Minister of Forests Promises Timber Supply Action Plan by End of September
Wednesday, August 15, 2012 @ 2:25 PM
Prince George, B.C.- Minister of Forests, Steve Thomson, says his ministry will be developing an action plan and will have it ready by the end of September to address the recommendations from the Timber Supply Committee’s report.
The report, released this morning, made 22 recommendations to deal with the declining supply of timber brought on by the mountain pine beetle infestation, and the need for a sustainable fibre supply for the Burns Lake area. ( click here to access recommendations)
Thomson says some of the work has already started, including the inventory of timber supply and a review of the annual allowable cut.
Fibre supply is a crucial issue in the future of a sawmill in Burns Lake. The Hampton Affiliates Babine forest Products mill was destroyed in January following a tragic fatal explosion. The mill was the primary employer in that community and residents have been waiting for word on whether there will be enough fibre to warrant to reconstruction of that mill.
While the final decision on the future of the Babine Forest Products mill rests with Hampton Affiliates, Thomson says there are clearly options for Burns Lake, which he thinks his Ministry can work on right away “We do recognize the urgency in dealing with the Burns Lake situation, John Rustad (MLA) will be meeting with the community tomorrow and we’ll (Ministry of Forests) be engaging with Hampton in the next few days.”
Thompson says the report looked at the log export issues and says it has always been his Ministry’s desire to see harvested logs processed in B.C. but that the logs exported from the Interior region make up less than 1% of the total harvest in the area.
Comments
Any bets on how many Provincial Parks will be clear cut to satisfy the big forestry companies?
Not just the Provincial Parks Oldun. Think visual buffers, marginal stands, high-slope cut blocks, etc. If I were a tree with needles on it, I’ve be very nervous right now.
It’s ironic that the reason the Mountain Pine Beetle problem became an epidemic in the first place is that stupid Moe Sihota wouldn’t allow logging in Tweedsmuir Park back in the day. Now there was forward-thinking forest management.
Hindsight is always 20-20 but how they handle the problem from here on forward is where clear thinking is needed.
It’s sad to see that hoary old bromide about how logging Tweedsmuir would have prevented or lessened the beetle epidemic is still around. In reality there were beetles in vast areas of overmature pine forests, inside and outside of parks. Blame the mild winters and abundant susceptible forests, but logging in parks would have made no difference to the situation.
Perhaps the areas outside the parks should have been logged faster in the pre-beetle days, not to prevent the epidemic but to reduce the host material and maximize the economic return from the forest. One can hope the lessons learned from this crisis will not be forgotten.
Also worth noting, the committee report recommends generally against harvesting the reserved areas.
We dont need to cut off our noses to save our face.
If some mills have to close down so be it. Thats what life is all about. Surely there are other things we can do.
We have people working in Fort McMuray who live as far away as New Brunswick. They come from all over Canada to work in Alberta. In addition there are thousands of jobs coming available in Kitimat, Highway 37, Terrace, etc; etc;. People will have move, that the bottom line. We cannot gaurantee everyone a job in their home towns.
Right on Canislupis. I am a litte surprised that the committee did not recommend an end to world hunger and war. They have the same chance of being implemented as most of their recommendations. The politicians will cherry pick portions of the recommendations that suit what they have already planned and ignore the rest. The devil will be the details. For instance, if operability minimums are reduced but the politicians forget to partition the cut – nobody will go into the low volume uneconomic stands. Logging will just increase in the already overcut economic stands.
The real bottom line in all this is that not one single person, government, company, town, city etc. has provided any kind of insurance fund for crop failure. Basically that is what we have.
Since we have no such contingency fund lying around, everyone is running around like chickens with their heads cut off, not realizing they are dead.
In such times, we really get to understand how poorly our forests are managed for the resources we have always expected to get from them in perpetuity.
When bridges collapse around us, and buildings cannot withstand winds and earthquakes, and insurance money is not adequate to rebuild, we turn to the professionals and say we have not received the service we expected to get from them.
So where are the professional foresters in all this? What did those who put together harvesting plans and silvicultural prescriptions that were supposed to provide us with sustainable yields tell the ministry responsible to protect the people’s resources and livelihoods about what the ministry was doing? Did the ministry follow the plans? Did the ministry force the foresters to provide recommendations they knew would not survive a massive natural disturbance? Did they just play the odds and gamble with public assets?
What are we doing to learn from this? Has anyone been looking at that? Is our solution here to actually take more risks rather than less? It sure looks like it from a non-insider point of view.
Hurry up an make a plan, your tenure is just about over!! WTH have you been doing for the last ten years besides selling off the province and taxing us to death?
Next will be the announced standing committee to study why our moose and sheep populations have shrunk so dramatically….just before an election as usual. :-(
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