I don’t think there is any confusion on the words. It was always clear to me that the the Province has been talking about Tree Farm Licenses for quite some time. Whatever wording has been used, it’s been clear that:

1) The Province wants to see forest companies taking more responsibility for the forests, not less. We have TFLs and we have volume based licenses already. TFLs are much better looked after than volume based licenses.

2) TFLs don’t have “not sufficienctly restocked” (NSR) land. NSR is a big problem in this province. If there is a fire, or bug kill and no one harvests the land under a volume based license, then no one replants. This has cost the Province billions because the Province has to take responsibility for NSR land. Under TFLs, the land gets replanted by the forest company at the forest company’s expense.

3) If there is a switch of any license, the Province only wants it done where there is community support from the local community. The forest company may have to agree to stock some lakes with fish, provide and maintain campsites, work with trappers, provide an agreed upon cut plan, etc. There may be other conditions as well. This is something that we don’t get with volume based licenses, but is common with all the tree farm licenses.

4) As we start handing more and more land to the natives, volume based licenses are going to lead to law suits against the Province. The natives don’t want people logging the land that they have a claim on. Yet the forest companies are doing just that under their volume based licenses. The Province wants to start removing the native land from the cutting areas. Moving to Tree Farm Licenses does this.

We have TFL30, the McGregor, nearby.

Rather than dealing with the general, could we deal with the specifics of the TFL30 (also known for a couple of decades as the McGregor Model Forest0 that at least some locals will have some knowledge of and learn to understand from it how previously Northwood and now Canfor are dealing with that responsibility and how the Ministry responsible for Forests (during the Social Credit, BC NDP and BC Liberal eras) has been dealing with it and is dealing with it now.

Then, can we do a compare and contrast between that form of tenure and the PG TSA volume based tenure.

The other stuff is just conjecture which is still to be played out during the “conversation” with the people in areas such as PG throughout the province.

I have learned a long time ago in my life that one size does not fit all. I see nothing in the reports coming from the government which prejudge the outcome. Far from it.

Following up with the quote from “Alice in Wonderland”, let me quote Chicken Little …. “The sky is falling, the sky is falling”.

;-)

“Well, Tree Farm Licences have always been controversial in BC.”

Huh?

Not so funny Gus, for those of us that have spent their life in the industry Lcicle is giving the government spin, there is much more when you move to TFL’s.Much of the province has Land Use Plans in place and many entrenched in legislation which stopped the war in the woods but also addressed the needs of other user’s of the land. Also the forest act was changed in 2001/2002 which gave industry the ability manage and in return billions in investment was committed by industry but never happened. TFLs will only compound the problems we already face and will open up another round of conflict when we are just coming out of an industry recession.

A couple of Icicle’s statements are highly debatable:
“TFL’s are much better looked after than volume based licences.” There are examples of well-managed and poorly managed TFL’s, as there are of forest licences. TFL holders have an incentive to practice good silviculture, but I have seen them fail to respect the rights that other parties have on the same land base, grazing tenure holders for example. Good forest management has many facets besides silviculture.

After fires, “Under TFLs, the land gets replanted by the forest company at the forest company’s expense.” TFL holders are not obligated to replant burned areas, and if cutblocks with a free growing obligation are burned then government funds the licensee’s extra cost to achieve free growing. Bottom line: no difference between TFL and FL.

One question that remains unanswered is how converting forest licences to TFL’s helps the mid-term timber supply. (It doesn’t). Another question we should consider: where is the public benefit in this initiative?

So, I see no one is willing to compare and contrast the PG TSA and TFL. That is what we are being asked to do by government. How does the community wish to deal with the forests and its many values in OUR area.

Why can’t we deal with that rather than generalities? We have many tenure systems, and in the 1980s there was a change from older ones to newer or updated systems.

So, how is it working for the communities? How is it working for people in this “neck of the woods”? Quit government bashing for a while, because we have had many governments over the years and they each have tweaked the system but we are still basically operating in the same fashion we have been for the last 30 years and longer.

Tenure reform, tenure reform, tenure reform. Why? How? and show us the proof that it will work better.

Where are our professional foresters on this? Anyone posting on here an RFP?

Better still … anyone posting on here a RPF?

TFL’s allow exclusive timber rights to the TFL holder within the TFL area. In a regular forest licence area prospective timber buyers can bid on the sales.

