As the author of a book on deforestation in Canada, I feel I have some qualification to comment on recent claims made by an alliance of environmental groups that the federal government is “spinning” the truth on the subject. Unfortunately, there is widespread public (and media) confusion about what deforestation is and isn’t. …The world’s forest scientists through the United Nations make a key distinction when it comes to removing trees from forest land. When trees are removed and replaced by agricultural crops, grazing land, residential subdivisions, or flooded to make hydro reservoirs, the forest is unlikely to come back to forest. That is called deforestation. But if that forest land is regenerated as forest … then that is not considered to be deforestation. The land remains forest land where trees will be grown again. Logging by itself, then, is not deforestation. Only if the land is not returned to forest.