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B.C. timber report leaves questions: councillors By Andrew Hudson Houston Today
Andrew Hudson /Houston Today
PRIZE STEER
Quick Community 4-H member Jake Dieleman stands with Elroy, the 1,330-pound Angus-Charolais cross he raised as a 4-H market project. Elroy won top middleweight steer at the Bulkley Valley Fall Fair on Aug. 24. “I’ve been in 4-H for 10 years now and grew up on a beef ranch with 30 cattle, so I’ve been around them for a long time,” Dieleman said, adding that he hopes Elroy might fetch a price of between $2.50 and $3.50 a pound.
A special report on B.C.’s mid-term timber supply didn’t make many waves at Houston council last week. “Really, I didn’t see any recommendations that weren’t already there before the review,” said Mayor Bill Holmberg. Facing a pine beetle epidemic that could shut logging production equal to eight of B.C.’s 24 interior sawmills, a special bipartisan committee led by Nechako Lakes MLA John Rustad spent the last four months touring interior forestry towns before sending a list of 22 recommendations to the Ministry of Forests. While Mayor Holmberg welcomed the review as a chance for people to be heard on the issue, he said that what really matters it not the committee’s report so much as what the ministry de-
cides to do with it. Councillor Jonathan Van Barneveld, who joined Mayor Holmberg in addressing the committee at its Houston hearing, said the report reflects many things people in forestry have been thinking about for years. “It’s good to see that finally down on paper,” he said. But the report was quite broad, he said, and when it came to the most controversial proposal—relaxing forestry rules to do increase logging in protected areas such as old-growth stands and riparian areas—the decision was delegated to a series of local landuse planning groups. “I think everyone thought that was going to be talked about in the report, and it was passed down the chain,” he said. “Just because the report is out doesn’t mean we have any answers yet.” Van Barneveld said
he was surprised to see a special section of the report go to the question of what to do in Burns Lake, where residents and forestry company Hampton Affiliates have urged the province to help secure enough timber to rebuild Hampton’s recently destroyed Babine Forest Products sawmill. The report outlines Hampton’s requests on the issue, including one to revoke the timber licences of its big competitors in the Lakes TSA. The report stopped short of granting that request, but it did join Hampton in the hope that harvesting marginal stands, investing in silviculture and other measures could boost the Lakes-area timber supply to 1 million cubic metres a year from the 500,000 cubic metres a year that was previously forecast. B.C.’s Ministry of Forests is expected to decide on the issue by the middle of Sept. 15.
Forests ministry to look at securing salvage loggers’ cut By Andrew Hudson Houston Today
B.C.’s forestry minister will soon decide whether to create a license for small-scale salvage logging in the Morice timber area. In a letter to District of Houston councillors, who asked the province to con-
sider such a license in May, Minister Steve Thomson said he expects to finish a review of Morice timber licenses by September. While the Morice timber supply is “very tight,” he said he would keep salvaging a priority. Forester Dave Mayer speaks for the
Morice Forest Salvage Society, a group of 12 Houston loggers who salvage small areas of beetle-killed pine trees and hire one or two extra staff at most. Mayer says that just like a big forestry company, small-scale loggers need to be sure they’ll have more timber to cut in the future
before they can invest in their businesses. “It’s exactly the same scenario, only it’s even more difficult for the smaller guy because they can’t capture the economy of scale that a large operator can,” he said. For two years, the MFSS has been asking the Nadina forest
service to create a forest license of between 50,000 and 100,000 cubic metres of timber they can bid on. “There’s still a lot of area out there that hasn’t been salvaged,” Mayer said, noting that was the finding of an Aug. 15 report by B.C.’s special timber supply committee.
“The real plus for the small-scale guys is they can go in and they can log ares of two or three hectares. The big operators can’t be bothered with something like that.” Minister Thomson suggested that besides a license, Houston’s small-scale loggers might secure timber
through Dungate Community Forest. But Mayer disagrees. Logging for Dungate is managed by larger operators, he said, and while some have hired MFSS members in the past, he said those contracts are still on a year to year basis.