Think of it this way..TFLs are monopoly’s and Forest Licenes are free market..

Advantages.. TFL provides a predictible timber source and if your in a sawmill business you can have an accuate prediction of where your fibre comes from. Predictable stumpage rates..

Disadvantages..(public interest) Legal hoops..if the company goes bankrupt the timber is still held until assetts disoved. Some TFL holders block public access..(mostly on the island..)

“Icicle” (top post) may not be confused by words but his four enumerated points do not stand up to scrutiny.

1) The government already pays for most forest management activities on Tree Farm Licences (TFL). The government directly pays for inventory and pest monitoring. It indirectly pays for reforestation, road construction and bridge building through the stumpage system. And it usually pays for fighting wildfire on TFLs when adjacent Crown land or private property is threatened. So precisely what “more responsibility” are you talking about?

2) Where insects, disease, drought or wildfire have killed large areas of forest on a TFL, show me an instance where the TFL holder has paid for tree planting rather than just let nature run its course. Besides all logged areas are reforested by law in B.C. regardless of whether the logging occurs under tenure or under a licence within a TSA. It would be good if you would let us know where NSR areas as a result of logging are not being reforested and who is breaking the law. We can expect a lot more disturbance due to climate change (insect infestations, diseases, wildfire and drought) and forests in TFLs are no more resilient to disturbance than are forests in TSAs

3) The rights to timber (i.e., the value of the timber) can be listed on the books of the TFL holder. Those privatized and monetized rights can be traded and sold any where on the global market. The Chinese can buy TFLs if they wish and the government has no powers under law to prevent such a trade. I don’t think any community would want this uncertainty. I think communities and First Nations want jurisdiction and control over local forests. Why should companies that shut down mills get to keep replaceable forest licences? To allow them to rollover those licences into TFLs having shut down mills and laid off workers would be an outrage.

4) Where First Nations have treaty land claims over Crown land on which volume-based logging is occurring under licence, then the matter will be made much worse by rolling over the licences into TFLs with defined boundaries providing exclusive private rights on Crown land because the government will end up having to compensate both First Nations and the company.

As a professional forester, I am in general in favor of a conversion of volume based to area based tenures, including TFL’s. The reason for this is that the existing overlapping volume based commitments coupled with changing public land use and stewardship priorities over the past 20 years, land claims, and the forest inventory impacts of the beetle in the interior, have created a classic tragedy of the commons on many public timber supply areas (TSA’s) – (also defacto “area based” tenures managed by the Province). The reality is that the land base is in many areas over committed and it is no longer possible to accomodate all of the existing overlapping rights holders, not to mention the new ones. Converting to area based tenures provides a mechanism to rationalise these volume rights to specific areas and transform simple rights to volume to a long term stewardship responsibility (and incentive) for producing this volume (along with other resource values as determined by the public through legislation and community consultation and input into the Management Plans and FSP’s) from a defined area. This not only provides the rights holders but also the public with more certainty with regards to resource values and mitigates the liabilities to the Province of no longer being able to meet existing volume based contractual arrangements, (or cancelling them – another alternative).

Regarding TFL’s versus other forms of area based tenure, the tenure type itself is not the issue, I would argue that they all effectively manage the publics expectations as expressed through the Forest Act and FRPA and associate regulations. As in all aspects of life there are stronger and weaker licensees (same goes for woodlots, community forests, and FN woodland licenses). The major industrial players in the province are key players and drivers in our forest economy and their corporate structure and scale of operations enable to the capital investment and market structure that the smaller licensees also depend on. Arguements on the stewardship front I believe are red herrings as we have the tools to achive what we want on public lands, regardless of tenure form if we choose to implement them.

Perhaps the biggest weakness of the major licensee ( I’m generalising here) from the public benefit perspective is that the large corporate (and international) ownership structure of many, and their focus on shareholders, coupled with changes in public economic policy (such as with the removal of appurtenancy – a major feature of the original TFL system) has allowed for the flight of capital from the provincial economy rather than its reinvestment in our own jurisdiction. Herein lies the appeal of the smaller community based tenures where the profits tend to stay in the system and contrinute to growth of the economy. If we were to figure out a better way to manage this across the industry without impacting our competitveness in the global market – now that would be something to worth discussing.

