The temperate rainforest: Canada's clear-out secret.

• Author: Denniston, Derek
• Position: Canada's hypocritical environment policy

Last November, when Canada became the first industrialized nation to ratify the biodiversity treaty negotiated at the Earth Summit, its well-cultivated reputation for environmental leadership got a boost. As the world's leading exporter of forest products, Canada is sensitive to the political repercussions of cutting trees - and has promoted itself as a prudent steward of forests. British Columbia, which produces more than half of Canada's lumber and pulp, has been particularly aggressive, touting its "super, natural" beauty in $9 million worth of tourism marketing each year. In April, the federal Forestry Minister announced a $5 million publicity budget for burnishing the timber industry's image with European consumers, adding to the $1.2 million B.C. Premier Michael Harcourt spent last year.

But behind this polished veneer, British Columbia has been rapidly liquidating North America's largest and most productive temperate rain forest. With less than 40 percent still standing, foresters project that at current rates of logging, no ecologically viable stands of ancient rain forest will grow on British Columbian coasts 15 years from now. Cathedral groves of ancient Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, western hemlock, and red cedar are being razed at rates faster than the tropical deforestation in Indonesia and Brazil. With about 44 percent of the world's temperate rain forest already gone, the 23 million hectares (58 million acres) that remain are of incalculable biological value. (By comparison, the total area of tropical rain forest is about 610 million hectares.) The largest contiguous zone - the "Amazon Basin" of temperate rain forest - is found along a narrow coastal strip between Oregon's Siuslaw River and the Alaskan Peninsula. But in Oregon and Washington, no intact watersheds of more than 500 hectares remain unlogged. And while large stands survive in Chile and Alaska, the largest undeveloped areas in the warmer, more productive zone are found in British Columbia.

Temperate in forest thrives in the mid-latitudes where moist ocean air collides with coastal mountains, causing precipitation throughout the year in excess of 2,000 millimeters (80 inches) - about the average rainfall in the Amazon, and more than twice that of Europe. The ecosystem produces most of the planet's oldest and largest trees, not to mention its heaviest accumulations of organic matter, fastest, developing soil, and highest density of fens and bogs. The diversity of...