The NDP government brought in Innovative Forest Practices Agreements (IFPA) in 1997, to grant forest licence holders the ability to earn allowable cut increases by work to improve forest productivity through what the Ministry of Forests calls “specialized silviculture, inventory reviews, and growth and yield activities.”
To date, Forest Renewal BC has spent many millions of dollars on six IFPA pilots in the Interior.
IFPAs are an affront to common sense. They propose that supposed improvements to the growing stock could allow for an increase in logging of the remaining old growth.
Back in 1976, Peter Pearse in his Royal Commission on Forestry report, described the “allowable cut effect” of using improvement in growing stock to produce an Annual Allowable Cut increase as “so obviously perverse that the degree of acceptance of the system is surprising.” (Timber Rights and Forest Policy, Vol. I, pg. 228)
The timber cut is now declining due to the “falldown effect,” as fewer high volume, mature forests remain. Meanwhile, plantations are threatened by bugs, diseases, global warming and ultraviolet radiation damage. A 1992 survey of young plantations showed that one third had been impacted by insects and disease. (FRDA Report #190). The government, without accurate data about the health of young forests, plans to increase the cut in hopes of future increases in growth. This program is both scientifically unsound and runs counter to the principles of sustainability.
A Forest Service study on the economics of intensive silviculture shows future benefits are dependent on premium prices for larger sawlogs. Without this premium, “untreated stands in all but a few situations (largely coastal) provide the best forest investment strategy.”
Where does Chief Forester Larry Pederson stand on the potential benefits from incremental silviculture? His scepticism is apparent in his Annual Allowable Cut Rationales for both the Williams Lake and Kamloops Timber Supply Areas:
“Most current research indicates that while such practices improve the quality of timber within a forest stand, they have little effect on the actual volume of timber produced, in most cases.” Fertilization “would only affect the medium-and long-term timber supply.”
In the Okanagan Timber Supply Areas Rationale, Pederson down played the benefits of stand tending:
“Any volume gains attributable to these practices are small and will not be realized until well into the future. Also, the extent to which these activities could be expanded is limited currently by the presence of root rot in the Timber Supply Areas.”
One of the Innovative Forestry Practices proposed is improved inventories. Forest companies will be able to use stumpage money to attempt to find more trees and volume. Inventory should be the responsibility of the Forest Service instead of a forest company that is desperate for more fibre to feed its over-capacity sawmills.
The government once promised the public that Forest Renewal BC was going to invest stumpage dollars into our future forests. Now it wants to use stumpage money to give these future benefits to forest companies today. Forest companies will be able to spend our children’s inheritance now to boost their corporate profits.
Unfortunately, it looks as though IFPAs will continue, given the Liberal government’s intentions to fund programs that will increase Annual Allowable Cuts. One can only hope that Regional Managers will be unwilling to grant these IFPA cut increases based on such dubious assumptions.
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[From WS December 2001/January 2002]
