Gordon Hamilton, Canwest News Service
VANCOUVER — The provincial government launched a new plan yesterday to reduce the millions of cubic metres of wood being left to rot after logging by changing the way it values timber.
Forests Minister Pat Bell announced the changes — to be introduced in small pilot projects around the province this fall — during a conference call with news media.
He said he is “very concerned” about the volume of wood being left behind in the province’s forests.
The Ministry of Forests estimates that up to four million cubic metres of wood — enough wood to fill 130,000 logging trucks — go to waste every year.
Bells believes the real amount is actually higher.
“I believe there is a lot more out there. Tens of millions of cubic metres is a very real possibility,” he said in a recent interview before the new policy was announced.
At the heart of the changes is a new form of forest tenure. Instead of charging loggers a set price for every cubic metre of wood that’s deemed to be merchantable, the province will charge them a flat rate for all the timber in a stand or specific area.
Bell called it a lump-sum sale.
“You are purchasing all of the fibre in that area for a single price,” Bell said.
The government expects the changes will provide economic incentive for loggers to utilize “every single piece of timber in that stand,” he said, providing sources of fibre for emerging industries such as wood pellet manufacturers.
Currently, by charging a higher stumpage rate but just on timber deemed merchantable for sawmills or pulp mills, loggers have no incentive to haul out wood if their costs are higher than the price they can get for it.
The current policy has led to “high-grading” of timber, by loggers, who take only higher-valued saw logs that are profitable after all their costs — including stumpage — have been factored in.
“The temptation to cream the stands is very real for people,” Bell said in acknowledging the flaws in the current provincial practice.
Further, loggers are not even bothering to bid for government timber sales if they believe they will not be able to pay the stumpage and break even.
Rick Publicover, executive director of the Central Interior Logging Association, said he is hopeful the new forest tenures will solve some of the problems faced by contract loggers if problematic details can be resolved.
“I like the concept,” he said. “Normally, if our members only have one market they can sell into [sawmills], they are stymied in terms of developing new opportunities.”
With the province charging a flat rate for all timber, he said loggers will be encourage to haul out marginal timber.
However, he said loggers already see several impediments to the new stumpage system working.
Loggers are to be charged up-front for the new timber licence before they have harvested it, increasing their risk — and the risk their bankers will face.
Further, he said, it remains unclear how government timber cruisers will take in the value of all the wood, whether it is merchantable or not, in arriving at a lump sum value for the area to be logged.
He said some contractors in some regions have stopped bidding for timber because of the current stumpage system.
“To log it and haul it out, you couldn’t deliver it for the price some mills are paying. “I think this will open up more areas for marketing timber that currently aren’t being utilized,” he said.
Bell also introduced a plan to reduce the impact on forest communities of the mountain pine beetle epidemic by encouraging more use of the dead pine now for uses other than lumber, such as biofuel.
That would take some of the pressure off green stands of timber, which could be used to fill the gap once the pine is gone, he said.
Bell also said the province is considering investing more heavily in silviculture to bring the new generation of pine on-stream faster.
