Note: Brazil has approved 5 GE eucalyptus trees modified to resist glyphosate.
This September 27, 2023 article by Jen Groundwater first appeared on the website of Watershed Sentinel.
Canada is one of the world’s biggest producers of softwood lumber and in 2022 exported approximately 22.16 billion lumber and other wood products. The article discusses how thousands of hectares of Canadian forests are spray yearly with glyphosate, a weed-killing agent that, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), is “probably carcinogenic to humans” . The spraying, often by helicopter, is done to kill off grasses, shrubs, and deciduous trees and creates “a tree-farm monoculture that’s less hospitable to wildlife, insects, fungi, and fish than a mixed-wood forest.”
The article goes in depth about how legislation protects the softwood lumber industry to the determinant of forest health, which is increasingly concerning as forest fires have been raging across the country.
The article can be read in its entirety on the Watershed Sentinel Website.