firefox007

You make some interesting points and in a not so direct way seem to implicate the government for setting the stage for poor labour practices, fraud and forgery.

Tree-Planting.

It seems that all the posters have experience here. That makes for good comments & we all seem to agree tree-planting has gone way downhill in BC.

The Ministry of Forests must change its rules; to avoid us being forced to accept only the lowest-bid contract; they do this even if they've had severe quality control with that contractor previously. Out in the field, the foresters like myself don't want that, but our employer sets those contracting rules.

Another thing is the huge prevalence of NSR blocks; so the re-planting costs are huge. About half the blocks must be NSR. (Not Sufficienly Re-Stocked)

Stumpage Pays For Seedlings.

christophe;

"Tree-planting; it is interesting how the forestry companies"

"keep it at arms-length, isn't it?"

"You would think they might take more of an interest in replacing their own inventory, but hell no!"

What do you mean? They pay stumpage, which goes to the Province to pay for tree-planting, that's where the money comes from to grow the seedlings. Stumpage is tax.

"Why are we still allowing forest monoculture?"

Not true at all, whaddya mean? We in the MOF replant according to what species grows best in a given area; which could mean pine, spruce, D. fir, etc...All silviculture is site-specific...right...?

Forestry Companies.

"The forestry comapnies are usually multinational giants, owned by pension funds and they answer to no one."

They answer to those who lease the Crown land to them, the Ministry Of Forests. They only log if their logging plan is approved by the Ministry.

Paisley and Christophe, where's your evidence?

It never ceases to amaze me how those who claim to be so vitally concerned about our forests actually seem to know so little about them. I am referring to your reference to "monocultures". Just what monocultures would those be? Just another part of environmentalist mythology, I would guess.

I have worked in the forests all over Vancouver Island, along the BC coast and throughout the BC interior. I have carried out studies for the Ministry of Forests on species diversity in plantations to determine the mix of species over thousands of hectares of cut blocks. Both in my observations over the province and from those studies, I can assure you that very few of those cut blocks contain "monocultures". If only one species of trees is planted, it is usually because other species have seeded in naturally or will seed in naturally.

There is a very complex system in place that classifies ecologically every square inch of the province’s forests. It considers the old-growth species that were there, the soil, the climate and individual site factors to arrive at a recommendation of what species should be planted on a particular site. In my 20 years, I supervised many treeplanting projects and there were very few in which there was only one species planted on a cut block.

There are areas of the BC interior where you will find almost pure lodgepole pine plantations. This occurs mostly in the Cariboo west of highway 97. It is in those types of cases, where there were monocultures of old-growth to start with, where you may find monoculture plantations. Otherwise, there is a good mix of species in just about every plantation you would walk through.

As for the comments from those critical of the treeplanting industry, I agree 100%.

Stumpage fees used to pay for stream restoration too, guys

The forest companies pay stumpage fees then MoF hires tree planters. It is all arm's length and probably corrupt as hell. In other countries, the forest companies own the land and they take care of their own business.

The compartmentalisation of our industry robs everyone of ownership. THAT is my problem. It is the whole frigging system, which sucks.

As for forestry companies promoting bio-diversity, in the central coast, they were spot-spraying everything that wasn't fibre-producing. They hung posters in the post office in Ocean Falls and other population hot-spots but it was otherwise a well-kept secret.

Do you remember Forest Renewal BC? I do because I applied for $1.8 million to do stream assessment in 1996, and I got it. The director of FRBC threatened to resign because over half of the total $400 million per year they went through was spent on internal process rather than work.

Of the funds that did get spent on field work, 80% was spent on road deactivation and very little went towards actual stream restoration. Now they spend next to nothing on stream restoration.

Next March 31, the current funding for Living Rivers BC expires, probably forcing the termination of a valuable program that employs about a dozen expert fisheries biologists.

Again it is no one's fault, but the system is set up to fail and the only category of salmon streams in BC that is increasing in number is the category where "no fish were seen this year".

Meanwhile we export raw logs and the BC OIL and Gas Commission is staffed entirely by ex-forestry industry workers who have not discovered a cubic metre of oil or gas in their entire lives. They are forestry hacks. It is the epitome of nepotism, not professionalism.

So don't talk to me about how great our forestry industry is. Tell me instead why one of the last stands of mature Douglas-firs on southeast Vancouver Island was contracted to the Nanoose First Nation so they could log the headwaters of Nanoose Creek.

This province is totally f**ed up and we all know it. The union-management system is doing a great job of looking after themselves an the province of BC looks like the Avatar movie.

Apart from that, everything is just great.

robtaylor, your insight

has been my experience and understanding as well. With a quarter-million trees put into the ground myself, I can confirm anecdotally that "No ethnic minority in silviculture has a monopoly on low balling contracts to get work."

Your so right x4estworker

“It never ceases to amaze me how those who claim to be so vitally concerned about our forests actually seem to know so little about them.” Yes, ditto on that.
I am not sure if you know this but tree planting started decades before your 20 years at and solely as a band aid for clear cut logging. Things have hopefully changed but the fact remains that monoculture was tried, specifically with an attempt to make spruce the most common species on the west coast of the island which had nothing to do with biodiversity and everything to do with money.
As it turned out planting spruce everywhere didn’t quite work out. The last laugh and giggles project I witnessed, to try and turn things around, was watching silviculture workers climbing step ladders in a test block and cutting the top leaders off the trees and burning the accumulated piles to see if that would slow down the nematodes that were attacking them. When that didn’t work(funny that) the next project was injecting the trees with hypodermic needles filled with pesticide(failure no#2). The thing is the nematodes have always been around but clear cut logging had not. Natural generating spruce growing up under an old growth canopy don’t have a nematode problem.
This was a feeble attempt to correct a monoculture planting problem plain and simple, a myth it is not.
Of course there would be no reason to have tree planting if selective logging on small woodlot licenses was the norm in this province where natural regeneration would do the job itself. We would have far more jobs. The MOF has made it their business to make sure woodlot licenses are rare and you can believe that the forest corporations are on board with that. Why? One might ask? You will never see a ministry make decisions that would make themselves unemployed. The MOF's structure requires industrial logging. Woodlot licenses could mean the beginning of the end of industrial logging.

Thanks, Paisley

Your comment about tree planting being a band-aid for clearcut logging reminds me of the fish hatchery problem.

Hatcheries were conceived as a band-aid to dams and fish habitat destruction but they screw up the genetics of the fish. This has been proven repeatedly on many river systems.

Artificial tree planting probably does the same for the forest ecosystem, but on a longer time scale.

Foresters try to mimic nature, just as fisheries biologists do, and both are doomed to failure.

The idea of harvesting one or two trees for seed stock is just plain lunacy when looked at from the genetic perspective.

The idea of spraying the understorey in the central coast forests to promote the growth of fibre is equally nuts. Devil's club and Salmonberry do not compete with trees, they complement tree growth. Yet in 2001, the forestry companies sprayed everything that was not producing fibre in an attempt to maximise fibre production. I kid you not.

I remember talking to a Dutch forester on the Queen of the North (before it sank). He laughed as he said that if he did in Holland what Canadian loggers do here, he would be thrown in jail. Clear cutting only makes sense if you accept that raping the land is OK. Otherwise, it destroys everything, setting the land back 10,000 years in time. It is OK if you like mass wastage and erosion.

Merv Wilkinson of Wildwood proved that he could make more money by selective logging than by clear cutting. It just doesn't suit the big business model of the transnationals is all.