is a structure that takes centuries to assemble: large-diameter trees, standing dead trees (snags), large fallen logs and coarse woody debris, a layered canopy with gaps that let light reach a deep understory of ferns, shrubs, mosses, and lichens. [Established science: BC Government, Old growth definitions and values.] An even-aged plantation has none of these for a long time. It is dense, single-layered, and closed-canopy until it is thinned or cut.

Some of what depends on that structure:

• Wildlife habitat. The marbled murrelet, a seabird listed as Threatened under the federal Species at Risk Act, nests inland on the large mossy branches of old coniferous trees and almost nowhere else. British Columbia has lost an estimated 33 to 49 percent of its suitable murrelet nesting habitat to industrial logging in roughly the past half century. [Established science: BC Government, Marbled Murrelet; COSEWIC status report.] Young plantations do not have the large mossy branches murrelets need.
• Lumber quality. Slow-grown old-growth wood is tight-grained and largely clear of knots, which is why it is sought for specialty products. Faster-grown plantation wood harvested young contains more juvenile wood and grows under conditions that change the quality of the timber. [Established science: BC wood-quality research; sector descriptions.] Cutting old growth and replacing it with short-rotation plantations trades a one-time stock of high-grade wood for a lower-grade renewable crop.
• Fish habitat. Old streamside forest shades water, drops large wood that builds pools and stable banks, and holds soil that would otherwise wash in as sediment. These functions are documented in B.C.'s own riparian science. [Established science: BC riparian areas science; see how-forestry-affects-fish-habitat.md.] Young replanted stands take decades to provide them again.
• Fire behaviour. Young dense stands and post-harvest slash change fuel structure and exposure. The Forest Practices Board's 2025 investigation found forestry in wildland-urban interface areas is not reaching its potential to reduce wildfire risk. [Established science: FPB, Help or Hinder; see slash-second-growth-wildfire-risk-explainer.md.] Whether a given local stand is more or less flammable depends on many factors and is a local-data gap.

What the local data shows

These come from official records already downloaded for the study area (San Juan, Gordon, Fairy, Walbran, Harris, Lens, Caycuse, Renfrew, Sombrio). They are screening facts. See scripts/build_succession_analysis.py and data/succession/.

The replanting is real, but it is plantation, not restoration. Of 1,074 RESULTS openings in the area, 1,008 (about 94 percent) have a planting record. So replanting is happening. But 1,002 of those openings (about 93 percent) used clearcut or clearcut-with-reserves systems, and of the 792 openings that record a prior stand age, 512 (about 65 percent) were 141 years or older before harvest, including 373 that were in the 251-plus age class. In plain terms, mature and old forest was clearcut and replaced with even-aged plantations.

Almost nothing logged has had time to recover. Across the recorded harvested footprint of about 32,764 hectares, 99.5 percent is regrowth less than 60 years old. Coastal old growth is defined at about 250 years. None of the logged area is close. A stand clearcut today would not be old forest again until about the year 2275, roughly eight human generations from now. No one alive today, or their grandchildren, will see it return.

Old growth is still being cut while younger forest is available. Recorded harvest from 2010 onward overlaps about 518 hectares of mapped old growth (TAP old-forest, ancient-forest, and priority-deferral layers combined; 887 hectares across all recorded harvest). At the same time, the same watersheds hold about 15,915 hectares of second growth already 60 to 139 years old, which is at or past normal coastal harvest age, plus about 42,388 hectares of younger regrowth coming up behind it. [Screening fact.] This does not prove any specific block should not have been cut. It raises a clear question: why cut mapped old growth when second growth at harvestable age is far more abundant?

The cascade: fish, hunting, tourism

The argument does not end at the tree. The forest type drives the economy and the wildlife that depend on it.

• Salmon and sport fishing. Port Renfrew's economy has shifted toward sport fishing and old-growth tourism. [Context: Port Renfrew Chamber.] Riparian forest condition affects salmon habitat through shade, large wood, and sediment. The link between local stand age and local salmon returns is a local-data gap, not a proven local causation.
• Hunting. Forage for deer and elk peaks in early-seral openings, but thermal cover and winter range depend on older forest structure. Whether the current age mix can sustain ungulate populations locally is a local-data gap.
• Tourism. The ESSA Port Renfrew valuation found standing old growth carries significant recreation and tourism value that a plantation does not replace. See notes/essa-port-renfrew-economics-summary.md.

