Strategy is there but WFCA wonders if regulations are disappearing

The Western Silviculture Contractors Association (WSCA) is delivering tree-planting training this year through the federally funded and provincially administered Community Development Trust Fund. John Betts, WSCA Executive Director, says, "First Nations are training in driving on resource roads, operating brush saws, running all-terrain-vehicles, and driving crew buses," on highways and resource roads.
     

"We delivered training last year in the Chilcotin and Blue Collar Silviculture's Mark Courtney instructed a class in the field. It was an opportunity for the First Nation trainees to experience the life of a tree planter in a forestry bush camp," says Betts. He believes training in these close quarters produces an excellent outcome for silviculture contractors. 
     

"The trainees get the inside track on the 'stocking' standards in B.C. forestry," which species of trees are used, and the spacing and placement requirements of the seedlings. Betts notes that the province of B.C. has been depending on nature to take it's course in regeneration of forests. 
     

"We have seen a lower priority given to stocking the forests with seedlings. We went from planting 250 million seedlings a couple years ago to planting 160 million this year," and even fewer next year. He says that 40 percent of the MPB ravaged landscape is not growing any new trees. 
     

"We have 18 million hectares of MPB degraded forests in B.C. alone," including forests eaten by the spruce bud worm. "We have many areas with bug kill, other blights, and forest fire burned areas where restoration is being ignored." Betts notes that arguments made by Keith Atkinson, CEO of the First Nation Forestry Council, correctly identify the problems in a sketchy funding regime.
     

"The FNFC recognizes that we have crushing regeneration issues and huge demands for landscape level replanting operations," including transmission line corridors, highways, and watersheds. Electrical grid failure is just one of the threats in the forest fire (inferno) scenario. Destruction of watersheds also demands more attention."
     

Meanwhile the province is overrun by environment lobbies that want to lock-down forestry operations, "They are not recognizing the problem. Leaving forests alone is perilous when fires are increasing in number and severity." Betts notes that historically First Nations used a lot of fire to manage forests and make them produce specific plants, trees, and ecologies.
     
"The so-called natural fires have been eliminated by suppression and fire is gone as a forestry management tool. In place of managed fires the unnatural fires we see are non-renewing events." The intensity of these unnatural fires wipes out water resources, aquatic plants included, and all the grasses and trees in an ecology disappear. 
     

Worst of all, the soil gets super-heated and destroyed as an eco-system. Unfortunately, says Betts, "We see no real strategy and the demand is growing to get involved with biomass reclamation and refurbishing of these provincial forests.
     

"Nature won't be fooled. Interior forests are being left behind, whereas these landscapes require a change in strategy." First Nations are blazing the trail in the pursuit of a biomass economy from these decadent forests. "They see perpetual employment and management requirements for the eco-systems in their territories."
     

Betts believes the existing proposals for use of biomass are too large, and should be made smaller than those seen in the BC HYDRO call for power scenarios, like the 40 MWh cogeneration plant in Gitxsan and the 60 MWh plant in T'silcotin. "Go smaller, scale back the size of the projects to 1 to 5 MWh and make more of them," because smaller plants make more efficient use of biomass to create electricity."
     

While restoration strategies are in place the regulations behind it are being deleted left and right, and, Betts adds, "The premier may say, 'Well I'm not getting any calls on this,' but it appears that overall he's not paying attention to a degrading public resource."

Zanzibar Holdings partner discusses their B.C. silviculture prospects in 2010

Tree planters are looking at 2010 with less certainty. There are 25 million less seedlings being planted in 2010 than 2009, according to Tony Harrison, Zanzibar Holdings. This is partly due to reduced funding for provincial funding called Forests for Tomorrow. The current funding of 44 million a year for the next 10 years will address about  4% of the need. Harrison says the growing carbon credits business and the new biomass proposals could help with some of the funding shortfall but there is a big gap to make up. 
     

FFT has been set up  to manage the work in Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) destroyed forests and is mandated to provide 25 percent of the work to First Nations. "First Nations could be key players in the business of carbon credits and silviculture. They have an potential role to play in negotiating carbon credits through treaty discussions." Pat Bell the BC minister of Forest recently said that he believes carbon credit sales will be funding a major source in the provincial silviculture in the near future.
     

This MPB crisis makes everybody in the forestry industry a little queasy. Harrison notes that B.C. is looking at 16 million hectares of MPB eaten forests. "There is a huge opportunity for the silviculture industry here that has been stalled for the past 5 years.
     
Zanzibar is a silviculture company with 120 employees, "For the past two years we've been working in joint ventures in the Cariboo country with members of the Shuswap nation and the Tsilhqot'in Nation Government (TNG) . Presently we are working with Western Silviculture Contractors Association (WSCA) on the issues of First Nation participation with the discussion to centre on the lack of First Nation silviculture businesses involved in the FFT program.
    

