A commentary by the publisher of the View From The Stump newsletter.
I read with concern the Feb. 23 article, “More mill closures inevitable as B.C. forest industry crisis deepens.” To correct Ben Parfitt, the resource industry analyst at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, infestations did not begin in 2009. Mountain pine beetle outbreaks in the Interior’s lodgepole pine forests are a natural phenomenon. In the late 1990s and early 2000s these outbreaks expanded into an epidemic with the amount of pine being killed each year reaching a peak in 2005.
By 2015 the epidemic was well over, with a reported 731 million-plus cubic metres, or 54 per cent, of the Interior’s merchantable lodgepole pine having been killed – that 15 years’ worth of harvest!
Faced with such a catastrophe, the government had two options:
1. Do nothing and let the dead timber decay; or
2. Encourage the industry to use as much of the decaying timber as possible by temporarily increasing the harvest before it rotted.
The later scenario was adopted, and a significant volume of dead pine was salvaged, which in turn created jobs and boosted the local rural economies. At the same time, salvage harvesting created the opportunity for the prompt regeneration of these vast dead forests (thereby restarting the land base’s forest carbon absorption engine).
Yes, harvesting, and lumber production rose to levels well above historical averages, but it was done with intention – this was no secret!
Following the upswing in harvesting and milling activity, it was always known there would be a return to a sustained yield basis of forest management, but at lower harvest level than that prior to the beetle-epidemic. Some 23 years past the start of the epidemic, much of that pine is no longer suitable for making lumber so sawmills must now adapt or close.
I believe Parfitt’s comments provide a misinformed and false impression of the pellet industry. The B.C. pellet industry grew in response to a European Union mandated target to use more than 20-per-cent renewable energy by 2020 which included biomass energy (as in wood pellets).
At the same time, the practice in B.C. was to burn post-harvest residue in slash piles, while sawmills’ sawdust and shaving would go into beehive burners – all of which were the perfect wood supply for making pellets.
It was obvious there was a win-win solution to this increased renewable energy demand in Europe and the surplus of low-quality wood fibre (as dead forests or from increased sawmilling) because of the beetles. How could this possibly have been a mistake?
A recent study conducted by a team of forest professionals and academic experts found that 85 per cent of the B.C. pellet industry’s fibre supply comes from byproducts of sawmills, and the remaining 15 per cent is supplied from the forest including low-quality logs not suitable for lumber production and post-harvest residue.
What secondary value-added product could be made with sawdust, shavings and logging slash as Parfitt suggests there would be an alternative to making pellets? Despite the plethora of wood fibre available due to the epidemic, no other industry was developed.
Harvest rates were not such that “too much has been cut too quickly” as Parfitt says – this is an absurd proposition given the decision was to harvest the dead timber before it rotted – there was no option to stave off harvesting the dead timber for later.
Today, the Interior industry is in the midst of a timber supply fall-down as a result of the beetle and other natural factors. We are not running out forests overall, rather we have reached limits in some areas on what is economically available to harvest – that is a big difference.
Exacerbating today’s situation is that in many areas across the province there are forests affected by the government’s imposition of new policy initiatives that limit harvesting of non-dead timber (like forests set aside for old-growth management and other non-timber production values).
The article is correct in providing the message that “there’s every reason to believe that we’re going to see further mill closures,” but mill closures cannot be blamed on the incorrect notions that the industry was overharvesting (dead timber) or the rise of the pellet industry.
>>> To comment on this article, write a letter to the editor: [email protected]
