Algonquin Park Forest History

Algonquin Park is Ontario's oldest provincial park, and the last provincial park that still allows logging within it. If we trace the history of logging in Algonquin Park from its beginning, pine lumbering in what would later be the Park started around 1830 and peaked in the 1860's. When the Park was formed in 1893, the Parks Act prohibited logging of any species other than white and red pine. This reflected an economic reality, that the pine still standing in the park was very valuable, whereas other species would rarely even bring a return equal to the cost of getting them to market. Floating logs down rivers was still the main way of transporting wood, and hardwoods, unlike pine, wouldn't float long enough on rivers and lakes to get them to the mill. Instead they often became waterlogged and sank. In 1897, J.R. Booth financed a railroad between Ottawa and Parry Sound, along the north side of the park. In 1900, an amendment to the Parks Act added spruce, black birch (white birch), yellow birch, white cedar, black ash and tamarack, to the trees which could be logged from the park.

In 1913, under political pressure from J.R. Booth, an act was passed which allowed the possibility for any other species in the park to be logged. The first hardwood to be extensively logged in the park was yellow birch, which was cut primarily from the 1930's to the 1950's. From about 1945 to today logging of sugar maple has steadily increased, while a wide variety of other trees are still being cut.

Algonquin Park is probably most important for the abundance of very old hemlock and yellow birch forest within its boundaries, where trees often reach 200 to 400 years old. Old sugar maple is also common. However, a number of these old-growth forests are still not protected, and are being logged.

More than 50 years of modern Logging has eliminated much of the old-growth hardwood and hemlock forest in the managed forest part of Algonquin, however significant patches do still exist and are threatened with logging. Some are allocated within the current five-year management plan, others have recently been logged. These forests, some of which have been growing since the early 1600's, are irreplaceable. Trees that are 375 years old or more cannot be managed "sustainably" by modern forestry which typically works on rotation periods of 100 years or less.

Mapping Algonquin's old-growth forests

On December 8, 2006 the Ontario Parks Board produced the report Lightening the Ecological Footprint of Logging In Algonquin Provincial Park , which was subsequently released in May 2007 to the public. This report makes a series of recommendations, the most notable of which is to expand the protection zones to include 54% of the Park. This presents an historic opportunity to protect some of the remaining pristine and old-growth forests that are currently available for logging within the Recreation/Utilization Zone of the Park. To this end, we conducted a mapping analysis of old-growth forest in Algonquin Park, which shows that less than half of the old-growth forest in the Park is currently protected from logging. The Ontario Parks Board recommendations would increase this level of protection for old-growth forests to just over two thirds of the old growth remaining in the Park. In addition to leaving one third of the Park’s old-growth forest available for logging (roughly 34,000 ha, an area half the size of the city of Toronto), a number of large clusters of old-growth stands would be excluded from the recommended new protected zones. Click here for the full report.

Algonquin Park Old-Growth Forest Report Now Available

A report on old-growth forest in Algonquin Park is now online. Or read a press release about the report findings

The report finds that Algonquin Park is one of the last refuges of original hemlock, yellow birch, and sugar maple forests in Ontario, and likely contains thousands of hectares of old-growth forest that could potentially be lost to logging. About 40% of forests over 140 years old in Ontario’s Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Forest Region is located in Algonquin Park, while the Park occupies only 4% of the land in this region.

A number of researchers have discovered trees in Algonquin’s old-growth forests up to 430 years old using growth ring counts, and up to 610 years old using estimation techniques. Focusing on six of Algonquin Park’s old-growth landscapes, we counted rings of 21 old trees with a minimum age of 177 years, a maximum age of 433 years, and a mean age of 287 years. Within the recreation-utilization zone, where old-growth forests have no protection from logging we counted tree ages up to 304 years and estimated ages up to 375 years. Other researchers have found extremely old forests with trees as old as 387 years in the recreation-utilization zone of Algonquin Park. Hemlock trees to at least 240 years old have been harvested in the last few years north-east of Big Trout Lake, and a large block of old-growth forest near Erables Lake is allocated for logging in the current management plan.

And yet, these very old forests in Ontario’s first provincial park remain largely un-documented. Even more concerning is the continued logging of old-growth forests in Algonquin. To address the lack of adequate information and protection for old-growth forests in Algonquin Park, a detailed assessment of old-growth forests throughout the entirety of the Park should be carried out using digital forest resource inventory data and field inventories. As called for by many well-known ecological scientists and conservation organizations, all old-growth forests in Algonquin’s recreation-utilization zone should be protected from logging, including the Erables Lake Forest. Old-growth stands that have been selectively logged but retain old-growth features should either be protected from logging or managed to restore or maintain representative size-class distributions, vertical structure, logs, and snags that are typical of Algonquin’s old-growth forests. And finally, a province-wide conservation strategy for hemlock forests and yellow birch forests should be developed.