Environmental Reviews

A Review of the Intact Landscape Concept in the Canadian boreal forest: Its History, Value and Measurement

Journal: Environmental Reviews

Manuscript ID er-2018-0041.R1

Manuscript Type: Review

Date Submitted by the 23-Jul-2018 Author:

Complete List of Authors: Venier, Lisa A.; Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service Walton, Russ; Consultant Thompson, Ian D.; Consultant Arsenault, André; Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service Titus, Brian D.; Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service

intact forest landscape, IFL, , boreal forest, forest Keyword: managementDraft

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A Review of the Intact Forest Landscape Concept in the Canadian boreal forest: Its

History, Value and Measurement

L.A Venier, R. Walton, I.D. Thompson, A. Arsenault and B.D. Titus

L.A. Venier. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, 1219 Queen St. East,

Sault Ste. Marie, ON. P6A 2E5. Canada.

R. Walton. Consultant, 3160 Bank Road, Kamloops, BC. V2B 6Z5. Canada.

I.D. Thompson. Thompson Forest Consultants, West Kelowna, BC. Canada. Draft A. Arsenault. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, 26 University Dr.,

Corner Brook, NL. A2H 6J3. Canada.

B.D. Titus. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Pacific Forestry Centre, 506

West Burnside Road, Victoria, BC. V8Z 1M5. Canada.

Corresponding author:

Lisa Venier, Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, 1219 Queen St. East, Sault

Ste. Marie, ON. P6A 2E5. Canada. Telephone: (705) 541-5605. Fax number: (705) 541-

5700. E-mail: [email protected].

Word count: 10,757

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Abstract

Loss of global forest, and in particular forest that has little human disturbance, is a standard against which we measure progress to conserve Earth’s . The value of intact forest landscapes has taken hold in the global psyche. We provide a brief history of the intact forest landscape concept and discuss how this has moved to an operational definition used as a global and regional metric of forest conservation. We distinguish between a conceptual intact forest landscape and an operational definition. For the purposes of this paper we will use the term IFL to mean the operational definition and ‘intact forest landscapes’ to mean the conceptual idea. We provide an overview of the science that supports the value of intact forest landscapes in a Canadian boreal context and analyse issues with using a standard operationalized IFL definition to both Draftmeasure and promote conservation of forests at global and regional scales. We found many arguments for protecting large, intact forest landscapes that are relevant to the Canadian boreal forest, including conservation of biodiversity, ecological processes and services, existence values, application of the precautionary principle and the need for scientific benchmarks. But it is clear that the standard operational IFL size threshold of 50,000 ha in the boreal forest is inadequate to meet these broad conservation objectives. However, the concept of intact forest being large enough to allow for all natural processes and biodiversity is likely not logistically feasible in

Canada’s managed boreal forest. The scale at which the most extensive processes (e.g., fire and insects) occur and (e.g., caribou) function is likely too large.

Management options incorporating local knowledge of conservation needs and the specifics of ecosystem function and composition are more likely to be effective in conservation than rigid IFL requirements. A standardized approach is useful for global tracking of IFLs but it is not the best approach to meet more regional forest conservation goals. Intact forest landscapes have exceptional value but should be managed in the context of integrated land

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use planning that includes protected areas, sustainable forest management, species at risk

management, and ecosystem restoration.

Key words: intact forest landscape, IFL, biodiversity, boreal forest, forest management,

landscape planning.

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1. Introduction

Forests provide a range of critical ecosystem services. They protect soils, maintain hydrological cycles (Miura et al. 2015), and provide for a vast array of biodiversity

(Venier et al. 2014). Forests also store large amounts of terrestrial carbon (Pan et al. 2011), moderate regional climate (Thompson et al. 2009), and provide economic, cultural and aesthetic values. Forests totalled almost 4 billion ha in 2015, covering 31 % of the global land area (FAO 2016). Global forests, however, are being transformed by human activity at an unprecedented rate (FAO 2016). From 2010 to 2015 there was a net annual decrease in total forest of about 3.3 million ha per year, with the largest area lost in the tropics (FAO 2016).

Ninety-three percent (3.7 billion ha) of the world’s forest is naturally regenerated (i.e., not planted), but only about 33 % (1.3 billionDraft ha) of global forests can be considered primary forests that have experienced little or no anthropogenic disturbance (FAO 2016). Since 1990,

31 million ha of primary forest have been reported as lost (FAO 2016). As the country with the second largest area of primary forest, Canada contained over 16 % of the world’s primary forest in 2015, primarily in the boreal zone (Morales-Hidalgo et al. 2015).

Forests provide habitat for 80 % of terrestrial biodiversity (FAO 2011). However, it is generally believed that forests altered by anthropogenic disturbances are less effective at preserving ecosystem services and biodiversity when compared with “undisturbed” forests

(Ducatez and Shine 2017; Gibson et al. 2011; Watson et al. 2016). For this reason, forests considered more “natural” or “undisturbed” are valued for conservation protection (e.g.,

Hunter Jr 1990; Norton 1999; Watson et al. 2018). Terminology around how we classify forest condition is diverse and confusing. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the

United Nations (FAO) defines natural forest as naturally regenerated regardless of the nature of the initial disturbance, and primary forest as the subset of natural forest that has been subjected to little or no human disturbance. Specifically, primary forest is defined as

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“naturally regenerated forest of native species, where there are no clearly visible indications

of human activities and the ecological processes are not significantly disturbed” (FAO 2012).

