Let me get this right. We want tourism; and we want the countryside to look like a war zone?

“Bell says he’s also working with officials in Burns Lake on a tourism strategy for the summer, including marketing the area for vacations”

Because nothing will increase tourism like clear cutting right beside the highway, LOL. Good grief.

This crisis is the opportunity a guy like Pat Bell has been waiting for… the opportunity to clear cut the visual road side trees. Gets his old logging buddies some nice cream work with little need for infrastructure and maintenance of forestry roads, quick returns. So that’s the plan it appears… log the road side with clear cuts. I think its typical Pat Bell short sighted parochial thinking.

And then to think part two of his plan is to promote tourism in the area…lol.

Some other points to consider:

– If they permit clear cutting beside the highway for the Burns Lake operation, how long until they allow it for every other operation that may be in trouble (which will be almost all of them in the coming years)? I would suggest that it would be virtually impossible to not extend the same opportunity to other operations. Are the people of BC willing to accept what that would mean?
– The development team with experience in diversifying economies. Isn’t it a little late for them? Wouldn’t a government with vision have not thought about doing this a decade ago? And just who is this team and what economies have they diversified before? Is this team being deployed to the other cities in BC who are going to go through the exact same issues in the coming decade?
– Even if they were to rebuild, what exactly are the chances that Hampton will remain a viable MEDIUM TO LONG TERM operation given the state of BC forests? Any impacts from the changes in policy needs to evaluated over the expected term that the mill would realistically be in operation, not an assumption that it will be operating as a going concern forever.

I think the Province needs to be extremely cautious about the role that they let Hampton play in this process. Work with them for sure, but at the end of the day, a policy decision needs to be made based on an independent assessment by the Province. It takes a great deal of time to PROPERLY assess all of the impacts of making a policy decision and far too often these types of processes do not factor in all of the related impacts and considerations. In the haste to arrive at a decision, governments often take a far too simplistic approach that looks great on the surface but is full of problems once you dig into it. I sense that this could indeed be one of those situations.

Didn’t they have fire insurance? Or they didn’t because of past violations?

http://safetyauthority.ca/news/2011-incident-report-%E2%80%93-babine-forest-products

Maybe Canfor could give up what was allocated for the Rustad Mill and the Sinclair group could give up what was allocated for The Pas.

Before we discard the idea of clearcuting the highway viewscapes, we should consider the pros and cons. On the one hand you can unitlize the over mature timber, regenerate the stand for future generations to use (which will be greened up in about 20 years)and create jobs in the area now in logging, milling and the service industry. Leaving the stands to the devices of mother nature in this part of the province always ends in either, a forest fire, blown down or killed by some form of bug or pathogen. Stand killed by nature do not look “pretty” and take a very long time to regenerate naturally.

If we have learned anything from the massive beetle kill events, is that all trees eventually die, its the circle of life! Forest policy makers in this province I hope are finally starting recognize the sucessional, ecological facts and manage our forests for the stand’s entire life cycle, not just their own short careers or the presures of the latest, misguided flavour of the month.

Good point Streetwise2…….

Let us look at that with a few less blinders on than StreetWise2.

There are many more ways to get at timber. Clearcutting is certainly not the only way. It is the favourite way in Canada. In other countries they use considerably more selective cutting.

When Pat Bell says: “visual quality objectives.” basically means that when you drive down the highway you don’t see clear cuts.”

As he says, that is basically what it means. In reality, what it means in more detail is that the objective is to get away from the old checkerboard look of clearcuts which means too many in one area, too large, and with borders that are not determined by the lie of the land but rather by square cookie cutters.

Take a look at google earth aerials. The countryside is already inundated with harvested areas. With an 80 year cycle, no more than just over 1% of the forested area should be a fresh cut at any one time. Give it a 10 year cycle before a harvested area no longer is all that clearly observable on a low resolution tool such as google earth and no more than about 10-12% of the forested area should be visible. It then becomes obvious that to cut more than they have been cutting in the immediate area around Burns Lake (150km radius?) they would be impacting the criteria used to determine their annual allowable cut. In other words, there is little room left, and every addtional year that you give to a licensee will be a year less after the mill closes in 20 years for lack of timber.

Here are some suggestions.

1. Find a different niche market for the wood which would allow a licensee to go to smaller mills producing higher value added products.

2. Couple that with selective cutting techniques in the more visually sensitive areas.

3. Work with the First Nations, which are a significant population in the area to take a different approach at how forestry is done.

4. The rage at the moment is about “growing the bioeconomy”. Well, here is the perfect chance to move from the old economy of mega mills to that very bioeconomy which will see a considerably greater use of feedstock from the forested land base.

In fact, that will be the topic of the Bioenergy conference in PG in June.

One of the topics will be “Fisrt Nations, Remote Communities and the Bioeconomy”.

We have the perfect opportunity staring us in the face. So what is the solution? The same olde, same olde.

WHY????? Where are the thinkers in our government administration? I do not care about the politicians. We don’t seem to have anyone with any thinking skills in our bureaucracy!!!

Just so that others put some thinking caps on as well. The Burns Lake area ought to be able to become an area which can successfully integrate all the forested land based industries, that includes wood products, fishing, hunting, non timber forest products, various other tourism activities in addition to those already named, potential mining, and even oil.

Single land use is a luxury. More densely populated countries have had to face that long ago. We will slowly have to move to a more intensive use of our land.

Clear cut all the over mature timber along the hiway then put a 18000 hole golf coarse on both sides. There tourism problem solved

BONG…..BONG…..BONG….BONG, Them damn Bells ringing in my head just won’t go away.

“Clear cut all the over mature timber along the hiway”

What better way to view all the distant logged areas which are now hidden by trees along the highway ……

Get down to the viewpoint of the person travelling along the roads. Do the same for the back roads used by those accessing fishing camps and lakes.

Forget about those flying in to anywhere. They get to see that the Emperor has no clothes …… ;-)

So, start planting trees on the highway right of ways not taken up by the travelled road surface and utility poles and we can cut down as much of the backcountry you want.

Just another approach to achieving “visual quality objectives”. May not help the sustainability of the forests much, buit who cares about that anyway as long as the current land users can use the spoils to benefit the present generation. Caring about the next generation is kind of stupid.

We are way past that point Gus. It is a monster that needs to be fed. Paying all the defined pension plans of government employees means the show must go on! Keep on clear cutting or we will have more social unrest.

Contrary to what Pat Bell implies, there are already plenty of clearcuts highly visible from Hwy 16 in the Burns Lake area, along the south side of Decker Lake for example. It’s much the same throughout most of northern BC. What would relaxed visual quality look like? What’s the real agenda? Toss out biodiversity and wildlife habitat too?
CL

“Contrary to what Pat Bell implies, there are already plenty of clearcuts highly visible from Hwy 16 in the Burns Lake area’

Exactly …

And it is not only HWY 16 but, more importantly the roads leading to the lakes in the region which are the destination of some of the domestic visitors who expect to see the harvested blocks as well as the foreigners.

As visitors wrote into the guestbooks in the Bowron Lakes, they were not impressed with the harvested areas visible from famous canoing route.

“Keep on clear cutting or we will have more social unrest.”

So you are telling me that we are junkies hooked on a drug.

Time for tough love, is my suggestion, before it gets to be really tough. We still have a methodone out at the moment with a possibility of getting to some more rational level of sustainability.