"Waste-Associated CO2 Emissions (tonnes) 2,971,157"

Who is putting this stuff together?

1. Leave it on the ground and allow it to provide nutrients to the soils.

2. chip it and leave on the ground for the same reasons

3. Burn it on site and return the minerals to the ground

4. chip it on site and remove it to a co-gen location.

Over time, they all create the same amount of CO2 from the "waste" unless the CO2 in a controlled cogen is sequestered in some fashion.

#4 creates more CO2 from the transportation process and burns gasoline and adds to the depletion of oil.

Do they expect the harvested forest floor to be raked clean? That is not part of the post harvesting site prep prescription.

What part of nature do they not understand? In nature, there is no waste. This stuff is recycled by Mother Nature. Everything has a purpose.

Do these people have anything better to do?

I understand what you are saying Gus but on the otherhand does nature leave stuff stacked in huge piles? No! I can not see these piles going away any time soon. It is also an eyesore when you travel on any of the logging roads towards a lake and for miles all you see is a huge mess. Mother nature has much work to do to clean up after humans unfortunately IMO. You look at any logging site that has been left and you can ALWAYS find oil drums, plastic containers and garbage. It is discusting to say the very least. We camp every weekend and/or weeks at a time at various lakes within 45 min of the city so I have seen it with my own eyes and sometimes they tear up at the mess.

This is just an example of what the code allows and yes all contractors will push the limit. This quite simply is greed oriented, get in and get out as fast as you can and make the biggest buck you can in that time frame to heck with the environment or the consequence.
This is an example of the local ministry of forest ineptness and the local sawmill woodlands groups inability to manage their harvest. this is not uncommon....you see this everywhere in the logging industry. I'm sure given the chance Mother Nature would like to take the legs out from underneath the people that allow this type of thing to continue, because it is totally unnecessary.

C02 thats funny.

Obviously, like always, the stuff has been bulldozed into piles, ready to be set on fire when an opportunity arises, smouldering for days and casting a pall over the entire area.

Woodsmoke causes cancer. Don't pollute the air we breathe. Don't burn the stuff unless it is done at sufficiently high temperatures and properly controlled air addition in a generating plant to produce usable energy!

Spread the stuff out evenly in as thin a layer as possible to naturally decompose and become nourishment for newly planted trees.

the piles are actually good habitat for small mammals when they are left there. However, the piles shown are waiting to be burned. The waste is piled from areas where the trees are yarded/processed. There is so much debris there that trees cant be planted.
There is a big difference between usable wood and merchantable wood. Contractors bid to harvest timber to ministry standards. Expecting them to go to any further expense to satisfy the general public is unrealistic. When you hire someone to do a job, they do it, not the job plus some extra ecause they are soooo nice. As for pushing the limits, well perhaps contractors do so, but if you think they are getting away with murder, you have never dealt with Enforcement at the MOF.
By the way, if you see oil drums and the like left at any logging show, report it. These are violations (unless they are on private land)and need to be dealt with, not cried over.

Spread the stuff out evenly in as thin a layer as possible to naturally decompose and become nourishment for newly planted trees.

Would that cost any more money than piling it into huge pyres for burning?

Of course not.

There has to be a significant amount of waste left behind to refortify the soil and provide food and housing for insects, mice, other small animals, etc.

They are leaving behind the non-economically viable wood. Yes, it could be used for other things but is significantly costly to recover.

It is better off being burned or left on the forest floor for regeneration.

Remember that the waste left behind will need to sustain the regrowth for 75 years or more. During the first 15-20 years of a replant, there will be nothing falling to the forest floor from the new growth.

Talk to a farmer and see if he wants to clean every last scrap of material from his fields.

I wonder if the report contains pictures of porcupines making a home for themselves in the fresh slash piles in winter while they log nearby.

I wonder if the report contains pictures of owls (in daylight) sitting on top of the slash piles, hunting mice who have made a home for themselves in the fresh slash piles (with an abundance of easily accessible seed cones) while they log nearby.

I wonder if the report contains pictures of coyotes hunting around fresh slash piles while they log nearby.

I often see owls hunting during the day in winter. I only see them at night during the summer.

An owl hunting during the day is obviously hungry. Wildlife moving right into fresh slash piles is in obvious need of shelter.

Maybe our forest practices policies are finally coming into a harmonic balance with nature. Maybe we have started contributing instead of deteriorating.

These days, you see more wildlife in a cutblock than you do in the tall stands.

Gus is bang on. Inarguable facts.

