Want to know when Canada will harvest its last tree? Never. That’s the answer a new fact sheet offered by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) uses to illustrate the rigor of Canada’s forest management policies, which are some of the toughest in the world.
The fact sheet is one in a new series that is designed to help the forest products industry promote itself and provide concise and consistent responses to misinformation. (For more on forestry myths see our July blog post The Greatest Threat to the boreal is Misinformation.)
This is an important tool because forestry myths are like wildfires, just when you think you’ve stamped one out, it can flare up again. For example, it might not be news to some readers that forestry operations are not the same as deforestation (in fact, 100% of harvested areas must be regenerated). But myths like this one persist because images of clear cuts are made synonymous with the notion of deforestation.
While the forest products industry continues to fight this misunderstanding, it certainly helps when we get a letter from the federal government like the one we received in July thanking Resolute and our President and CEO Richard Garneau personally for his leadership in sustainability and confirming the government’s firm resolve to dispel myths and “continue to approach customers of Canadian forest products and other stakeholders across the country, in the United States and in Europe to ensure that the facts about the Canadian forest products industry’s very strong environmental performance are understood.”
You can see for yourself in the letter.