 For the past couple years Zanzibar has been planting and surveying in First Nation territory, "We've been working with them to put the Bands in profitable situations and workers are making a good living. The province has a history of Bands launching into silviculture and failing but the partnerships we have formed make the process work."
     

Harrison says the training aspect of silviculture adds 20 percent to the cost of a tree-planting operation, but is well worth the investment. FFT in the Cariboo has supported First Nations to date but there is a need to expand the program and continue to promote joint ventures between local Bands and experienced contractors. Unfortunately because of the downturn in the forest industry and Federal and Provincial governments cutting back funding there is less opportunity at a time when our forests need silviculture the most. "We should be planting 250 million seedlings a year, but this previous year the province planted 200 million. In 2010 the province will plant 175 million," and next year we may be down as low as 150 million new trees will go in the ground.
     

The Tsilhqot'in National Government and Secwepmec ( Northern Shuswap) will be gearing for tree-planting operations that are so much in demand because the MPB has been especially virulent in the heart of their traditional territory. WSCA sponsored First Nation Silviculture Safety training sessions will be available this April in Williams Lake."

Forest industry sailing through a perfect storm

Skimikim Nursery in Salmon Arm, B.C. continues to grow trees for silviculture in a province where forestry is struggling, and Skimikim has contracts to fulfill in First Nation forestry departments including Adams Lake Band and Stuwix Resources Joint Venture, two forestry outfits operating in the B.C. Interior. 
     

Skimikim had to close their Surrey greenhouse operations that had been growing trees since the 1960s. “We’re probably not as hard put as eastern Canada,” said Jim Kusisto, but the workload at Skimikim is clearly reduced, “We shipped 275 million seedlings about three years ago, this year we will ship 185 millions seedlings. We’ve lost millions of seedlings in sales in the past three years.”
     

All areas of the province are harvesting less timber, mills are shutting, “Its way down and mills are closing,” said Kusisto. “All of the towns of the B.C. interior are tied to the forest industry and stores are closing on main streets, every month one or two more.”
      

Kusisto agreed that wood pellet manufacture and use of forest waste and biomass, these are new directions for an industry that faces a full blown mountain pine beetle disaster in B.C.. “There are hundreds of thousands of trees standing that have already exceeded their life expectancy,” dead pine trees standing or leaning all over the forests of B.C., and Jim gets to see them up close.
     

The forests of B.C. have been painted a different colour from the normal constant verdant; where once was a constant bright green, instead great red swatches cover long mountain slopes from Houston to Burns Lake, from Prince George to Merritt. It’s a patchwork of dead trees, some standing red and dying, amid thriving spruce or fir. Other pine vistas provide consistent ruination from the top to bottom of a mountain slope.  In the face of all the tumult in the B.C. and Canadian forest industry, “Silviculture has not been ignored,” said Kusisto. But let’s face it, “There are limitations on what you can do to remediate a problem this big. This is off the scale in terms of what we’ve ever done before.”
     

In the forestry industry they’ve encountered what amounts to a perfect storm, “Massive amounts of wood to harvest with no market to sell to and everything in the economy going against us,” thus more than a few have scaled down operations. 
     

Skimikim closed Surrey greenhouse operations that had 20  employees. Kusisto said the time was right for most of the people concerned because the median age in the Surrey operation was older, most were at or near retirement.
     

The operation near Salmon Arm has a more diversified workforce of about 12 to 15 employees. “We are confident that we are going to go on. This year’s contracts look okay. The problem is margins are going to hell as the cost of fertilizer rises and hydro bills increase on greenhouse operations. We did get a break on natural gas this year,” and indoor growing occurred with cost-efficiencies this past winter.
     

The main goal in this economy is to keep the quality of their product up, “You are trying to maintain market share,” and ensure that word of mouth about the Skimikim seedlings is all positive. Good business relations with First Nations also help, “We got a later order from Lower Nicola First Nation this spring.” 
     

\The problem now is finding pine seed, “Pine seed is a valuable commodity right now,” said  Kusisto.  With all the pine in the province dead there is a huge volume demand for pine seed, “and more mixed species planting with pine and spruce, even pine and Douglas Fir. Not to say we’re out of seed, but those who own it are nervous about selling it right now.”
     

Cone orchards are needed, in fact, “It’s a 25 year commitment to invest in cone orchards, and it takes years to collect on that investment. We do grafts and create orchard seedlings by the thousands. You graft the pine strip to a root stock and produce a highly favorable pine tree for cone production.”
     

They did 2,500 grafts this year for cone orchards in B.C. and Alberta. The goal is to produce a bigger, better self-pruning pine tree that grows bigger and produces ‘clear’ wood,” wood without blemishes and knots. “You pick grafts that will produce taller, straighter, self-pruning trees that will deliver clear wood.”
     

\Bigger trees with better volumes of usable timber means the province can adjust future Annual Allowable Cuts upwards without adversely affecting the balance of volume in the forest.