New Report Challenges Canada’s Forest Narrative

July 30, 2025

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• Boreal Forest
• Caribou
• Forests
• Rocky Mountain and Foothills Forests

 

The David Suzuki Foundation (DSF), in collaboration with other environmental organizations, released a new report: “Advertising or Accountability? A Critical Review of Canada’s State of the Forest Report”. This review directly challenges the overly optimistic tone and misleading claims of the federal government’s 2024 State of Canada’s Forests report.

The federal report avoids urgent issues threatening forest health and biodiversity. The DSF report calls out key omissions and misleading claims, including:

• The decline of woodland caribou due to continued industrial disturbance and habitat fragmentation.
• The loss of old-growth and primary forests, which are still being logged across the country with little meaningful protection.
• The lack of implementation of Indigenous rights, particularly the failure to include free, prior, and informed consent from Indigenous nations for development approvals.
• A troubling shift away from environmental regulation in provincial forest policies, undermining the federal narrative of sustainability and ecological stewardship.

The report also features work by AWA, CPAWS Northern Alberta, and the Alberta Chapter of the Wildlife Society, highlighting our joint report of Alberta’s Draft Upper Smoky Sub-Regional Plan. Our report warns that the proposed plan would allow continued clearcutting within the winter range of two southern mountain caribou populations. The first few years of proposed harvesting would strip away critical winter habitat, rendering it unusable and pushing these already vulnerable populations closer to extirpation.

Read the full  report here:  “Advertising or Accountability? A Critical Review of Canada’s State of the Forest Report”