Further explanatory notes indicate that primary forests should be large enough to maintain

natural characteristics, they should display natural dynamics (age structure, tree species

composition, regeneration processes and dead wood), and that there should be no evidence of

“significant human intervention” unless it happened long enough ago for the forest to have

returned to its previous state (FAO 2012). The FAO definition of primary forest is

considered the global standard for many non-governmental organizations (NGOs), research

agencies and some forest certification organizations. Although size thresholds are not

specified, the primary forest definition introduces the concept of a minimum forest size for

maintaining ecosystem functionality. This is partly driven by concerns about fragmentation

and edge effects on the integrity of coreDraft forest areas (Laurance et al. 2011). Primary forests

must be large enough for all natural ecosystem processes to function and all natural

biodiversity to be represented, especially large-bodied mammals (Potapov et al. 2008).

‘Intact forest landscape’ is a common term used to gain traction for conservation in

forest management and forest certification processes and to draw attention to the problem of

excessive and unplanned in tropical forests. The definition of intact forest landscape

is similar to the primary forest concept but it recognizes the heterogeneity of landscapes by

incorporating both forest and non-forest elements, while emphasizing a spatial context

(Potapov et al. 2017). In this paper, we distinguish between a conceptual intact forest

landscape and an operational definition. For the purposes of this paper we will use the term

IFL to mean the operational definition and ‘intact forest landscapes’ to mean the conceptual

idea. Conceptually, intact forest landscapes are defined by Potapov et al. (2008, 2017) as “a

seamless mosaic of forests and associated natural treeless that exhibit no remotely

detected signs of human activity or and are large enough to maintain all

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6 native biological diversity, including viable populations of wide-ranging species.”

Environmental NGOs introduced the IFL definition as a way to measure changes in the extent of large undeveloped forests at regional and global scales and to use this information to affect forest conservation policy. In an effort to monitor and track forest condition, eNGOs, such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Global Forest Watch, need to translate the conceptual definition into a specific operational definition. In January 2017, the FSC made consideration of IFLs a requirement for forest certification (FSC Canada 2017). This decision was controversial (Rotherham 2016) and also required that the broad conceptual intact forest landscape definition be translated into a specific, operational definition applicable globally.

Our goal for this paper is to inform sound and effective policy development and general understanding around conservationDraft of large tracts of Canadian boreal forest that are undisturbed by humans. We make a case for why consideration of intact forest should be specific to the ecosystem in question, and to the social and economic context. We focus on the application of the IFL concept in boreal forests of Canada that are driven primarily by large-scale disturbances including fires and insect outbreak in their natural condition (Brandt et al. 2013). They are also subject to extensive human disturbance, largely extensive forestry, but also to oil and gas development, and hydroelectric development (Brandt et al.

2013). Our first objective is to provide a brief overview of the history of measuring intact forests both globally and regionally to set the context. Our second objective is to evaluate the science that supports, or fails to support, the need for conservation of intact forests, with emphasis on the Canadian boreal. Our third objective is to synthesize issues with using operational IFLs as a mechanism for measuring and preserving large landscapes. Although there are also many social, cultural and economic issues pertinent to intact forests, our synthesis is primarily restricted to an ecological perspective with a few minor exceptions.

1.1. A brief history of measuring forests that are relatively undisturbed by humans

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As a means of measuring the state of intact forests in the world today, several

organizations have attempted to measure and map global and regional areas without signs of

human disturbance. One of the first attempts at mapping areas of low human disturbance at a

global scale was by the Sierra Club (McCloskey and Spalding 1989). They mapped

, defined as “undeveloped land still primarily shaped by the forces of nature” and

set an arbitrary minimum size threshold for a block of wilderness at 4,000 km2. Forest and

non-forest ecosystems were included. Any human development, including roads and

settlements, disqualified a potential area as wilderness. In 1997, the World Resources

Institute (WRI), an eNGO, published the first global map showing large areas of forested

wilderness (Bryant et al. 1997) using McCloskey and Spalding’s (1989) map as a starting

point for identifying forests unaltered by industrial processes. Combining forest cover maps

and expert opinion, Bryant et al. (1997)Draft made further modifications to create a map of what

they called the world’s last “frontier forests.”

Bryant et al. (1997) defined frontier forests as “large intact natural forest ecosystems.

These forests are -- on the whole -- relatively undisturbed and big enough to maintain all of

their biodiversity, including viable populations of the wide-ranging species associated with

each forest type,” closely matching the conceptual definition of IFLs. No minimum size

threshold was specified, although frontier forest blocks were larger than 50,000 ha (Potapov

et al. 2008). Further criteria required frontier forests to be primarily forested, dominated by

native tree species, relatively unmanaged by humans, and large enough for natural

disturbances to shape forest structure and composition and to provide habitat to animal and

plant species native to the forest type (Bryant et al. 1997). Bryant et al. (1997) calculated that

just one fifth of the world’s original forest cover remained as frontier forests, with almost 70

% of all frontier forests located in Russia, Canada and Brazil.

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The development of more accessible opened up new opportunities for mapping undisturbed forest. In 2001, Russia and Global Forest Watch (a partnership of organizations convened by WRI) replaced the frontier forest definition with a more detailed operational IFL definition and produced the first IFL map using satellite imagery, a map of Northern European Russia (Yaroshenko et al. 2001). The IFL definition built on the ecological principles of frontier forests but provided more specific, transparent and replicable rules for mapping. Global Forest Watch Canada created the first IFL map for

Canada using slightly modified rules from the Russian version (Lee et al. 2003). The first global map using higher resolution satellite imagery (circa 2000) was produced in 2006

(Potapov et al. 2008) and later updated with 2013 imagery (Potapov et al. 2017). All of these studies set an arbitrary minimum size threshold of 50,000 ha (500 km2) for an IFL. Draft Global IFL mapping has been primarily done by the IFL Mapping Team, an organization of researchers and eNGOs including Greenpeace, Global Forest Watch,

