Higher Value, Lower Volume: The Future Of Canadian Forestry

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Canada’s forests are immense, covering nearly 350 million hectares and holding almost 9% of the world’s forested land. They are central to the country’s identity, economy, and climate profile. For decades, forestry has provided jobs and exports while maintaining relatively stable forest cover, but the climate and biodiversity math has shifted. Canada’s forests are no longer a consistent carbon sink. In many recent years they have been a net carbon source due to a combination of wildfires, insect outbreaks, and the way harvesting is done. This means that any future expansion of a forest products sector, including the much-discussed mass timber industry, has to be contingent on making forestry truly sustainable.

In my lengthy series on mass timber in Canada, sustainable forestry was given too little attention, something commenters have been bringing to my attention. This article, and the research I did to understand the domain, corrects that, although it became clear to me that an entire series of articles would be required to more than lightly address it. In addition to this article, I’ve added it as a section in my report on mass timber in Canada.

The numbers are stark. Canada harvests about 130 million cubic meters of wood each year, mainly softwoods from the boreal and temperate zones. That represents about 0.2% of the forest area annually, which sounds small, but when combined with natural disturbance the footprint is much larger. Wildfires alone average 2 million hectares burned annually, with outlier years like 2023 seeing more than 15 million hectares burned. Insects such as the mountain pine beetle and spruce budworm add further mortality. These disturbances remove timber that models once counted as available for harvest. If forest management does not adjust for this, then harvest levels risk overshooting what ecosystems can support while maintaining biodiversity and carbon stocks.

From a climate perspective, harvesting mature forests creates an immediate pulse of emissions. Carbon stored in trunks, branches, roots, and soils is released over years and decades. Only a portion of that carbon ends up in long-lived products. A significant share is in paper, packaging, or bioenergy, where it returns to the atmosphere quickly. Reforestation eventually reabsorbs carbon, but the lag time can be many decades. In the context of 2030 and 2050 climate targets, that lag matters. A cubic meter of wood used in a cross laminated timber panel that sits in a building for 80 years contributes to a climate solution. The same cubic meter burned in a pellet plant in Europe contributes to near-term emissions at the worst possible time.

This is why the practice of pelletizing Canadian wood and shipping it overseas has to stop. Canada exported roughly 3 million tons of wood pellets in 2023. That is wood that could have been stored in buildings for decades, displacing concrete and steel. Instead, it was converted into energy with carbon emissions counted as zero by importing countries even though the atmospheric impact is real. The idea that forest bioenergy is carbon neutral has been widely discredited. Continuing to cut primary or secondary forests for pellets undermines both Canada’s climate commitments and the credibility of its forest sector.

Biodiversity indicators tell a similar story. Woodland caribou are the signal species for boreal sustainability. They need large tracts of undisturbed forest, at least 65% of their ranges left intact. Most herds in managed forest zones fall well below this threshold, and many populations are in decline. Old growth temperate rainforests in British Columbia have been reduced to fragments, with over 95% of the most productive stands already gone. These ecosystems store huge amounts of carbon and support unique species. Logging the remnants cannot be called sustainable. The lesson is clear: if harvest plus disturbance pushes landscapes outside their natural range of variation, species decline and ecosystems unravel. Sustainable yield has to mean more than timber volumes balancing regrowth. It must mean that habitat structure, species composition, and age-class distributions remain within healthy bounds.

A mass timber industry depends on long-term credibility. If the wood used for panels and beams comes from degraded ecosystems or from fiber that should have been left to recover, then the climate case for mass timber collapses. The pathway forward is to make forestry compatible with both climate goals and biodiversity protection. That requires a shift from high-volume commodity extraction toward higher value per cubic meter. Canada’s forestry has historically been about maximizing volume. A cubic meter turned into pulp has a low value and a short life. The same cubic meter turned into a cross laminated timber panel or a prefabricated module can store carbon for many decades and displace materials that have much higher emissions profiles.

There is a clear industrial logic to this shift. Value per cubic meter in pulp might be tens of dollars. In a finished module it can be thousands. The workforce needed to produce engineered products and modules is larger per unit of wood than the workforce for commodity lumber. That means more jobs and more stability for communities without needing to cut more forest. It also aligns with global demand, as countries everywhere seek low-carbon construction solutions. Canada could be exporting prefabricated buildings rather than raw logs or pellets.

Indigenous partnership is an essential part of this future. Much of the forested land is on traditional territories. Sustainable forestry has to mean consent and co-governance with Indigenous nations. This ensures not only respect for rights but also integration of knowledge that can improve ecosystem stewardship. While this article focuses on climate and biodiversity, it is important to recognize that legitimacy and long-term success in forestry require Indigenous leadership.

Global comparisons are instructive. Finland and Sweden show that forests can be highly productive under intensive management, but their biodiversity deficits are significant and now require correction. Germany shows how close-to-nature silviculture can sustain ecological values, though with lower yields. New Zealand demonstrates a plantation model that supplies large volumes from small areas while sparing native forests, but with risks from monocultures and erosion. Uruguay shows how policy can create a plantation industry from almost nothing, but with trade-offs for water and grassland ecosystems. Canada still has large intact forests. That is an advantage most other industrial nations have already lost. The challenge is to avoid following the same path of over-intensification and instead leapfrog to a model that delivers higher value from lower volume while protecting intact ecosystems.

The outlines of such a model are visible. Annual harvest should remain around 0.2% of forest area or less, with a declining share from primary and old-growth forests. The majority of harvested carbon should end up in long-lived products, not in short-lived paper or pellets. Carbon accounting must be transparent, with full recognition of logging emissions and regrowth lags. Harvest plans must incorporate biodiversity thresholds, such as the 65% undisturbed requirement for caribou. Protected areas and Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas need to expand to cover the most sensitive ecosystems.

A roadmap to this future would begin with immediate moratoria on the most at-risk old-growth and critical caribou ranges, elimination of subsidies or support for pellet exports, and targeted investment in mass timber factories and supply chains. Over the next decade, allowable cuts should be revised downward in regions where natural disturbances are increasing, and building codes and insurance frameworks should be aligned to encourage mass timber construction. By mid-century, Canada’s forest sector could be smaller in terms of cubic meters harvested but larger in terms of jobs, exports, and climate benefits.

Canada has the opportunity to align its forestry and its mass timber industry with a sustainable future. The conditions are clear: stop cutting trees for energy pellets, shift to higher value per cubic meter, and embed climate and biodiversity thresholds into every plan. Done right, this would allow Canada to export not only wood products but also a model of how to manage vast forests responsibly in a century defined by climate and ecological limits.