VICTORIA, BC — A new report claims a sharp increase in wood-pellet exports is fuelling the loss of primary forests in B.C., but Forests Minister Bruce Ralston says that is not the case. Ben Parfitt… says B.C.’s forests are in crisis after decades of “intense logging” that has “depleted and fragmented” the forest industry, and now the demand of wood pellets is adding to the loss of B.C.’s primary forests. …However, Ralston said “forests are not being turned into pellets,” adding that the source material for making pellets is sawmills, shavings, chips and forest residues. He said all of those materials, which are taken to the Drax mills and made into pellets, would otherwise be burned in slash piles that “releases a lot of carbon and it wastes a lot of valuable forest products… so it’s just way more valuable to trade those logs for the kind of sawdust, chips, bark that is used for pellets.”