Protect the remaining primary forests

This morning’s walk to Meech Lake (all photos by Alexander Verbeek)

I love forests for their beauty, the peace and calm I feel when I walk on forest trails, and their role in preserving biodiversity and the climate. Today, I was reminded twice how diverse other people's attitudes toward natural forests may be.

First, according to a BBC Panorama investigation, I learned that a firm that has received six billion pounds in green energy subsidies from UK taxpayers is cutting down forests that are essential to the Canadian ecology. The reporters concluded that millions of tons of imported wood pellets, classified as renewable energy, are burned at Drax's largest power plant in Britain. However, part of the wood came from Canada's old-growth forests, which took thousands of years to develop.

Drax disputes this and says it only uses waste wood and sawdust. However, panorama employed drone footage, satellite image analysis, license tracking, and even tracked a vehicle transporting full logs from a protected woodland to substantiate their findings.