• News
  • Multimedia
  • Weather
  • Air Quality
  • Civic Election 2008

Forest Practices Board Notes High-Grading

By 250 News

A Forest Practices Board investigation has found high-grading of cedar and some spruce trees on the central and north coast  of B.C.

In an examination of 54 cutblocks, the investigation found that the valuable trees were selectively logged by helicopter, but at the expense of any future harvest opportunity and with no viable plan for regenerating the forest.

The harvest method involves selectively removing the valuable cedar and spruce trees, leaving behind mainly old rotting hemlock trees spread across the cutblock. This is commonly referred to as "high-grading." There is little likelihood that young cedar or spruce will grow well on these sites because of the low light levels under the dense tree canopy that remains.

The investigation did find that important social and environmental values such as viewscapes and biodiversity, often cited as the reason for using this method, were protected. The practice is also allowed under current legislation.

"This is a bit of a dilemma," said board chair Bruce Fraser. "On the one hand, government and industry want to extract some economic value from these sites and provide local employment and economic benefits, while also protecting other forest values. But on the other hand, the result is limited prospects for harvesting in the future."

"Government may decide this is entirely acceptable, but it is not consistent with current policy of sustained yield forestry and legislation that requires maintaining a future timber supply," said Fraser.

The performance of the forest licensees was variable, with some doing a better job than others, and was also affected by the type of forest they were operating within.

The investigation found a number of other issues, such as provincial government policies that encourage this approach, professional stewardship issues involving the adequacy of prescriptions that professional foresters are writing for these sites, and licensee implementation of practices on the ground that are different from what
was prescribed.

The Ministry of Forests and Range and the coastal industry are aware of  the issue and have a working group looking at ways to improve harvest methods on these types of forest sites. "We are encouraged by the work being done on this issue and look forward to some solutions that will continue to meet the economic, social and environmental objectives of people in coastal communities both today and for the future," said Fraser.

Tools:    Email to Friend | Print | Digg this Article | Save this Page

Comments

Posted by: YamaDooPolCat on January 17 2008 7:43 AM

The LRMP has some of the same kind of weird "have your cake, and eat it too" language in it. And now it comes home to roost.

I protested at the PG LRMP that keeping the View Scape targets in the plan restricted the ability of the foresters to plan properly. But the participants aren't the most reasonable or unselfish group you are likely to find and refused to think about it. The LRMP is one weird document and should be scraped. It reflects the wishes of the strongest person in the room at the time, and nothing else.

Posted by: realitysetsin on January 17 2008 8:48 AM

Selective logging doesn't work. Just another example.

The forest is a farm. If a traditional farmer selectively harvested his crop of lettuce, what do you think would be leftover? The really good stuff? Likely not.

Posted by: northman on January 17 2008 9:04 AM

Of course they are high grading this is nothing new...You cant produce lumber out of rotten logs! When you do saw lumber out of rotten logs you get a low grade that isnt selling right now and has a hard time selling when the market is at its hightest.They could go back to a full blown clear cut and leave the rotten trees in slash piles like everywhere else then people will really start bitching. Just because a tree is rotten doesnt mean that its usless to the environment, it is still living creating oxygen. Just isnt sutable for lumber production. No matter what forest companies do in this business, even the most dilligent companies!! their practices still arent good enough for some people.. And these are the people who lack practical experince and knowledge of the forest industry.

Posted by: herbster on January 17 2008 10:05 AM

I'd like to see some analysis of stumpage rates here too. Word of mouth has it that some of the red cedar on the Queen Charlottes was going for $0.25 /m salvage rates. So they get to highgrade it and they call it salvage! Of course it all then gets shipped overseas. Beautiful scam. Liberals should be proud.

Posted by: northman on January 17 2008 10:41 AM

Herbster- Im not going into details here but you can google how the bc scale syestem works and you will find how wrong the word of mouth people are.

Posted by: gitterdun on January 17 2008 10:50 AM

"leaving behind mainly old rotting hemlock trees spread across the cutblock".....isn't this just a standing slash pile? .......at least until the next good windstorm!

Posted by: herbster on January 17 2008 11:47 AM

My word of mouth comes from an RPF who worked on the Charlottes and knows of what he says.

Posted by: realitysetsin on January 17 2008 12:01 PM

Northman, the same BC scale system that is now to allowing companies to put logs into KILNS before scaling them so that they can bake them, scale them and claim all sorts of 25c stumpage due to the new found checked logs?

I would agree though, that all forest companies high grade. There is increasingly no incentive to take the junk wood.

Posted by: cowtipper on January 17 2008 8:30 PM

I think the best thing that could be done in this situation is to read the full report for the Forest Practices Board and see that not all cutblocks that were part of the report were "high graded".
There are some dilligant companies out there who are trying to do their best, as the report shows.
Northman is right, even rotten trees have a place and purpose to the environment.