BY ANTHONY BRITNEFF, BEN PARFITT, THE PROVINCE
AUGUST 20, 2012 8:34
Since May, when a special committee of the legislature
was appointed to address a looming "timber supply" crisis, questions
have arisen about what the committee would say about one community in
particular.
That community is Burns Lake, where an explosion and
fire in January levelled the local sawmill - the village's major employer -
killing two workers and put-ting another 250 out of work.
Well, the wait is over, and if the unanimous
recommendations of the committee's Liberal and NDP MLAs are an indication, our
forests and many rural communities are headed for even harder times than
previously thought.
Here's why. Rather than focusing on the core issue
(how many trees are left, and what the future holds for our forests) committee
members allowed themselves to be swayed by dramatic yet unrelated events.
What happened in Burns Lake naturally triggered
outpourings of concern. But let's be clear: the loss of the mill has nothing to
do with a looming timber supply crisis. Rather, it underscores the severity of
the problems ahead for numerous communities, Burns Lake included.
We are on the cusp of a monumental shift in our
Interior forests. After a decade-plus attack by mountain pine beetles and other
pests, a spate of intense wildfires and years of unsustainable logging, our
forests are largely depleted of commercially desirable trees.
To their credit, members of the special committee on
timber supply acknowledge this. They conclude that the projected drop in
logging rates places eight sawmills in danger. This is probably an
underestimate. Either way, when mill capacity outstrips what our forests can
provide, mills must close.
Yet having acknowledged that existing sawmills have an
appetite for wood that exceeds what our forests can provide, committee members
turned around and suggested we should build another mill first and find the
timber later.
To entice the owner of the destroyed Burns Lake mill
to rebuild, the commit-tee chose to go down the same tired road that gave rise
to the timber supply crisis: push the boundaries of what can be harvested to
the extreme. This was essentially the approach applied in the East Coast cod
fishery, and we all know how that worked out.
The committee astonishingly suggested that there are
actually twice as many trees to log in the forests around Burns Lake than what
senior forest professionals in government estimated just last year - one million
cubic metres of wood a year instead of 500,000.
How did the committee magically double timber supply?
With three key recommendations.
First, that more "marginally economic"
forests be logged. Second, that the government underwrite a massive fertilization
program to boost tree growth. And third - and here committee members use weasel
words to mask the true intent of their proposition - to increase the logging of
remnant old-growth forests that were previously ruled off-limits to logging.
It is far from clear that this will produce enough
wood to supply a rebuilt mill.
First "marginal" forests are marginal for a
reason. They are generally of inferior quality, further from mills and more
costly to log. And they are often found in places where trees grow less
vigorously, for example at higher elevations. Hence, they are risky to log,
both economically and environmentally.
Second, with government having drastically curtailed
its investments in growing trees, no one should assume there is appetite for
big spending increases on fertilization. Never mind the ecological impacts of
repeated applications of tree fertilizers on shallow soils and on our
waterways, fish populations and other plant life in our forests.
Third, perceived increases in old-growth logging could
prove a nightmare in international markets where the B.C. government and forest
companies alike have worked judiciously to have forestry operations
independently certified as sustainably managed.
If the government embraces the committee's recommendations
for Burns Lake, expect the same unsustainable logging practices to be applied
province wide, and with devastating consequences.
The real tragedy in the committee members'
recommendations is that they are well aware of where the real challenges lie.
The committee acknowledges the essential importance of improved forest
inventories - looking at how many healthy trees we have. Why isn't this the
first order of business? B.C. needs an expedited, thorough assessment now,
before we have committed to even more unsustainable logging rates.
To proceed with logging increases before such work is
done is irresponsible and an insult to forest-dependent com-munities across the
province.
Anthony Britneff recently retired from a 40-year
career as a professional forester with the B.C. Forest Service. Ben Parfitt is
a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
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