BC’s wildfire emissions in 2023 exceeded those of seven of the world’s ten largest national emitters. …At the same time, provincial policy has systematically reduced the managed forest harvest and shuttered 21 mills since 2023. …The policy of locking forests away from active management—while presented as environmental protection—is contributing to the very climate outcome it claims to prevent. Decadent, unmanaged stands are the fuel that feeds catastrophic wildfire. A well-managed, productive forest economy would reduce Canada’s climate impact more than any policy of exclusion. …The argument for locking forests away from harvest assumes that standing forests are always a carbon sink—absorbing more CO₂ than they release. This is true for young, actively growing forests. It is not true for old, decadent stands. …The solution is not less forestry. It is more forestry—done well, done sustainably, and done with the explicit goal of reducing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions: uncontrolled wildfire in unmanaged forests.