The piles in the picture are pretty clean acutally compared to some of the piles i have measured before. Ahhh the good ol days of cooking your brain in the summer doing waste surveys!!

The real injustice is the 1-ton a minute that goes into the Plateau burner (others as well) and should be going to co-gen or bio-buels or something as it has already been removed from the forest and so it should be utilized.

From what I understand you can't chip the waste to spread it out on the land, because when it decomposes it generates a chlorine type substance that kills plant life and it takes about 20-years through a natural cycle for this to break down. This is why at old mills sites nothing grows on the old chip and waste piles, and why no one uses hog fuel or wood chips for garden fertilizer.

IMO pile it up and burn the stuff not hauled out of the woods... its the best way to spread the nutrients back into the forest naturally.

Here's my vote of admiration for gus's opinion on this.

I think Ben Parfitt from the "policy alternatives" organization has hatched his opinions in the dark of a small windowless office, in front of a computer monitor, with very little knowledge of the real world.

And the sad think about this, is that he has caught the eye of the revenue hungry news media, who see this as an opportunity to stir the wood, fan the flames, a bit.

How much do you want to bet that within a day or so, someone from the NDP will try to use this story to generate a bit of face time on the evening news?

A few years ago, I had a summer student working for me, a bright young lad. One day, he mentioned in passing, that he had picked up some extra money, doing research for the "policy alternatives" organization. He chuckled, saying that he would be "pushed" to tint the research a bit, to benefit the NDP's agenda of the day, which of course always confronted what the Liberal gov't was doing.

A leopard don't change it's spots - do it?

isn't mr parfitt a clever boy then.

the piles are actually good habitat for small mammals when they are left there. However, the piles shown are waiting to be burned. The waste is piled from areas where the trees are yarded/processed. There is so much debris there that trees cant be planted.
There is a big difference between usable wood and merchantable wood. Contractors bid to harvest timber to ministry standards. Expecting them to go to any further expense to satisfy the general public is unrealistic. When you hire someone to do a job, they do it, not the job plus some extra ecause they are soooo nice. As for pushing the limits, well perhaps contractors do so, but if you think they are getting away with murder, you have never dealt with Enforcement at the MOF.
By the way, if you see oil drums and the like left at any logging show, report it. These are violations (unless they are on private land)and need to be dealt with, not cried over.

how did i manage to post this twice? Oh well, the waste could not really be spread back out without doing more harm to the site than good (compaction, forest floor disturbance, etc. It would also increase the difficulty for planters, etc.
I realize there is a perception of gross waste of the forest resource out there but there is no profit to be made from picking up the debris left (working to current standards) then it should be left to decay or burned. We have better alternatives for increasing mid-term timber than gleaning road side waste. Unless of course there are people out there who can make such operations profitable (without govt. subsidies)

It was Pat Bell's who started to write the article but he changed his mind..... to close to election!!

I agree that some waste needs to be left on the forest floor when logged and I also agree that some of it needs to be better utilized.

The scale of this whole issue is mindboggling and there is no way it can be all managed for one or the other or even both for that matter. We couldn't log it all even if we wanted to and we cannot utilize it all in some sort of bioenergy scheme.
So people who decide to try to polarise this issue that we should or should not log or remove most or utilize some/all of what is cut are really out of touch with reality.
IMO we need numerous waste utilization systems put in place quickly and this will hardly put a dent in what is available and quickly deteriorating. We are at least five years late in building these plants already.

"WE" are the people who need this to happen and it must be "WE" that take responsibility for our current energy infrastructure problems and our environmental performance, both short and long term.
"WE" are expecting the solution to come from mega corps which have no such priorities. Obviously waste utilization is not lucrative enough or quick enough ROI. So we will wait until we provide enough concessions or lock into high price contracts before the companies are going to do something about "OUR problems".
IMO;This is when our problems will really start as electrical energy will skyrocket and our economy and standards of living will be seriously reduced. This will be similar to the effects of last summers gas prices,except it will never go down.

Contrary to liberal philosophy, privatizing all of our infrastructire is a death sentence to our collective prosperity. We do not need to exclude private energy production, but we need to be able to manage the affordable means to sustain everything else.
Its high time that BC invests in its infrastructure once again.

A sidenote:

In the picture above, there are several larger pieces sticking way out from the pile, that do not appear to be raked there or piled there by a machine. They are all facing the same general direction and appear to have been staged.

It appears to me that nobody these days can so much as take a poop without spinning it wildly before it hits the ground.