Transparent World, the University of Maryland and WWF Russia. Key to the global mapping approach is the use of a consistent methodology to identify and monitor IFLs to enable comparisons across geographic areas and time. Essentially, mapping IFLs works through a process where forested areas are mapped as an initial base and areas influenced by anthropogenic disturbance are removed from this base according to a set of size and configuration criteria (Potapov et al. 2017). Regional mapping organizations, like Global

Forest Watch Canada (GFWC), use similar methods but may alter global criteria to make

IFLs more relevant regionally. For example, GFWC treats all stand-replacing fires in Canada as natural disturbances, regardless of their cause, whereas GFW classifies any fires in the vicinity of human development as human-caused (Potapov et al. 2017). This discrepancy results in more burned area being excluded from IFLs in the GFW version. This difference reflects differences between Russia, where fires are more often human-caused and where IFL

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criteria were first developed, and Canada, where lightning-origin fires play a larger role (Lee

2009). Regional approaches are complementary to global IFL mapping (Potapov et al. 2017;

Smith and Cheng 2016) and in many cases are more relevant to national conservation issues.

Examples of other countries with regional IFL projects include Indonesia (Margono et al.

2012), the Democratic Republic of Congo (Zhuravleva et al. 2013) and India (Reddy et al.

2016).

A parallel program is conducted by the FAO that, in 1948, began publishing Global

Forest Resources Assessments every 5-10 years. In 2000, the FAO tracked the area of

“natural forest undisturbed by humans” (available from

http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/Y1997E/y1997e1m.htm [accessed 21 March 2018]). In 2005, the term “primary forest” was adopted.Draft Since 2005, FAO has reported on the global area of primary forest but the use of primary forest as a metric of forest conservation is complicated

by the need to convert the FAO definition to an operational definition (Bernier et al. 2016).

Individual countries have been left to generate their own operational definitions which has

led to inconsistency (Morales-Hidalgo et al. 2015). No minimum area requirement is

specified for a forest to be considered primary, recognizing the potential ecological value of

smaller forested areas in non-forest landscapes. Seven countries, topped by Russia, Canada

and Brazil, contributed 76 % of all global primary forest in the 2015 report (Morales-Hidalgo

et al. 2015). Given the concentration of primary forests in a relatively small number of

countries, however, variation in how these countries measure primary forest can have a

significant and potentially misleading impact on global reporting.

The development and tracking of all of these forest concepts represents a general

understanding that forests and forested landscapes with little human disturbance and intact

natural processes have a higher and potentially unmatchable conservation value for

biodiversity and ecosystem services than forested landscapes with some disturbance. The

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10 degree of disturbance is, however, important. Major disturbances such as conversion of forest to agriculture or plantations in the tropics have been demonstrated to result in significant changes in biodiversity (Gibson et al. 2011). In the Canadian boreal, the effects of forestry with regeneration compared to primary forests are more difficult to demonstrate (Venier et al.

2014). There have been no comprehensive science reviews that can support or refute the unique ecological value of large intact forest landscapes relative to all other forested landscapes in the Canadian boreal context (but see Watson et al. (2018) for a global perspective), but below we provide an overview.

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2. What is the value of large forest landscapes with minimal human disturbance?

The underlying premise of the primary forest and intact forest concept is that if a

landscape is large enough and has had little human disturbance, then natural processes will

govern, the suite of species adapted to those processes will be viable and important

ecosystem services will be maintained. This latter premise is acknowledged by the current

forest management approach in Canada that attempts to emulate natural disturbances. This

approach assumes that harvesting practices that more closely mimic the effects of natural

disturbances so far as possible, at both stand and landscape scales, will have smaller negative

effects than if wood supply is the only management objective.

There are at least six suggested values of intact forest landscapes including: conservation of biodiversity, ecologicalDraft processes, ecosystem services, as application of the precautionary principle, as benchmarks of desired conditions, and for their existence value.

We provide a brief review of these concepts below for the Canadian boreal forest.

2.1. Biodiversity conservation

One of the primary drivers for conservation of intact forest is the conservation of

biodiversity. Fire, insects and diseases are the dominant natural disturbances of the Canadian

boreal forest (Brandt et al. 2013). Boreal species that have evolved with these natural

disturbance regimes of high spatiotemporal variability should be less vulnerable to

disturbances compared to many tropical species, affected by smaller spatial scale

disturbances. Human disturbances differ in fundamental ways from natural disturbances

(McRae et al. 2001), however, resulting in cumulative impacts on biodiversity (e.g., Sorensen

et al. 2008). It has been clearly demonstrated in previous reviews that human disturbance in

the boreal in the form of natural resource extraction has had some negative effects on

biodiversity, both terrestrial (Venier et al. 2014) and aquatic (Kreutzweiser et al. 2013;

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Venier et al. 2014). However forestry, the most extensive human disturbance in boreal

Canada, has only been demonstrated to cause significant impacts on boreal-wide wildlife at population levels in a few key wide-ranging species (Venier et al. 2014), such as boreal woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou), wolverine (Gulo gulo) and grizzly bears

(Ursus arctos). Wide-ranging species that need undisturbed appear to be the most significantly affected by current human disturbances in the boreal.

Other species groups such as birds, small mammals, arthropods, fungi and understory plants have been shown to be affected by natural resource extraction at local scales but not at boreal-wide scales (Venier et al. 2014). This is not to say that some species groups such as forest birds are not showing declines in some populations (e.g., Canada warbler (Wilsonia canadensis), Rusty blackbird (EuphagusDraft carolinus)), but few declines have been directly tied to human disturbance in boreal forests as the primary cause (e.g., Blancher et al. 2009). It is extremely important to note that in many cases the data are lacking to fully examine the role of human disturbances in the boreal on population changes of wildlife, although it seems obvious that local scale effects will result in significant population-level effects if human disturbance is sufficiently extensive. A review of the effects of natural resource development on aquatic biodiversity in the boreal suggests that there are a number of risks at local and regional scales but points to a similar lack of long-term data and published studies to demonstrate boreal-wide impacts (Kreutzweiser et al. 2013).