Carbon at stake (screening estimate)

Coastal old growth holds more carbon per hectare than almost any other forest type. Published ranges for productive coastal sites run from roughly 500 to 1,300 tonnes of carbon per hectare, and logging releases an estimated 40 to 65 percent of ecosystem carbon even after counting wood products. [Established science, published ranges; precise local values are a deep-research item, see research/deep-research/07-carbon-oldgrowth-vs-secondgrowth.md.]

Applying those ranges to the local hectares is a screening estimate, not a measurement:

• The roughly 17,922 hectares of 250-plus old forest remaining in these watersheds hold on the order of 33 to 85 million tonnes of CO2.
• The roughly 518 hectares of old growth cut since 2010 represent on the order of 0.4 to 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 released.

These are wide screening ranges meant to show the order of magnitude of the climate stake, not a precise figure. See data/succession/carbon-screening-estimate.csv.

What this does not prove

• It does not prove any specific harvest was illegal or that any rule was broken.
• It does not prove a local wildlife population, salmon run, or fire was caused by local logging. Those need data we do not have.
• The harvest-over-old-growth overlap is a screening number computed on simplified geometry, not a field-confirmed audit.

The honest claim is narrower and still strong: replanting restores tree cover, not old forest, and the public should be able to see why old growth is cut when younger forest is available, and what is being given up in habitat, fish, fire resilience, and wood quality.

Related angles worth pursuing (brainstorm)

• Carbon debt. Old growth stores large, stable carbon; a clearcut releases it and a young stand takes decades to repay the debt. Pair with the carbon line in the full-cost work.
• Timber-supply falldown. The known drop from high old-growth volumes to lower managed second-growth yields. It reframes old-growth logging as drawing down a stock, not a steady harvest.
• Soil and productivity over rotations. Whether successive short rotations reduce site productivity over time.
• Cumulative watershed and hydrology recovery. How long peak-flow and sediment effects persist as a watershed fills with young stands.
• Connectivity and edge effects. Fragmented old growth loses interior-forest value even where patches remain.
• Climate resilience. Whether old, structurally complex stands buffer drought, heat, and fire better than even-aged plantations.
• At-risk-species legal triggers. Murrelet habitat thresholds and the December 2021 Crown-land retention order as a concrete accountability hook.
• Cedar and cultural values. Large old cedar for cultural use is not replaced by a short-rotation plantation.
• A public story scene. "Replanted is not restored," built from the numbers above, as a future addition to the story page.

Methods and caveats

• Growth-stage areas come from the VRI age-class summary in data/public-data-audit/watershed-harvest-stand-age-summary.csv. VRI age is a screening signal, not a legal old-growth determination.
• Harvest-over-old-growth overlap dissolves cutblocks and the TAP old-growth layers and intersects them, on geometry simplified to about 40 metres for speed. Treat the hectares as screening estimates.
• Reforestation figures come from RESULTS openings (data/historical-change/results-openings.geojson). Prior age class uses the standard B.C. age-class codes; a full code decode is a backlog item.
• Time-since-harvest uses cutblock HARVEST_START_YEAR_CALENDAR against 2026.

Sources

• BC Government, Old growth definitions and values: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/forestry/managing-our-forest-resources/old-growth-forests/old-growth-values
• BC Government, Marbled Murrelet: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/plants-animals-ecosystems/species-ecosystems-at-risk/implementation/conservation-projects-partnerships/marbled-murrelet
• COSEWIC status report, Marbled Murrelet: https://www.sararegistry.gc.ca/virtual_sara/files/cosewic/sr_guillemot_marbre_marbled_murrelet_1012_e.pdf
• Forest Practices Board, Help or Hinder? Aligning forestry with wildfire risk reduction: https://www.bcfpb.ca/release-publications/releases/help-or-hinder/
• BC riparian areas science (see data/source-inventory.md).
• Local analysis: scripts/build_succession_analysis.py, data/succession/.