I am sorry, but that has been proven incorrect. While younger trees grow faster, they are incapable of putting on the same amount of secondary growth of an old growth tree. Imagine an annual growth ring of a tree, say 20 years old, in a spaced silviculture plot. The surface area that tree puts on in secondary growth, even under the best growing conditions, would barely equal the surface area of second growth added to the branch of an old growth tree, never mind the amount of wood mass that it put on annually by the trunk of an old growth. Photosynthetic rates may be higher in young trees with access to full sunlight and nutrients, but the photosynthetic rate per LAI (leaf area index) of an old growth tree is incomparably higher.

That’s not the only important role of old growth trees. Below ground these giant trees form ancient networks with the help of mycorrhizal fungi, which allow trees to share resources, such as carbon, micro/macro nutrients such as nitrogen or phosphorus, expand root systems to access water, and to communicate with each other, such as sending early chemical warning signs to neighboring trees that a pathogen has entered the forest, which allows those neighbours to produce defensive enzymes and hormones before those pathogens physically reach them. The fungal network actually grows and ages with the trees, and is biologically different and significantly more resistant than a young fungal network in a second growth forest. Old growth forests also sustain a biodiversity of species that can only exist in old growth forests. They do not regenerate in second growth forests, and could take thousands of years to return, if ever. Biodiversity is what protects a forest from pathogens and environmental disturbances.

As someone who has done research on old growth cedar trees on Vancouver Island, I can tell you that the logging cuts are not selective. They are clear cuts using an archaic cut-block method that is supposed to mimic natural disturbances, but instead leaves the landscape a scarred and at-risk-mosaic of young monoculture stands. Selective logging is too expensive, so when you see giants left unlogged, it is only because they could not get the machine equipment in to those particular spots and they will return in a year or two to heli-log it.

The push to log old growths on Vancouver Island is a response to a crumbling logging industry which is due to poor government management over the past 15 years. We were in a boom due to the pine-beetle outbreak as stumpage fees were reduced and infected or dead stands were being logged left right and center. It wasn’t sustainable. Stumpage fees should have returned to a standard rate and the rates of logging over the course of the last decade should have been slowed to one that could be sustained by current silviculture plots. But because of poor government planning mills are shutting down across the province at an unprecedented rate, and logging families are taking the brunt of it all. It’s both an economic and an environmental disaster.

#endrant

Any identified tree however is subject to being cut if a) it is deemed a Safety Hazard to WorkSafe B.C. and or would unnecessarily add to the road building cost to harvest the remaining trees in the cut block.

San Forestry, Port Alberni has just upgraded by 70million $$, their Ancient Tree processing line – They will want a multi-decade supply of Ancients to pay off their mill costs

This practice is still happening, with many cut logs to prove this. Look on Google Earth around Port Renfrew, Walbran, and Nitnat, for example, if you’re around Victoria. It’s happening all over there. Then drive up Gordon Main and turn left anywhere near Renfrew and see for yourself. This article is not actually misleading, though I agree that more recent pictures would be helpful.