← Port Renfrew forest accountability

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:

First, second, third growth: what the words mean

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:

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 chronosequence study in B.C.'s Coastal Western Hemlock zone found that even at 80 to 100 years, second growth is only about 41 to 55 percent structurally similar to old growth. [Established science: chronosequence study, see Sources.] 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.

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 old growth releases an estimated 40 to 65 percent of ecosystem carbon even after counting wood products. [Established science: Harmon, Ferrell and Franklin 1990, Science 247:699-702; coastal carbon-density ranges per the Sources below. Precise per-stand 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:

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 the public received for that carbon is small by comparison. Coastal old growth carries very high timber volume, on the order of 1,000 to 1,800 cubic metres per hectare (second growth is roughly a third of that). [Established science: industry and CBC/AFA figures.] The roughly 518 hectares of old growth cut since 2010 therefore held very roughly 0.5 to 0.9 million cubic metres of timber. At the area's average public stumpage of about $6.55 per cubic metre (ESSA 2021), the public's direct cash take from that timber was on the order of $3 to $6 million. The carbon released from the same cutting is valued at roughly $30 to $274 million at the federal carbon price (screening). Even at the most conservative ends, the carbon cost is several times the public's cash return. [Screening estimate; combines our carbon screening with ESSA stumpage and published volume ranges.]

What this does not prove

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)

Methods and caveats

Sources