by Jim Cooperman
The beetle epidemic, fuelled by climate change, is resulting in huge increases in the province’s Allowable Annual Cut (AAC). Recently, chief forester Jim Snetsinger announced the latest increases: 745,000 cubic metres/year (m3) in the Okanagan Timber Supply Area and 200,000 cubic metres for Tree Farm License 49. All told, the provincial increase so farhas been 14,790,039 m3 and the forest service is already looking at another 8,115,207 m3 increase.
The impact on ecosystems and on future harvest levels will be signifi cant. Lodgepole pine forests account for approximately 25 percent of the forestland base and most of these trees are forecast to be dead or dying within the next ten years.
The actual amount of wood logged has lagged behind the allowable cut levels. The “undercut” has varied from 2.5 million to as high as 9 million cubic metres in 2001. In the interior of the province, companies are still ramping up their operations to be able to cut more pine. On the coast, the cut had only been propped up due to high cedar prices, which are now falling. Most quality timber on the coast is now gone and companies can no longer fi nd markets for the hemlock that dominates the remaining stands. Logging costs on the coast are also a factor, as it is very expensive to log these hard-to-access forests.
Coastal companies have been pressuring the government to get into the second-growth forests. If they are successful, the Ministry of Forests will require that the AAC drop signifi cantly, because the remaining stands of old growth hemlock will have to be removed from the timber harvesting land base; companies cannot fi nd markets for it. Meanwhile, on their vast private forest land holdings on Vancouver Island, companies have been creaming off the second growth, with much of this quality timber shipped offshore as raw logs.
Salvage Problems
Despite the increased cut in the interior, much of the massive volume of dead lodgepole pine will never be logged. Of the close to one billion cubic metres forecast to be killed by the beetles, anywhere from one to two-thirds will be left on the landscape. Nonetheless, problems abound with the massive increase in salvage logging. Companies are taking advantage of the urgency to log, the relaxed regulations, and the lack of government monitoring. A “by-catch” of other green tree species is being exploited and feller bunchers often mow down the young trees (advanced regeneration) that would have matured far sooner than the seedlings getting planted in the cutblocks. Plus there is the increase in negative impacts on watersheds, recreation values and wildlife habitat.
Voodoo Growth
Part of the AAC increase is also due to a leftover policy from the 1990s, the Innovative Forestry Practices Agreement (IFPA). Forest companies have been awarded increases in Merritt, Vanderhoof, Kamloops and most recently, the Okanagan timber supply areas. Supposedly these companies have demonstrated that their innovative practices will result in higher growth rates and thus deserve higher cut levels, even though most foresters now admit that no forestry practice can result in increased growth. Instead, these companies have used voodoo growth and yield data to predict the trees are growing faster than previously estimated. Predicting faster growth in the face of climate change impacts such as drought, disease and more bugs seems absurd.
The entire forest industry stands like a house of cards. Once the beetle-killed pine has been logged, the crash will likely be signifi cant. Already, mills are closing or have closed across the province — in Malakwa, Midway, Clearwater and elsewhere. Often the softwood war is used as a scapegoat, when the real cause has been decades of overcutting that has focused on easy access, high quality stands of timber. Since companies have been planting too many blocks with lodgepole pine, the impact could stretch on for many decades, especially now that the beetles are decimating plantations as young as twenty years.
If forestry were managed to sustain all forest values, the chief forester would require licensees to focus as much of the cut as possible in beetle-killed lodgepole pine forests. Recent forest service harvest billing data shows 40 percent of the volume logged coming from lodgepole pine, but ideally the percentage should be double. Interior forest companies should have to switch to logging only beetle-killed pine during the epidemic so the AAC would not have to increase, more non-timber values could be protected and the impending falldown would be lessened.
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[From WS January/February 2006]