A recent Reuters’ “special report” on Canadian forestry opens with the assertion that timber firms “are harvesting large swaths of Canada’s older forests, which are critical to containing global warming.” But is the first part true? Since no definition of “older forests” is offered, we assume Reuters means either Canada’s oldest trees (defined by the National Forest Inventory database as those 201 plus years old) or trees over 140 years old (the “old growth” classification used for the British Columbia interior). The former represents just 4% of Canada’s total tree population, while the latter, a much broader grouping, would boost a combined “older” category to over 10% of Canada’s trees. This is what exists, according to the National Forest Inventory, not what is available for harvest.