Long-term impacts are, however, expected due to four fundamental and demonstrated changes in the boreal forest that are ongoing due to human disturbances (Venier et al. 2014).

The first change is forest conversion, where forest types are converted from one type to another due to differences between human and natural disturbance and the influence of these differences on succession (Drapeau et al. 2000; Venier et al. 2014). The second change is the potential truncation of the age-class distribution resulting from the selective nature of forest

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harvesting, where mature stands with the largest trees are preferentially harvested (Drapeau et

al. 2000). This truncation is exacerbated by the combined rate of natural and human

disturbances exceeding natural disturbance rates (Bergeron et al. 2017; Cyr et al. 2009). The

third change is the alteration in stand structures associated with stand-level differences

between natural and human disturbance, especially a decrease in standing and downed dead

wood associated with human disturbance (Brassard and Chen 2008). Lastly, the spatial

structure of forest landscapes has changed over broad scales as a result of the accumulation of

human disturbances (Schneider et al. 2003).

Fragmentation and loss of intact forest has resulted from forest harvest, road building,

oil and gas exploration and development, utility corridors, mining and other infrastructure. Roads fragment habitat for some speciesDraft (Dyer et al. 2002), increase wildlife mortality (directly through collisions with vehicles and indirectly through increased hunting and

predation pressure) (Frair et al. 2008), enable access to invasive species (Sanderson et al.

2012), and can act as barriers on the landscape for sensitive species or for species with short

dispersal distances (Dyer et al. 2002). In the boreal forest, new road networks associated with

resource development allow hunters and poachers increased access to previously remote

areas (Festa-Bianchet et al. 2011). For species like boreal caribou with declining populations,

access can pose a serious threat (Environment Canada 2012). Increased predation by wolves

on caribou is also facilitated by easier access along linear features including seismic lines,

pipeline rights-of-way, hydro transmission lines and roads (Courbin et al. 2014; Hervieux et

al. 2013), and these features also encourage more use by snowmobiles and off-road vehicles.

Roads can act as barriers to caribou movement; in one study, female caribou avoided

crossing roads with moderate vehicle traffic, especially in late winter, although seismic lines

did not appear to have the same effect (Dyer et al. 2002).

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All four of these forest changes have been shown to result in significant responses of biodiversity, mostly at stand and landscape scales, but we lack sufficient data to scale these effects up to population level implications for most species, except for some wide-ranging species (Venier et al. 2014). Significant population declines in caribou, for example, have been attributed to habitat loss and increased predation resulting from human disturbance, especially forest management. Woodland caribou (boreal ecotype) require large tracts of old forest habitat and appear to be especially sensitive to anthropogenic disturbance

(Environment Canada 2012). Between 2000 and 2013, IFLs within boreal woodland caribou ranges were degraded by 43 % and 68 %, respectively, in British Columbia and Alberta, and by 7 % and 5 % in Quebec and Ontario (Smith and Cheng 2016). In Alberta, it is estimated that caribou populations are decreasing by 50 % every eight years as a result of development

(Hervieux et al. 2013). Draft

To maintain viable populations of caribou, intact forest reserves would need to be much larger than the current suggested size threshold from Potapov et al. (2008) of 50,000 ha. At a minimum, caribou require ranges of several thousand square kilometres to provide sufficient habitat (Environment Canada 2012) and, with increases in the frequency and extent of fires expected with climate change, intact forest landscapes should be even larger than this to be effective at sustaining natural processes. Aside from social and political concerns, creating intact landscapes of this size would be limited by rigid IFL criteria. For example, once an area has been industrially harvested, it cannot be considered as part of an IFL in the future, meaning that 25 year old cutblocks on the present-day landscape that could contribute to grizzly bear habitat at present or that could regenerate into caribou habitat in a few decades would be forever excluded. This could result in poor decision making in large-scale land use planning.

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Grizzly bear and wolverine are other wide-ranging species that have seen population

declines across their boreal forest ranges due to anthropogenic impacts (Venier et al. 2014).

Both of these species require large areas, although not entirely unmanaged forest ecosystems,

extending throughout their ranges. Individual wolverines, for example, occupy ranges of up

to several hundred square kilometres that include areas with managed montane forests (Krebs

et al. 2007), and in Ontario Dawson et al. (2010) reported boreal ranges of >2000 km2 for

male wolverines.

Protecting intact landscapes is likely only part of an effective strategy for biodiversity

conservation. Andrew et al. (2014) argued that protected areas alone will not be enough to

ensure conservation objectives are met because of the large areal needs of wide-ranging species and shifting conditions causedDraft by natural disturbance regimes and climate change. Instead, land-use planning that combines protected reserves with sustainable management

areas will likely be more effective than protection alone in the boreal forest (Andrew et al.

2014; Angelstam et al. 2004). Wide-ranging species are also likely to need comprehensive

management plans that encompass the managed forest landscape habitat (Environment

Canada 2012), in conjunction with protected areas that include some IFLs.

