Dunkley Lumber Ltd., a large sawmill south of Prince George, has faced the same kind of challenges post mountain pine beetle (MPB) that sawmills across the region have been facing: how to find enough sawlog-grade volume to keep the doors open for the long-term.
The Strathnaver, B.C. mill, 42 kms north of Quesnel, was founded in 1951. Since 1977, when new owners took over, reinvestment in the mill has continued with major improvement projects taking place in every decade since.
During 2003 and 2004, the peak of the mountain pine beetle epidemic in the Quesnel area, Dunkley Lumber almost doubled its sawmill capacity. All sawmills were seeing an uplift in log volume thanks to attempts to mitigate the effects of the MPB epidemic, so this alone isn’t unusual.
What is unusual is Dunkley’s tree farm license (TFL) 53 has seen consistent increases to its Annual Allowable Cut (AAC) even post-MPB epidemic. In its most recent AAC determination on Nov. 30, 2010, the B.C. chief forester’s office kept the cut-level unchanged over the previous level of 219,000 m3 annually.
The B.C. chief forester’s office determines the AAC for license holders based on forest inventory, silviculture efforts, and other socio-economic factors. It is set at least once every 10 years, or more frequently if required.
“Over the past few years Dunkley has been successful in mitigating timber supply impacts from the mountain pine beetle by concentrating their logging in damaged stands,” said Melanie Boyce, deputy chief forester at the time. “As a result they are able to maintain harvest levels much the same as those prior to the infestation.”
With the AAC reflecting timber available for harvest, it is no surprise that Dunkley Lumber and TFL 53 were singled out for attention when the province recently introduced legislation enabling the conversion of volume-based forest licenses to TFLs as a way to stimulate the mid-term timber supply.
The province hopes that by giving license holders a stake in the future profitability of their forest tenures, license holders will make investments in their land base that lead to greater forest productivity.
Jason Fisher, vice president of Dunkley Lumber, said that knowing his company will reap the future rewards of good forest management has allowed Dunkley to focus on “getting as much of the land growing trees as possible.”
More than 80 per cent of B.C.’s total AAC of 64,874,085 m3 is allocated under a volume-based approach where license holders stake out their cuts within a Timber Supply Area (TSA) shared by other license holders.
Although informal agreements between license holders define areas of activity, there’s no guarantee that a license holder will ever return to a previously cut and reforested area, or cut-block.
On the other hand, said Fisher, “If it’s an area-based tenure then, at least theoretically, you’ve got the security that investments you make will be there to benefit from later on.”
Although there are minimum requirements that license-holders must meet when it comes to reforestation, Fisher said that there are a number of ways that Dunkley goes beyond those minimums with their TFL.
Fisher cites intensive silviculture, higher-density planting, and increased road rehabilitation as areas of forest management where Dunkley feels more comfortable going beyond the minimum requirements thanks to the area-based management scenario of TFL 53.
“The likelihood is that having those trees growing is going to help keep our inventories up,” he said. “The idea is that one day - maybe not for me, but for my kids or grandkids - we’re going to get the chance to harvest that [wood].”
The B.C. Forest Practises Board (FPB) is an independent body that audits and investigates both industry and government forest practises in terms of B.C. forest practise legislation. It makes its findings public and freely available online.
A 2003 FPB audit of TFL 53 found that Dunkley was not only meeting all of the requirements of the forest practise code, but that it went beyond those requirements in two significant respects.
First, Dunkley’s road rehabilitation exceeded the Prince George Forest District average. While the FPB reported that the average amount of land lost to forestry roads or permanent access structures was between four and five percent. Dunkley Lumber was within .3 and .7 per cent of land loss in their TFL.
This means that more of the forest base that was disturbed during log harvest had been returned to a tree-generating state.
“Dunkley has been restoring a greater portion of land to a tree-producing state than required,” the report reads. Dunkley did this by rehabilitating roads in excess of district policy.
Second, the report indicated that Dunkley made intense efforts to identify and selectively harvest MPB affected patches of dead pine within their TFL while leaving healthy stands of trees in place through a combination of helicopter and ground-based extraction.
All of these practises cost more money, but for Fisher, the added expense is justified because he knows his company will see returns from that healthy land base in the future.
“If you’re going to spend additional money and make additional investment in the land base, you want to have a good idea that you’re going to be able to get some of those returns back,” he said.
In singling out TFL 53, the province has called attention to a noteworthy forest-management success story right in the heart of the MPB epidemic.
But TFL 53 is just one of 34 other TFLs throughout the province. In 2012, province-wide, TFLs made up 12,566,514 m3 , or 20 per cent, of the total provincial AAC.
What of those other TFLs?
According to online documents, the FPB has completed 17 audits of TFLs since 1997. Some TFLs have been deleted, added, subdivided, and in some cases changed ownership. No implication is intended here that the 17 audits made reflect 17 currently existing TFLs or their existing management.
Of those 17 audits, only one reported any concerns regarding reforestation obligations. In that single case the concern was mitigated by extenuating circumstances and the auditors were confident that corrective measures were in place.
Existing TFLs that have passed Forest Practise Board audits range in size form the 1.2 million m3 AAC Western Forest Products TFL on north Vancouver Island to the small 45,000 m3 AAC TFL owned by the Corporation of the District of Mission.