The satellite mapping analysis led by Peter Potapov, an associate professor of geographical sciences at the University of Maryland, showed that over 104 million hectares of the world's remaining intact forests — an area about the size of Ontario — were degraded between 2000 and 2013. Such forests are considered degraded when they are broken up or fragmented into smaller pieces that are no longer the same kind of ecosystem. Sizer called the amount of degradation a "shocking number."

Canada accounts for 21% of global degradation

"Canada is the country with the largest share of intact forest degradation in the world. It's No. 1 on the list," Sizer said.

https://www.globalforestwatch.org/blog/people/partner-post-f...

In Canada, logging is the single biggest driver. 60 percent of the degraded areas (129,487 km2) were inside of forest tenures allocated to companies for logging. Petroleum and natural gas development, including oil and gas facilities, pipelines, wells and seismic lines, was a distant but significant secondary driver, responsible for 6 percent (13,344 km2) of the reduction.

https://theconversation.com/the-future-is-uncertain-for-our-...

The issue at stake is not so much the loss of forests, but rather, the loss of intact forests, i.e. forests where no harvesting activities have ever taken place. ... Canada ranks third in the world for the rate of loss of its intact forests.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, much of Canada’s intact boreal landscape consisted of forests that had not burned for centuries. These are often referred to as “old growth” forests.

As far as the forester — whose main objective is to harvest wood — is concerned, allowing a forest to age amounts to a loss of wood. That’s because it is more efficient to cut forests early and frequently in order to take advantage of the strong growth of young trees. As a result, since the beginning of the industrial era, most harvesting of intact boreal forests has targeted old-growth forests with the objective of replacing them with younger forests. This drastically reduces the surface area and connectivity of old-growth forests. While they originally formed large continuous clumps, the old-growth forests that remain in managed areas now form small clusters separated from each other.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/sfu-old-grow...

Logging industry targeted B.C. old-growth forests for more than a century, SFU study finds

Ken Lertzman's paper shows between 1860 and 2016, 87 per cent of logging took place in old-growth forests

https://news.mongabay.com/2022/09/british-columbia-delays-pr...

In 2020, the NDP released optimistic estimates claiming that of BC’s 57.2 million hectares (221,000) square miles) of forest, some 23% (13.2 million hectares, or 51,000 square miles) of what was still standing was old growth.

Using that same data, Price, Daust and Holt distinguished vulnerable, tall old growth in rich ecosystems from stunted, sparse old growth on rocky, alpine mountainsides and forest bogs in unproductive ecosystems. Their findings were alarming: Less than 1% of big treed old growth remained in BC as of two years ago, or roughly 400,000 hectares (1,544 square miles) scattered in ecosystem fragments along the province’s coast and interior.