2.2. Ecological processes

Ecological processes operate at a range of scales and many small- to mid-scale

processes such as some nutrient cycling and decomposition can function without the

preservation of large intact forests. However, some large-scale processes such as wildfire,

insect outbreaks and hydrological flows can be altered by landscape and regional scale

human disturbances, including management. For example, hydro development has large

impacts on hydrology (Webster et al. 2015), forest harvesting can alter fuel availability for

fires (Bergeron et al. 2006), and Bt spraying can reduce tree mortality by spruce budworm

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(Hennigar et al. 2013). Intact forests provide an opportunity for large-scale processes to

produce natural landscapes. However, in practice, the areas of protected intact forests are

unlikely to be large enough to allow natural ecosystem processes, like fire in the boreal

forest, to reign freely while at the same time providing alternative, unburned areas for wide-

ranging mammals or species that require older forest habitat. An integrated land use planning

approach will likely be necessary to meet all of the ecological needs. The emphasis on

preservation of very large undeveloped landscapes does, however, have the potential to

protect water and soil resources at a multi-watershed scale and to provide space for predator-

prey interactions, such as wolf-ungulate relationships.

2.3. Ecosystem services: carbon and water

Canada’s managed boreal forestDraft stores 28 Pg carbon in biomass, dead organic matter and soil pools (Kurz et al. 2013). A recent synthesis on carbon in Canada’s boreal forest

suggests that a large fraction (57%) of the carbon harvested since 1990 remains stored in

wood products and solid waste disposal sites, contributing to net increases in product and

landfill carbon pools. It is estimated that, since 1990, Canada’s managed boreal forest has

acted as a carbon sink of 28 Tg C year -1 (Kurz et al. 2013). The carbon balance picture is less clear in the unmanaged boreal forest due to the scarcity of reliable data (Kurz et al. 2013).

The perspective of boreal forests acting solely as a static carbon sink is no longer acceptable due to the dynamics of natural disturbances that continually renew forests (Amiro et al.

2001). Although it has been speculated that the Canadian boreal forest may have become a recent carbon source because of wildfire and insect outbreaks in the 1970’s and 1980’s (Kurz and Apps 1999), this assertion is extremely tentative and could easily go in the opposite direction (Kurz et al. 2013). There is some debate in Canada about whether increases in fire frequency are lightning-caused or human-caused because of increased access associated with human disturbance, as has been shown in Russia (Bradshaw et al. 2009; Mollicone et al.

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2006). In Canada, recent work suggests that increases in area burned are the result of

lightning-caused fires in areas of very low population density where fire suppression is least

effective (Veraverbeke et al. 2017). Since there is much uncertainty about whether boreal

forest in Canada is a carbon source or sink, and how this has varied through time, carbon

storage may not be a strong argument for or against the preservation of intact boreal forests.

However, given that many ecological processes are involved with carbon storage and are not

completely understood, a precautionary approach ensuring that large areas are left

unmanaged may provide some insurance that processes associated with carbon stocks

dynamics are also maintained. Preserving unmanaged areas of boreal forest also provides an

opportunity to conduct research to reduce uncertainty around this question. Further, carbon

stock accounting has an ethical dimension: carbon stored in deadwood and in forest soils is

not ecologically equivalent to 2x4’s storedDraft in a dump.

Water resources are another significant impacted by human

disturbance in the Canadian boreal (Webster et al. 2015). Industries engaged in natural

resource development have made significant improvements over recent years in reducing

water usage, creating more natural flow regimes or reducing reservoir size, although

uncertainties remain about long-term recovery from previous human disturbances and the

potential impact of aging infrastructure (Webster et al. 2015). These concerns would be

reduced by protecting intact forests, although these forests are not completely isolated from

anthropogenic effects on waterways outside of their boundaries.

2.4. The precautionary principle and benchmarks

A common theme in a recent series of boreal forest science syntheses suggested that

we do not have enough knowledge to fully evaluate the impact human disturbances are

having on the boreal ecosystem (Kreutzweiser et al. 2013; Kurz et al. 2013; Price et al. 2013;

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Venier et al. 2014; Webster et al. 2015). This issue brings together two important points. The first is the precautionary principle, which states that “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation” (United United

Nations 1992). Canada’s environmental policy is guided by this principle as outlined in the

Federal Sustainable Development Strategy and Act (available from http://www.fsds- sfdd.ca/index.html#/en/goals/ [accessed 21 March 2018]). Based on the precautionary principle, conservation of some intact areas within the boreal forest large enough to maintain most natural ecosystems and their processes would be prudent. Second, to assess the ecological value of human disturbed forest and the effectiveness of forest and other natural resource development management, benchmarks are needed against which to measure our disturbed systems (Leopold 1941; NossDraft 1991). Intact forests provide these necessary benchmarks; however, benchmarks must be representative of the forest in question.

Currently, 8.1 % of the Canadian boreal zone is legislated as parks and protected areas

(Andrew et al. 2014). Andrew et al. (2012) estimated that 50-80 % of the boreal zone can still be classified as wilderness mostly due to its remoteness and the harshness of the climate.

These areas currently act as unofficial protected areas and they provide the “enviable potential” to proactively establish a more formal protected area network relatively cost- effectively (Andrew et al. 2012). However, much of this area is north of the managed boreal in Canada, has low productivity and is inaccessible. These northern forests have a distinct ecological character that differs from the more southern managed boreal (Venier et al. 2014).

For intact forests to act as benchmarks, all ecosystems need to be fully represented.

2.5. Existence value

Within an economic framework, one can define market versus non-market values for forests. Non-market values can further be subdivided into use versus non-use values. Non-use

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values include existence values and intrinsic values. Existence values reflect the idea that

something has value to people strictly because it exists. For example, knowing that large

forest landscapes exist, undisturbed by humans, enriches some peoples’ lives. Alternatively,

intrinsic values suggest that these wilderness landscapes have value for their own sake, not

because they provide a direct benefit to people (Noss 1991; Soulé 1985). Although difficult

to quantify, existence values have been examined using tools such as willingness to pay,

which allows the value to be examined in trade-offs with other values. Quantifying the

existence and intrinsic values of intact forests would provide important missing information

to support policy formulations, but this is a current gap in our valuation of these forests.

