Province to Move to Area Based Forestry Licences
Prince George, B.C.- The Government of B.C. has outlined 20 actions it is either taking or will take to increase the mid-term timber supply in the wake of the devastation brought on by the mountain pine beetle epidemic.
The province will follow all of the recommendations made by the Special Committee on Timber Supply including, introducing legislation to change the licence system from volume based to area based licencing and the creation of a new supplemental forest licence to increase bioenergy opportunities.
Committee Chair, John Rustad says the recommendations are aimed at reducing the impact of a loss of fibre supply would have on the current number of people working in the forestry sector. Rustad says while companies will make their own decisions, the factors that a company considers include fibre supply as well as demand for product.
The full report, ‘Beyond the Beetle: A Mid-Term Timber Supply Action Plan’ puts a sharper focus on increasing the mid-term timber supply and better use of timber for bioenergy and other purposes, to complement the traditional focus on sawlogs.
There will also be a 10 year forest inventory strategy, innovative silviculture practices aimed at growing more trees faster, and landscape fire to reduce risks to the midterm timber supply. Minister of Forests, Steve Thomson says the inventory was not able to be completed before now because of the ever changing wave of the Mountain Pine Beetle attack. Now that the majority of the attack has moved on, inventory work has already started in the Quesnel area.
Minister Thomson says there will continue to be work with communities, First Nations and industry partners to move forward.
Thomson says there is money in the current budget to cover the plan, “We believe we have the resources required to undertake the immediate start to the implementation of the recommendations, we know as we move forward, we know we are going to need to identify the resources required as the specific inventory work and specific plans come forward.”
Comments
Introduce Legislation ?
Doesn’t the Legislature have to be sitting for that?
Oh wait ..it’s a Liberal thing
LOL
Holy crow…. Well as mentioned the government will ACTUALLY have to sit to introduce this legislation…
Even if they do sit to introduce and pass the legislation, how do the boundaries for the companies get set??!
The Quesnel TSA is about done…. Same for the better part of the PG TSA…. So do the Canfor’s and West Fraser’s of the world get first kick at what is left? Regardless of where that might be?
What about the Dunkley Lumber’s and Burns lake debacle of companies?
Just sayin’
Lots of job in the salvage wood. I bet by volume as much as 2/3’rds the jobs of wood producing marketable lumber from a modern mill. It still needs to be logged and hauled to a bio-plant where people are employed.
I think there is still an under utilization of salvage fiber for electrical generation especially west of PG. We could easily have another plant like the PG Co-gen from the fiber out highway 16.
And then if forest companies could get carbon credits for removal of salvage wood especially for things like charcoal production… its a whole new industry just waiting for incubation with the right government incentives.
There is an upside and a downside of area based tenures replacing volume based tenures.
The upsides are that log hauling efficencies can be had by closer proximity of timber to a mill. Another is that forest management investments can be realised by those who spent the money investing into it.
The downside is that there is a risk to relying on a specific area in that should a forest fire or other natural disaster occur that a mill may not have a timber supply left to operate.
It is ironic that the province no longer provides tree farm licences that were designed to do just exactly what is being the proposed “area based” solution. It is also ironic that the province no longer provides pulpwood licences that were designed to provide pulpwood or low value species such as interior deciduous for OSB. Pulpwood licences would be the perfect vehicle for providing secure wood supply to biomass/biofuel operations that are seemingly wanted.
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