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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.

Canada is short billions of trees, but there is still time to build the forest of the future. Today’s deep dive takes a closer look at how we got here and how to get out of it.

Now, let’s catch you up on other news.

1. Weather: Environment Canada disbands radar research team amid cuts to weather services
2. Heat: Vancouver cuts cooling kits as B.C. faces more record-breaking summer temperatures
3. Emissions: Ottawa, Alberta agree on carbon pricing to advance plan for new oil pipeline
4. Energy: Ottawa begins consultations on strategy to double Canada’s grid capacity by 2050
5. Fisheries: PEI fisheries brace for hardship as two diseases devastate the province’s oyster industry
6. Arts: Cameron Fraser-Monroe explores Indigenous controlled burns with Ballet Kelowna

For this week’s deeper dive, a closer look at the fight for our forests, sustainable ecosystems, and the question of how to stop losing trees.

Canada is losing trees far faster than nature can grow them or humans can plant them. And even worse: We’re not planting enough seedlings to make the slightest dent in our tree deficit.

We cut them down for development, clear-cut for timber and paper. Some trees have been destroyed by the mountain pine beetle, a tree-killer supercharged by warming temperatures. Then there are the fires. Canada lost 7.35 billion trees that will never grow back, according to a recent analysis by the Canadian Tree Nursery Association.

And moving forward, as temperatures continue to rise faster than trees can adapt, scientists are now worried that even the sun-loving jack pine, which grows back first after a fire, will suffer.

To stop losing trees, writes Erin Anderssen, Canadians will have to be far more ambitious.

Short-term profits have often been prioritized over long-term stewardship, says Valérie Courtois, a member of Quebec’s Pekuakamiulnuatsh First Nation, who now serves as the executive director of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative.

Her elevator pitch for saving Canada’s boreal forest: It’s the largest intact forest on the planet; it stores more carbon in its soil than any other terrestrial ecosystem; it holds back floods; it cools the world down.

And according to Amy Cardinal Christianson, the senior fire adviser with the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, the harm that comes with the overconsumption of nature was even greater because Indigenous expertise was cast aside.

Across the country, about 10,000 tree planters put 600 million seedlings in the ground each summer. But these are only trees that companies are obligated to plant after clear-cuts.

In 2023, Canada’s forestry industry contributed $27-billion to the GDP. So economists are studying how to make the money work to save forests: How do you value a tree that is alive versus as two-by-fours?

Ottawa is set to study how to factor nature’s true value into decision-making and generate more private investment in conservation. Last year, the feds cancelled the 10-year 2 Billion Trees Program. This year, the government announced a new conservation strategy that promised to designate 2.9 million new hectares of federally protected land by 2031.

Sustaining our existing forests and creating climate-resistant new ones, scientists say, requires thinking carefully about how and what and where we chop and plant, and for what purpose – guided by the Indigenous experts who were Canada’s first forest guardians.

Read Erin’s full story for more about failed attempts and new efforts to fix Canada’s forest problem.

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