2.6. Summary of intact forest value

Data are generally scarce to demonstrateDraft unequivocally that intact forests are a necessary component for maintaining the ecological integrity of the boreal forest although

strong arguments have been made at the more global scale (Watson et al. 2018). However,

sufficient circumstantial ecological evidence suggests that conservation of intact forests is a

good strategy for long-term conservation of ecological integrity based on the benefit of intact

forests to biodiversity, ecological processes and ecosystem services, especially in the face of

the acknowledged uncertainty about the forest system. In particular, the uncertainty about the

current state of the forest and the need to better understand the requires

that we have intact forests as benchmarks to conduct research on development effects.

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3. Issues with using IFLs as a mechanism for measuring and preserving large landscapes

3.1. IFL size criteria

Primary forests and intact forests are both defined as areas where populations of all native species are viable and where natural ecosystem processes determine forest composition and forest age class structure. Conceptually, the size of an intact forest should be a function of the scale required by the largest ranging wildlife species in the ecosystem to persist and the nature and scale of natural ecosystem processes. Most IFL definitions focus more on the area needed for wide-ranging species rather than on the area required to maintain ecosystem processes (e.g., Potapov et al. 2017), although early Russian and Canadian mapping projects included the requirementDraft for IFLs to be large enough for natural processes to operate (Aksenov et al. 2002; Lee et al. 2003; Yaroshenko et al. 2001). The standard operational definition of an IFL, however, sets a minimum size threshold of 50,000 ha, which is arbitrary and disconnected from regional ecosystem processes (Bernier et al. 2016). In developing the earliest IFL standards in Russia, Aksenov et al. (2002) acknowledged that maintaining populations of large predators or ecosystem processes, like fire, could require

IFLs in the hundreds of thousands of hectares. They established the 50,000 ha minimum for the boreal forest based on recommendations from Russian environmental organizations on the area needed to sustain populations of most large and medium-sized predators. Clearly, this area is insufficient to maintain populations of some wide-ranging Russian species such as

Siberian Tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) where individuals have been known to move over

1000 km (Miquelle et al. 2011). The 50,000 ha limit was accepted as a practical threshold.

Potapov et al. (2008) adopted this size criteria for the first global mapping of IFLs, admitting that the criteria were a “pragmatic compromise” for keeping IFLs ecologically relevant but allowing for repeatable analyses to be done efficiently while reducing time and costs. Lee et

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al. (2003) also struggled with the size criteria when creating the first Canadian IFL map.

They recognized that the most ecologically relevant way to map IFLs was to consider each

ecoregion separately and to identify the “best remaining examples of relatively intact forest

landscapes rather than choosing a single size a priori that likely meets all criteria.” Lee et al.

(2003) considered the original Canadian IFL map to be a first step and used the IFL size

criteria developed in Russia “due to resource limitations.”

Since then, the 50,000 ha minimum size rule has become entrenched, although some

regional studies have used smaller areas for determining IFLs (Cheng et al. 2010; Reddy et

al. 2016). Standardised size rules makes global comparisons feasible and consistent but to be

ecologically relevant minimum IFL size should vary by climatic zone and forest type (Angelstam et al. 2004; Mackey et al. Draft2014), requirements of specific species in the region, and by natural disturbance regime (Arsenault 2015; Boulanger et al. 2013). Effective size

threshold values, however, depend upon an understanding of complex processes that may be

difficult to attain, especially under changing conditions like those caused by climate change.

As an example of the difficulties in incorporating some of this variation, Lee et al. (2003)

used two approaches from nature reserve design theory to estimate the minimum IFL size

required for northern Canadian forests based on wildfire sizes. In one approach, Lee et al.

(2003) multiplied the average boreal fire size by a factor of 50, and in the other they

multiplied the largest individual fire size by a factor of four, conservatively using 200,000 ha

as the value for the size of the largest boreal fire, while acknowledging that some boreal fires

have exceeded 1 million ha. Estimates varied widely (12,500 ha and 800,000 ha), with the

higher estimate being many times larger than the current IFL threshold. When Lee et al.

(2003) considered requirements for large vertebrates to retain viable populations (e.g., wolf-

caribou interactions) in a region with extensive natural disturbances, they estimated the

minimum IFL size would need to be at least several hundred thousand hectares. Based on the

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22 premise that larger patches have higher ecological value than smaller patches, Lee et al.

(2003) argued that it may be more practical for conservation purposes to focus on identifying the largest natural patches remaining in an ecoregion and on their configuration than it is to derive theoretical threshold sizes of questionable effectiveness. Reducing this complexity to one threshold value, however, seems too simplistic. At a minimum, developing slightly more sophisticated metrics to measure IFL seems worthwhile, such as tracking the total area in a suite of threshold IFL sizes rather than just a single size.

At the global scale, the 50,000 ha minimum size threshold for IFLs has value as a coarse-level assessment (Lee 2009; Mackey et al. 2014). When applied regionally, however, particularly in more disturbed landscapes where few IFLs remain, this arbitrary threshold discounts the conservation value of smallerDraft blocks of intact forest (Mackey et al. 2014). For example, few or no IFLs remain in regions with long histories of intensive economic development. In 2000, only 7.2 % of global IFLs were found in temperate forests (Potapov et al. 2008). GFWC recognized this shortcoming early in the IFL mapping process and in 2006 and 2010 they mapped Canadian “IFL fragments” smaller than the 50,000 ha size limit (Lee

2009; Lee et al. 2006). GFWC mapped what they termed IFLs in Nova Scotia down to 500 ha, arguing that this size threshold was large enough to meet habitat needs of certain local mammals, including the American marten (Martes americana), an endangered species in

Nova Scotia (Cheng et al. 2010). Since Thompson and Harestad (1994) indicate that at least

20,000 ha is needed to support a viable marten population, this suggests that 500 ha was too small to be considered an effective IFL size for marten. Nevertheless, there are many species whose area requirements would be easily met by fragments smaller than 50,000 ha (Venier et al. 2014), which suggests that nationally we should pay attention to fragments for their ecological value even if we do not define them as IFLs. GFWC projects reveal a tension between the global IFL definition and regional applications. Given the general lack of

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supporting evidence offered for threshold values, IFL size criteria are arbitrary and

logistically convenient rather than scientifically based.