I’m opposed to converting forest licenses to TFLs but the point I want to make here is that it is unfortunate that people are posting on this important issue using pseudonyms. Clearly, some people/companies could benefit greatly as a result of a TFL rollover. It is impossible to have an open conversation when people hide their identity. Is retired professional forester Anthony Britneff the only one with the courage of his convictions?

I would challenge Peter to provide evidence of his claimed “over-harvesting” .. the AAC has not been fully harvested for years as we deal with the death of a forest …. if all you want to do is rile up emotions you have succeeded .. lets have the discussion and make sure the facts are on the table.

“Forestryguy”

The evidence that you seek is to be found in:

1) The forests minister’s own briefing package (May 2013) in an issue note dealing with over-harvesting of the Morice TSA; and,

2) The Forest Practice Board’s latest special report (March 2014) entitled “Beetle killed timber salvage – is it meeting expectations?”

I am a professional forester with over 20 years experience. I like this discussion.

It is important not to get sucked into the political spin machine. The issue is about creating an incentive to invest in the forest so local future generations benefit. It is about property rights not title. And with all property rights there are always limitations or constraints.

There are some companies that are just wood product companies not forestry companies and they are interested in access to logs for today. They behave just like they are house renters. Here today gone tomorrow. And they make no bones about it. Some are proud of that strategy. I do not think they will convert to TFL’s.
The problem with most Forest licences (FL’s) is that the main objective of a FL is access to logs. Future generations do not benefit from this strategy. Log it, plant a pine tree, move on. On FL’s the social licence is treated like a liability where you only do what you have to, no more. There is no incentive to do more because the licence may be gone tomorrow (15 yr terms albeit replace-ability if the timber exists).

As far as I am concerned more Area based tenures would benefit society but with that being said it should be Woodlots, Community Forests and First Nation Woodland tenures. There are only a few major companies that qualify to manage TFL’s. In my mind the qualification is based on a proven social licence and actual investment in future generations. Only a couple companies can demonstrate that.

So at the end of the day the tenure conversion should be for the local communities and small enterprises, not for the multi national interests that only want profits for the next quarter so they can invest in another province / country.

Forester Gord.

Thank you for your clarification on this..! Much needed for this forum..

“Forester”

If you are a registered professional forester I suggest you unmask yourself, as you are required by by-laws and ethics to act in the public interest, which is not helped by anonymity. Who are you?

In response to your assertions, I make these 10 points:

1)Tree Farm Licences (TFL) are not immune to changes in land use. The compensation issue becomes more complicated and the cost to the public more extreme.
2)If the AAC is over-committed, then the solution is to take back timber volume from existing replaceable forest licences.
3)To allow a handful of large companies to safeguard their existing volume apportionment by rolling them over to TFLs will mean that all those holding non-replaceable forest licence (communities and First Nations) will take a direct hit. In any event non-replaceable forest licences will not be renewed for the very reason you provide: over-commitment of the economic AAC. Therefore to be fair to the holders of non-replaceable forest licences, the government should claw back timber volume from the replaceable forest licences before more TFLs are even considered.
4)Allowing a handful of companies to rollover their replaceable forest licences into TFLs will, as you say, rationalize the cut. But exclusively in the favour and interest of a handful of large companies?
5)TFLs have a long history in this province of providing uncertainty to communities and the public: removal of private lands, closure of mills, job losses, export of jobs and raw logs to China.
6)As for investment. Yes attracting investment is important. As this has become problematic under the existing failed model of forest governance, maybe it is time to consider alternative models such as First Nations Local Forest Trusts and Community Local Forest Trusts.
7)The Forest Act no longer expresses the public interest. And the Forest and Range Practices Act has never expressed the public interest as it was more or less written by industry to express private interests. For example, over-harvesting of AAC partitions is not against the law. Under present forest law over-harvesting is an issue of professional reliance. How does the public hold professionalforesters accountable for over-harvesting by companies?
8)Contrary to your assertion, TFLs are the issue. The government in its public consultation has made them the focus of feedback. Area-based management is the red herring.
9)More TFLs will create even stronger regional monopolies of timber supply damaging competiveness and incurring rightful indignation from the United States.
10)If you want to improve competiveness and stewardship, then set up an open honest provincial log market and force the present oligopoly of large companies to buy more logs on that market.

