Clear Cut Story Not So Clear Cut
By Ben Meisner
Thursday, March 10, 2011 03:45 AM
The media didn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story earlier this week when it was suggested the City of Prince George was going to be exposed to a clear cut operation around the outskirts.
If you listened to the story, you had the feeling that we were going to lay waste to all the trees in a 40 mile circle surrounding the city to construct a fire barrier.
Well that is not quite true.
In fact what is happening is this. Some months ago, the City of Prince George, Lheidli T’enneh, and the Regional District of Fraser Fort George signed a memorandum of understanding to look at an integrated approach to wildfire mitigation.
The idea was to log beetle infested wood while at the same time offering up more agricultural land in this area. By putting all of these lands under a Community forest licence, it enabled the three parties to to access Crown land , and Native lands while paying a reduced stumpage fee because of the fact the Community Forest licence has a lower stumpage rate.
These savings could go towards getting the land ready for agriculture production.
The Community Forest does not own the land, the Province does and they would retain the right to sell the land to farmers interested in purchasing a parcel.
There are 38,000 hectares in all slated to be given some sort of wildfire mitigation treatment. In some cases, the whole parcel may be logged clean, in others there may be a “prescription “ treatment which sees some logging, removal of understory, clearing of brush. It will all depend on the parcel in question and what is best to reduce the risk of wildfire.
Of the parcels identified in and around the City, there is a large chunk near Shelly which has a major beetle problem, along with another area near Willow River and a piece running south from Reid Lake towards the Nechako River.
When you consider that the area to be covered in this proposed expanded Community Forest Licence covers Summit Lake from the North to Hixon in the south, west of Isle Pierre to east of Giscome, the total area needing treatment ( 38 thousand hectares) is a drop in the bucket of the total land area. If every piece of property needing treatment was logged clean, it would be a combined total area of 10 by 12 miles.
It looks from first blush that when the beetle wood is cut, pockets of land throughout the region will look more like the country side from here to Vanderhoof. Changed for sure, but not a wasteland.
Before we get into panic mode, you might also want to ask yourself the question, do we need more agricultural land in this region? In view of the fact that global warming, (which you wouldn’t know from this year’s winter) will mean a much milder climate, we will likely be able to grow a lot of our own produce in the future.
Suggesting that we are going to have a Sahara Desert ringing the city of Prince George is more than a stretch of the story, it is wrong.
I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.
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Posted by: seamutt on March 10 2011 9:49 AM
If you take the time to fly over the area in question or to look at a 2007 or newer google map of the area you will discover that a large potion of the beetle infested area is already harvested and not a significant fire risk to the community. If the dead pine on ADA lands was such a fire risk, why not work to make the land more readily available to legitimate area farmers? This smells like a money grab by the city and their friends.