The volume of wood harvested on Quebec public lands will increase by 3% from 2023, announced Wednesday the Chief Forester of Quebec, Louis Pelletier, raising the concern of the environmental organization Nature Quebec.
The allowable cut calculation, i.e. the maximum quantity of wood that can be harvested to allow the renewal of the Quebec forest, will increase to just over 35 million cubic meters per year for the period 2023-2028.
“It is therefore 1.2% of the volume of wood present in forests,” explained the Chief Forester, during a press conference, to Roberval.
“It’s very worrying,” responded the forest engineer Marie-Ève Desmarais, consultant for Nature Quebec.
“Before, we exploited 1% of the forest each year, now we have reached 1.2%, so, roughly speaking, we came back to cut every 100 years, but there it will fall to 83 years”, illustrates – she.
We are going to enter the forests which are supposedly mature more quickly.
Marie-Ève Desmarais, Nature Quebec
This prospect is all the more worrying as it does not take into account many factors that will have an impact on Quebec’s forests, such as the climate change adaptation strategy on which the Ministère des Forêts is working, the caribou recovery plan. which is long overdue and the spruce budworm epidemic, lists Marie-Ève Desmarais.
“We are moving towards a goal of 30% protected areas [pour 2030], is there going to be a place for that? She wonders.
These elements are also identified as “issues to watch” by Louis Pelletier, who did not want to say whether he would have preferred to have these data in hand before carrying out his calculation, affirming that it would always be possible to modify it later.
As provided for in the law, the allowable cuts can be modified during the period. If there is a need to adjust or reduce the allowable cut, we will.
Louis Pelletier, Chief Forester of Quebec
It is true that the law allows it, “but there still has to be a political will,” retorts Marie-Ève Desmarais.
New arrivals
The Chief Forester presented some “new features”, such as the exclusion of sugar bushes from the allowable cut calculation for 2023-2028, which represents approximately 11,000 hectares.
“This is a good thing, because we have just increased the potential for maple syrup development [sur les terres publiques] », Rejoices Marie-Ève Desmarais.
The “riparian wooded edges” will also henceforth be excluded from the calculation, “but they had already been avoided by the industry for years”, underlines the forestry engineer.
The Chief Forester also reiterated the withdrawal announced last week by the Minister of Forests Pierre Dufour of some 155,000 hectares of “paludified landscapes”, that is to say land “surrounded”, prized by caribou.
This is a good thing, but one that should have been done long before, according to Nature Quebec, which points out that these are also sectors that were avoided by the forest industry.