Hemlock Decline, Reserve Selection, and Conserving Canada's Largest Remaining Old-Growth Eastern Hemlock Stand at Trent Lakes, Ontario

If current logging trends continue, eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis)–dominated forests in Ontario will be depleted by ∼2075. Possibly the most valuable remnant stand of old-growth eastern hemlock forest in Canada, the Catchacoma Forest, remains unprotected despite efforts to protect this stand since 2019. A government analysis found that the Forest was a common, fully represented landscape element that does not require protected status. This decision was based on a methodology that initially filters potential reserves by focusing exclusively on representation of the combinations of forest vegetation with surficial geological composition ignoring many other significant potential reserve selection attributes including forest stand age, ecological integrity, and species-at-risk. Consideration of these and other common attributes shows that the Catchacoma Forest is an exemplary old-growth forest candidate reserve. Protection of this forest would provide numerous ecological, cultural, educational, and scientific benefits to society at local to international scales since eastern hemlock forests are common throughout the temperate portions of eastern North America. From an economic perspective, the Catchacoma Forest is at least 10× more valuable if left unlogged. The current approach to natural heritage protection in Ontario is likely resulting in the loss of all types of old-growth forests throughout the ∼44 million ha of Ontario where the 2006 provincial gap analysis method is applied. Many policies and strategies that apply to the protection of biodiversity and forest carbon in Ontario provide a solid foundation to facilitate increased landscape protection. The most significant missing component required for nature protection implementation in Ontario is political will and associated action.