An environmentalist who helped broker the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement recently said that clearcut logging is "an appropriate silvaculture method" in the boreal forest.
"Frankly, in the boreal forest, selective harvest is impractical because of the nature of the trees. You don't have the big kind of coastal old growth forest," Steven E. Kallick, director of the International Boreal Conservation Campaign for the Pew Charitable Trusts, told Yale Environment 360.
"What you have is extensive forest of smaller trees. And in order to be profitable, you need to be able to go in there and take out a significant part of the volume. And ecologically it's not like clearcutting in a coastal forest. It doesn't have the same impact because the boreal forest is a vast, fire-dominated ecosystem where large-scale disturbance is not uncommon."
The logging companies that signed the agreement have agreed to "meet or beat the Forest Stewardship Council ...