“10) If you want to improve competitiveness and stewardship, then set up an open honest provincial log market and force the present oligopoly of large companies to buy more logs on that market.”
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On the surface this always sounds like a great solution. But there are some difficulties.

BC, unlike our American neighbors, where there is a much more competitive log market, (though not without problems of its own), does not have a large domestic market for lumber. Nor does Canada.

We depend on export markets, which are subject to various factors completely beyond our control. We can, as we’ve seen repeatedly with the recent softwood lumber dispute, to use just one example, be tariffed out of those markets, either directly or indirectly, at any time.

Now if you were a BC sawmiller, how do you convince a Canadian bank to continue to fund you if you do not have the rights to something in the way of a greater collateral security than a sawmill?

The principal value in that sawmill is not its ‘book value’, what it cost you to build it. It’s in its ‘credit value’. The continued ability of it to make a price for its product in excess of its costs.

Take that away, and the only value your machinery has, even if it’s ‘state of the art’, is essentially what it might be worth for scrap.

Lumbering, if it’s to be carried on successfully at all, is an increasingly ‘capital intensive’ business.

It has to compete for that capital against other fields of endevour where the returns are often much more assured, and far less cyclical.

It would nice to pretend this wasn’t so, that we could somehow go back to a more ‘labor intensive’ era, where endless ‘value-adding’ would provide copious employment in some kind of an industrial fairyland, and all logs could somehow be sold competitively for maximum value. But that’s not going to happen. And we have to play with the hand we’re dealt. So long as we’re so unwilling to ever look at the ‘bigger picture’ , beyond the arguments over tenure, and such like, and start to understand the real rules of the whole ‘economic’ game, and how we might better change them.

“If you are a registered professional forester I suggest you unmask yourself, as you are required by by-laws and ethics to act in the public interest”

What exactly are you inferring here? Are you, Anthony Britneff, the individual or even the forester, who determines what is in the public interest? How do you, make that determination? On what basis do you say “forester gord” is not speaking in the interest of the public? Is the Chief Forester of the province not acting for the public interest?

You are making an accusation which I believe is unprofessional.

“socredible”

Thank you for your considered response.

If the provincial log market is open and honest, then it would supply logs to whomever is willing to pay the market price. Such a market need not preclude export of logs but would have to be regionally administered to guarantee an adequate supply to local manufacturers.

Manufacturers of copper products or any product involving other commodities don’t have to own the mine to secure bank funds to capitalize their manufacturing facilities. They buy resources on the open market.

I think under a different forest governance model where manufacturers leave the woods and do what they do best in mills and factories, the present difficulties that you so elegantly describe might not be so troublesome.

It looks to me like the first step towards privatizing our forests, which this gov’t has said is one of the options it is looking at to cut costs. This would be an outrage because a private company, even one from a different country, would have the legal right to block access to the public if they had active logging going on. Anyone who thinks this is in the best interest of the people of BC or Canada should give their head a shake.

“gus”

Thank you for you response.

I am referring to the by-laws and ethics of the Association of BC Forest Professionals.

You misquote me by cutting a clause and the last sentence. What I said was this:
“If you are a registered professional forester I suggest you unmask yourself, as you are required by by-laws and ethics to act in the public interest, which is not helped by anonymity. Who are you?”

I don’t make inferences about what I write; you do. I am simply implying that forest professionals have the law behind them to speak and write in the public interest and that acting in the public interest is not helped by anonymity.

If you have inferred that I am saying that “Forester” – if she/he is a forest professional – is not acting in the public interest, then I correct you. That is not the case.

By contributing to this dialogue both “Forester” and “Forester Gord”, whom I have not mentioned, are acting in the public interest.

Forest professionals do not determine the public interest; the public does. They can only act in the public interest.

I make no pretence to be determining the public interest. But if you gave me a wand for a day I might be tempted! Like “Forester” and “Forester Gord” I do my best to act in the public interest.

I am who I say I am. No masquerading, identity theft or footsy-tootsy with me. What about you “gus”? Is “gus” your name? Or is “gus”a nom de plume behind which you securely hide like so many on this comment thread?

The way I view this issue is it is a defining political issue for the ideology of the BC liberals. The BC liberals campaign as the party of free enterprise, but TFL type policies are anything but free enterprise policy.

