More than 11.5 million tree seedlings destined for Quebec forests were destroyed last year

While reforestation efforts are at the heart of the fight against climate change around the world, more than 11.5 million tree seedlings destined for Quebec forests were destroyed last year.

Ironically, it was extreme weather conditions that forced plant nurseries to discard those that did not meet the government's criteria.

The significant losses, valued at $3.6 million, represent almost nine per cent of the trees that were poised to be planted in the province.

"Because the plants are produced outdoors, they are subject to increasingly frequent weather hazards in a context of climate change," the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry said in an email.

"Early frosts in the fall, a lack of snow, a mild spell during the winter or late frosts in the spring can cause significant damage to the plants." 

The ministry says 83 per cent of the trees destroyed in 2022 were related to extreme weather events.

Stéphane Boucher, president of Quebec's forest plant producers, says that over the past 10 years, the weather has been the source of headaches for nurseries and silviculture companies.

"There are people who replant trees that did not get their plants. There are sites that have not been reforested," he said.

His nursery in Saint-Ambroise, in the province's Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, was one of the two most affected by losses in Quebec, with two million plants destroyed.

The most significant damage occurred in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, where the Serres coopératives de Guyenne, a greenhouse, had to dispose of eight million trees.

In total, 14 times more plants were destroyed in the province than in 2021.

"It's still quite spectacular, the increase we see in the loss of forest plants produced by our nurseries," said Jean-François Boucher, a professor in eco-advising at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi.

He studies the roles that reforestation and afforestation — the process of creating forests that haven't existed before — have in the fight against global warming. 

"[These losses] challenge us in relation to the adaptation to climate change that must be done," he said.