IFLs can include non-treed features, such as water bodies and rock outcrops, if they

fall within a forest. In 2000, for example, almost 18 % of global IFLs were comprised of

non-forested habitat such as alpine meadows, treeless wetlands and areas burned by human-

caused wildfires, with a smaller non-vegetated component of water, rock and ice (Potapov et

al. 2017). The recent GFWC assessment found that lakes, wetlands, alpine and subalpine

areas, and northern barren lands make up 18 % of IFLs in Canada (Smith and Cheng 2016).

IFL rules used in the GFWC assessment excluded very large lakes (> 400,000 ha) and lakes

that made up more than half of an IFL area, but these qualifiers do not exist in the global version. There do not appear to be anyDraft GFW standards specifying the minimum amount of forested area required in an IFL. Preliminary guidelines from FSC Canada propose that up to

50 % of an IFL can be composed of non-forested areas (FSC Canada 2017), but this has not

been formally established. Understanding that a 50,000 ha IFL does not necessarily contain

50,000 ha of forest is an important distinction when considering forest-specific values or

policies.

3.2. Variation in intensity of anthropogenic disturbances and regional differences

Anthropogenic disturbances in forests range in intensity from small partial

disturbances to large-scale clearcutting and the conversion of forest lands to non-forested

areas (). Recent forest clearcutting and deforestation, visible with satellite

imagery, are relatively simple to identify and map, but quantifying and mapping less visible

forest change caused by older logging, old roads and forest management is much more

complex (Sasaki and Putz 2009). Early practitioners of the IFL approach (Lee et al. 2003;

Potapov et al. 2008; Yaroshenko et al. 2001) recognized how this gradient of anthropogenic

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24 disturbances and impacts could vary regionally, but simplifying the disturbance criteria was necessary to map and quantify IFLs across large scales consistently. To achieve this, areas with “recent and intensive” anthropogenic disturbances (Potapov et al. 2008) such as transportation infrastructure, mining and logging, were excluded from IFLs. Natural disturbances were not excluded from IFLs, although GFW and GFWC differed on how stand- replacing fires were treated, with GFW classifying most fires as human-caused and therefore excluding them from IFLs, whereas the Canadian approach included all fires as natural disturbances, regardless of their origin (Lee 2009). Some anthropogenic disturbances, such as forest grazing, hunting, preindustrial selective logging and older signs of shifting cultivation, were not excluded from IFLs, nor were disturbances that occurred more than 30 to 70 years ago (Potapov et al. 2017). Allowing older and less-intensive anthropogenic disturbances to remain within IFLs acknowledges thatDraft human impacts may be present in even the remotest locations, but it also reflects the technical limitations of using satellite imagery to detect more subtle anthropogenic disturbances, particularly for activities like low-intensity selective logging or small-scale slash-and-burn agriculture (Potapov et al. 2008). It also acknowledges that intactness is, in fact, a gradient, such that subtle anthropogenic disturbances are unlikely to disrupt most ecosystem functions. Operationally, IFLs only exclude anthropogenic disturbances observable from satellite imagery (with the help of ancillary data sets), creating an inherent bias that can overestimate IFL area (Potapov et al. 2008).

The binary nature of the exclusion criteria has drawn criticism. Bernier et al. (2016) argued that ignoring the gradient of anthropogenic impacts is too simplistic and results in the devaluation of excluded forest areas that contribute similar ecological services. For example, the IFL process does not discriminate between complete deforestation and selective harvesting, even though selectively harvested forests can still be productive and supply habitat for a wide range of endemic fauna and flora. In the South American tropics, 65% of

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IFL loss between 2000 and 2013 was attributed to deforestation resulting from conversion to

agriculture (Potapov et al. 2017). Excluding area burned by fires, forestry accounted for 84%

of IFL loss in North America over the same time period (Potapov et al. 2017), but in the

boreal case, forestry is being practiced with sustainability in mind and the forest is

regenerating. Under the current IFL approach to assess national changes in forest condition,

both changes are treated as being the same even though deforestation is a much more

significant loss from an ecological perspective. Writing about frontier forests, Innes and Er

(2002) also point out that the resilience of different forest types needs to be considered: for

the same disturbance, some forest types recover to pre-disturbance conditions more quickly

than others. These are not really criticisms of the IFL approach per se but argue for a more

sophisticated national-level assessment of the loss of ecological value from our forests. The

IFL approach was designed to create aDraft practical and repeatable method for mapping large

intact blocks of primary forest across large scales. This binary classification provides a

practical way to measure the unique value of intactness at global scales, but it should not be

the only metric to evaluate the ecological value of existing forests. It is clear that current

forest management in many countries preserves at least some of the same ecological and

social values that are the target of conservation of intact forests.

