Canada’s forgotten rainforest

“A spared cedar tree, at least 400 years old, stands uncloaked in the sun beside the road, an empty bear den hidden in its hollow trunk. ‘I haven’t seen logging this bad since I flew over Borneo,’ says DellaSala, president and chief scientist at the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, a partner in an international project to map the world’s most important unlogged forests. ‘It was a rainforest. Now it’s a wasteland.'”

Sarah Cox – The Narwhal – July 2019

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Keepers of the spotted owl

“McCulligh knew the breeding centre could not afford to lose this newborn. At that point in time, in April 2017, there were only six spotted owls left in B.C.’s wild, even though scientists had been sounding the alarm for decades about widespread destruction of the species’ ancient rainforest habitat. Ten years into operation, the breeding centre had hatched just eight other spotted owls — and one was blind, couldn’t fly and laid eggs in her water dish. ‘It was the most stressful thing of my entire life,’ McCulligh remembered. ‘It was at the point where I just didn’t know what to do anymore.'”

 

Sarah Cox – The Narwhal – November 2018