City Starts Winter Beetle Tree Removal

Thursday, November 02, 2006 02:41 PM

The City of Prince George has started its pine beetle removal and forest fire threat reduction program.

Crews will continue removing debris from an active site at 22nd and Ospika, as other crews work to remove a stand of dead trees from behind the McDonald’s at Massey and Westwood.

The program is getting underway a little earlier than normal says City Manager of Environment Mark Fercho "In the past we have started this kind of program in early December, but the conditions are just perfect for us now". Working through the winter offers some benefit in that snow cover protects the soil and the risk of fire is reduced.

This winter’s program will be larger in scale than we have seen so far. In 2004/2005 there were 220 logging truck loads, last winter, another 107 truck loads.

This year, the program is focusing on reducing forest fire danger, and reducing the hazard posed by dead trees.

Residents living next to areas that will be the subject of a harvest or special fuel managment plan, will get an information package from the City. You can click here to see the map of areas that will be dealt with over this winter.

There are four main programs this year in the City’s forest fire fuel management plan:

The residential assistance program tree removal program to help reduce costs of tree removal on private land.
Removal of dead pine trees from City land areas ranked high and very high hazard will be completed.
areas ranked as high and very high fire hazard in the community wildfire protection plan will have treatments to reduce the fire hazard, including removing dead pine, removing other tree species, pruning, brushing, and thinning.
Creation of "fuel breaks" in areas of the City’s new community forest, (crown land areas within the City) and in the more outlying areas that require larger cuts and treatments for wildfire protection to the City.

Residents can still get some assistance in dealing with the removal of debris. Debris removal crews remove fences before the trees are removed by a professional service which the property owner pays for. Once the tree is gone, debris removal crews return to clean up tree debris and re-install fences. This assistance is free. Anyone interested in the free tree debris removal service can call IFS at 564-4115 local 237 for information and to be put on the service schedule. Right now, the wait time for service is is less than one week.

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Posted on Thursday, November 02, 2006 02:41 PM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: Harbinger on November 2 2006 5:11 PM

Would be nice if they could plant a new tree after the removal so as to not have to come back again another time. But of course, like everything else in life, "it's not that simple".

Posted by: Chadermando on November 2 2006 6:38 PM

I smell a business oportunity....

Posted by: kimbo on November 3 2006 9:58 AM

"Working through the winter offers some benefit in that snow cover protects the soil".

Mr.Fercho talks the talk but dosent do the walk. Lets hope the information package he is handing out is more reliable then the one they gave out last winter. They crowed about how the sonw would protect the the tree removal (logging) and the understory would be retained.

They moved into Hesse Park and after they left it looked like a war zone. The small tracked equipment that they used destroyed the entire understory. They waited until spring when they came in with a stump grinder that was eight feed wide tracked and it ripped off any understory that remained. The response from Mr Paul was, "its unfortunated that the understory was lost".

We know it had to be done but why give us one story and then do something that is entirely different. Had they used a faller-buncher ran it down the middle there would of been very little damage in three or four years the stumps would have decayed and the understory would have covered the rest. And the cost would of been a fraction of the way it was done.

All last summer they ran a 18" water line from 15th avenue across the Ginter property to Ferry avenue (three Million dollars). Today they are back digging up parts of the line to repair the leaks.

Cheers