Canada’s forests, wetlands, grasslands and farmlands stole the show during a live panel discussion hosted online by The Narwhal. “The natural landscape contains a vast amount of carbon and by cutting down trees and digging up wetlands, we’re releasing that carbon,” said The Narwhal’s editor-in-chief Emma Gilchrist. The event, which drew more than 1,000 live attendees, offered a look behind the scenes of The Narwhal’s Carbon Cache series on the role of nature-based solutions in addressing the climate crisis — an approach the Canadian government committed $3.9 billion toward in the fall 2020 economic statement. …Research shows one-third of the carbon reductions needed to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Accord can be achieved by protecting, managing and restoring natural landscapes. …While Canada is home to a quarter of the world’s intact forests, panelist Hadley Archer, executive director of Nature United noted the potential for nature-based solutions to reach far beyond protecting and restoring forests. 

Nicole Rycroft

Vancouver environmentalist Nicole Rycroft has won a $3 million grant for being named recipient of a Climate Breakthrough Award. Rycroft, executive director of the non-governmental organization Canopy, said the grant from the San Francisco-based NGO Climate Breakthrough Project was the result of a rigorous two year vetting process. …In a statement, Climate Breakthrough Project described Rycroft’s work around transforming paper production to more sustainable models as  “visionary.” One of Canopy’s successes was a campaign to green J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. The result: no trees were cut to produce millions of copies of the final in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which were printed on “ecopaper” made from 100 per cent tree-free, post-consumer fibre. “We forget that forests are part of the lungs of our planet and that conserving forests is the fastest, cheapest and most immediate thing for us to stabilize our climate,” said Rycroft.

B.C.’s NDP government has sanctioned logging and road building in nine areas the party said during the fall election campaign it had “protected” as old-growth, according to information unearthed by the Wilderness Committee. A Ministry of Forests bulletin outlines how forestry companies can log and build roads in 157,000 hectares of second-growth forests in the 353,000 hectares the government announced in September were protected from development to kickstart a “new approach to old forests.” …Torrance Coste, national campaign director for the Wilderness Committee, said it is “stunning” to now discover it will be business as usual in the second-growth forests included in the deferral areas. “At the bare minimum, people deserve to be told honestly by the government what is going on,” Coste said, calling the government’s suggestion that 353,000 hectares of old-growth are being protected “factually incorrect and incredibly misleading.”

The B.C. government is funding dozens of training opportunities for people who are interested in the forestry industry on Vancouver Island this year. The province is spending nearly $775,000 to provide two rounds of certification courses and forestry training through Stillwater Consulting. During the roughly five-month program, participants will take part in 16 weeks of occupational skills training and three weeks of on-the-job work experience with local employers, followed by two weeks of job searching support. Participants will also have the chance to complete four industry certifications, including basic chainsaw operator, basic fire suppression and safety: fire entrapment avoidance, occupational first aid: level 3, and pesticide applicator: agriculture general. The province says that some graduates of the program have found employment as junior forestry technicians, wildland firefighters, silviculture surveyors, equipment operators and recreation trail builders. … Anyone interested in joining is asked to contact their local WorkBC centre.