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Loggers on Quadra Island are confronted with a dilemma. Whether they cut trees from TFL 47 or from any of the 11 licenced woodlots, the carbon stored in the forests is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, thereby contributing to the climate crisis. But loggers are required by law, as operators of their tenures, to cut an annual amount of merchantable wood—measured as cubic metres—to earn royalties, called stumpage, for government revenue. Because most logged wood becomes the raw material used for making paper, packaging and many other disposable products, most of the cut wood is quickly consumed or discarded, and its stored carbon is released into the atmosphere as CO₂ within the first year following logging—only about 20% of the cubic metres measured as forest product is sequestered up to a century as lumber for buildings or as kept objects such as furniture.