Liam Parfitt thinks he has a forestry management solution that will keep northern B.C. mills operating, reduce the risk of wildfires and create habitat that will give plants and animals a better chance to thrive.
“We have to look at other ways of keeping the industry going,” said Parfitt. “All we’ve been doing is salvaging dead things, whether it’s beetle-killed or fire-killed, we’re like a bunch of morticians. Forestry is all about live trees, habitat, ecosystems.” Parfitt explained the effect this system has. Sunlight hidden by treetops for years suddenly beams down to the forest floor where the harvesters cleared five-metre wide trails that run the length of the cut block. With the sky visible the forest floor is exposed to sun, rain and snow, which encourages the growth of willows, poplar, mountain ash and other broadleaf plants that moose and deer love to eat.
“A crown fire, when it’s burning, will throw up dinner-sized plates of burning ash and that will go up to five kilometres ahead of the fire, and how far will your campfire spread a fire, maybe five metres? If a fire gets up in the crown it stays in the crown, and it can’t do that here because we’ve created some gaps.”
“We have to move away from our clearcut mentality and value of the forests. It’s about the habitat, recreation, water quality and fire prevention.” Harvester operator/forest consultant Nico Kilgast moved to Prince George from Germany a year ago and says thinning and selective logging dominate forest harvesting practices in his native country, where cut blocks larger than a half-hectare are rare and larger cuts require a permit that can take years to acquire.
Woodlots represent about 1.5 per cent of the province’s total timber supply. Of the 841 woodlots in B.C., about 100 of them are within an hour’s drive of Prince George, averaging about 800 hectares each. A woodlot license grants the license holder the right to manage and harvest Crown timber within that area.
The annual allowable cut is 197,000 cubic metres, mostly dead pine, and Varga says there’s enough harvesting work in the 92,500-hectare Burns Lake Community Forest to keep a team of two working year-round for the next five years. He said if selective logging takes root in the industry and the big companies get behind it there are enough trees in northern B.C. to keep mills operational.