Zones of influence around anthropogenic disturbances are excluded from potential

IFLs. Determining the size of this zone is complicated because the affected forest interior

area can vary by disturbance type and species of interest (Laurance et al. 2011; Laurance et

al. 2009). In practice, arbitrary values are used to capture the zone of anthropogenic

influence. For example, both GFW and GFWC designate a 1 km buffer around major roads

and highways but GFWC uses a 500 m buffer for most other features, including cutblocks not

buffered using the global approach (Smith and Cheng 2016). GFW also buffers navigable

waterways by 1 km but these constraints are not applied by GFWC (Smith and Cheng 2016).

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Lee et al. (2006) acknowledged that the zone of influence can vary depending on ecosystem type and on the ecological value of concern, but they argue that building that level of detail into a large scale project, even if such data were available, would be onerous and not necessarily useful. Standardized buffer width offers a practical approach to estimating anthropogenic influence. Buffering linear features, such as roads, offers the additional benefit that anthropogenic disturbances that are difficult to detect on satellite imagery, such as selective logging, are more likely to be captured by buffer zones adjacent to roads (Potapov et al. 2008). At global scales, the IFL buffer criteria should be regarded as logistically- convenient estimates of the zone of influence rather than as rigorously derived scientific values. For the metric to be most useful for land-use planning at national and regional scales, however, a more rigorously defined buffer approach would be more appropriate based on species of concern and the nature of theDraft disturbance.

3.3. Forest Stewardship Council certification

In 2014, FSC approved Policy Motion 65 to strengthen protection of IFLs within their forestry standards. Inclusion of IFLs was largely the result of pressure from Greenpeace and other organizations about the apparent lack of protection for IFLs in FSC-certified forests

(Greenpeace 2014). This was a controversial decision, drawing criticism from those who thought FSC went too far, overstepping its role and dictating forest land use policy to governments (Rotherham 2016). While the process of incorporating IFLs into FSC standards is still ongoing, preliminary directives came into effect on January 1, 2017 in the form of an

Advice Note instructing that forest management cannot reduce an IFL below 50,000 ha or impact more than 20 % of IFLs within a forest management unit. The Advice Note also indicates that either Global Forest Watch maps or “…a more recent IFL inventory using the same methodology, such as Global Forest Watch Canada” should be used to identify existing

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IFLs as a baseline. Rules in the Advice Note are temporary and will be replaced as national

FSC organizations develop their own standards.

Application of FSC criteria to the scale at which forest management decisions are

made is challenging and highlights the difficulty in translating the global-scale conceptual

idea of IFLs to a practical operational definition at a regional scale. It will be difficult for

FSC-certified forest operators to protect IFLs that cross management unit boundaries with

other forest managers, government agencies and other groups over which FSC has no

jurisdiction. Even when IFLs are fully contained within their own management unit

boundaries, forest operators do not have the authority to prevent resource extraction or the

creation of roads from other industries or government. The Advice Note instructs that either GFW or GFWC maps can be used to identifyDraft IFLs but, due to different methodologies, the most recent versions of these maps in Canada differ in IFL area by 1.4 million ha, with the

GFWC map containing 32 % more area in IFLs (Smith and Cheng 2016). And debate

continues on which definitions and criteria will be applied. IFL certification criteria has the

potential to significantly impact wood supply for many forest companies and may prove to be

too stringent for compliance in today’s markets.

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4. Conclusion

Overall, many of the arguments for protecting large, intact forest landscapes without significant human disturbances are relevant to the Canadian boreal forest, including conservation of biodiversity, ecological processes, ecosystem services, existence values, the application of the precautionary principle and the need for scientific benchmarks. Forest land conservation in Canada combines the idea of protected areas (Andrew et al. 2014) with sustainable forest management and specific protections for species at risk (Angelstam et al.

2004). Development of any intact forest protection policy should be done within an integrated land use planning framework that includes all of these elements. Clearly, the standard operational IFL size threshold of 50,000 ha in the boreal forest is inadequate to meet the very broad objectives of protecting all biodiversityDraft and ecological processes. On the other hand, the concept of intact forest being large enough to allow for all natural processes and all natural biodiversity including wide-ranging species is likely not logistically feasible in

Canada’s managed boreal forest given the scale at which the most extensive processes (e.g., fire and insects) occur and species (e.g., woodland caribou) function. Other management options that incorporate local knowledge of conservation needs and the specifics of ecosystem functioning and composition are more likely to be effective in the conservation of boreal forest integrity, rather than a rigid IFL requirement that uses arbitrary and inflexible criteria. For example, if caribou is a primary conservation concern, as it is in some boreal forest areas, then spatially explicit caribou habitat analysis would be an effective tool to address the concern. A standardized approach is useful for global tracking of IFLs but, as noted by many, it is not the best approach to meet more regional forest conservation goals. In addition, IFL tracking should not be viewed as the only measure of ecological value of forested landscapes where there is a clear gradient of disturbance intensity and ecosystem resilience as a function of the ecological, social, and economic context. At a minimum, we

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need to make a distinction between managing forest for human use and deforestation but

could also recognize forests managed with sustainability in mind. The IFL global metric

could also be improved by including a range of threshold sizes to acknowledge the value of

what have been termed ‘IFL fragments,’ as well as an accounting of the additional ecological

value of areas larger than 50,000 ha that may yet be protected through legislation. A gradient

of threshold sizes acknowledges that intactness can be context specific and depends to some

degree on the taxa or ecological processes in question. The current application of IFL through

Forest Stewardship Council certification seems misplaced as it applies global IFL criteria to

regional issues, places problematic constraints on an existing provincial integrated land use

planning approaches, and does not reflect the scale and structure of current forest

management processes in Canada. It does highlight, however, the importance of Canada’s

large intact forest landscapes and a needDraft for policy to address their loss.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Werner Kurz, Chelene Hanes and Roxanne Comeau (Natural Resources Canada) for their advice on aspects of the manuscript.

Draft

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