The TFL area based forest practices to me come across as a form of monopoly capitalism for the benefit of multinational corporations that only operate for their bottom dollar, and the existing monopolists make no bones about squeezing out not only other potential competitors from the opportunity to access fiber, but also the public access for all the other stakeholders who have rights to public forests. Its a policy that enables greed for shareholders, and not innovation and opportunity for future generations.

The TFL area based policies are akin to a flag post on the way to private ownership rights (by Wall Street and China) that will make future generations surfs of a globalist monopoly capitalist forest industry driven by traders on Wall Street or Beijing and not the concerns of local communities. They with deep pockets will employ many a word smith to convince us otherwise.

For BC to have a true fee enterprise business model for our forest the first thing we need is to have a strong public ministry of forests that can act to protect, patrol, and enforce best practices in our forests, and ensure fair play when it comes to market access to the fiber for new entrants to the industry as well as innovative uses of the fiber that contribute to a more sustainable forest industry that brings its greatest value to the province as a whole. I don’t see the BC liberals going in this direction at all, but rather through cuts to the ministry of forests they are in fact going in the opposite direction and seem to be under the influence of the globalist monopoly capitalist money traders.

I think it is great to have people willing to discuss this issue, because I don’t think the vast majority of the voting public can separate the rhetoric from the actual implications of what the BC liberals are proposing with their changes to how Crown forest fiber is accessed.

To have a strong free enterprise economy we need to have a strong civil service that ensures equal opportunity.

I feel sorry for the grandchildren of today because if things don’t start to change with policy, they are going to be just like the ghetto africaans who are starving in their own country as everyone else removes their resources for their own profit and the profit of the corrupt gov’t who sell them out. If you think it can’t happen in Canada, just open your eyes, it has already started.

Anthony Britneff:- “I think under a different forest governance model where manufacturers leave the woods and do what they do best in mills and factories, the present difficulties that you so elegantly describe might not be so troublesome.”
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In theory, I quite agree with you here, Anthony However, putting such a theory into practice and maintaining financial viability is likely to hold many almost insurmountable difficulties.

Few large mills in BC have been built where the owner did not have at least some assured timber. Financing one without that would likely be extremely difficult.

Even Doman Industries on the Coast, who initially purchased almost all of their logs on the open market, and was the Coast’s foremost ‘small log sawmilling’ pioneer, began with a joint participation involving Pacific Logging Company, (a CPR subsidiary, and then still substantial private timberland owner on Vancouver Island), back when they started Ladysmith Forest Products, the first truly high-speed small log sawmill on VI.

Doman’s did subsequently sever the CPR connection, but even though their activities were highly profitable for many years utilising mostly open market timber, they were at ever greater risk of not being assured an adequate timber supply as they did what all companies in any ‘inflationary’ environment really have to do to continue to survive ~ grow. It’s quite ironic that finally securing the type of assured, large scale tenure they needed, right before the 1981 recession, played such a large role in Doman’s eventual demise. Still, if they had not, would the outcome have been different? I personally doubt it.

It seems to me that we might want to spend some more time looking at why there is, or supposedly has to be, an ‘inflationary’ environment such as we currently still have. (The alternative, a ‘deflationary’ one currently considered as being worse in that it is ruinous to producers trying to recover past costs from present,lower, prices).

And finally realise that all the assorted arguments over what’s the best form of tenure or access to timber are really moot so long as we fail to understand this larger problem, and how it might be corrected.

For it is the problem that, in my opinion, at least, has made an absolute mockery out of the whole concept of ‘sustained yield’. Which, save for ‘inflation’, was certainly theoretically possible when TFL were first introduced with that ostensibly in mind.

We won’t do that, of course. So, as I said before, we have to play the hand we’re dealt.

I have been a small sawmill operator most of my adult life, almost half a century at it now. I may quit when I hit that mark, if bureaucracy doesn’t drive me completely insane beforehand.

Some things today are better than when I started, many more things are not.

I’ve dealt with major companies who had TFL’s, and bought timber from them, stuff they couldn’t use themselves and their logging people didn’t want to see wasted. Though to their head office people, that often didn’t matter, especially if what they sold me came off their AAC, and they couldn’t then cut another tree of more value to them.

In spite of such anomalies, under the present ‘financial’ set-up, I would still prefer to deal privately one-to-one with any timber tenure holder for my wood than have to trust my future to ‘bidding’ against others in a public open auction type scenario.