🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Aug17.010212.5143@news.mentorg.com> jhurst@renfield.mentorg.com (Jim Hurst) writes:
>>Robert Froese writes:
>>>I, Jim Hurst, write:
>

Lots of wrangling deleted.

>
>Intensive selective management produces economic bennies, plus keeps a
>healthy forest, and provides many non-fiber amenities.

Could you cite your references here?  I've seen no evidence of intensive
selective managment in large-tree climax forests providing any benefits.
Unless, of course, you're talking about "pocket clearcuts" or "group
selection, which isn't really selective logging at all, is it?

Most selective management practised on our side of 49 is in interior forests,
much younger and smaller than our coastal forests.  S.M. also requires
reasonable topography, to support the use of cable yarding systems, and
is often unsuccessful with hauling really long/large logs.

Nonetheless, MB and Interfor are both apparently committed to trying
alternative harvesting systems in Clayoquot, as part of the "price of
playing".

>
>>investment that is not made on
>>public land for presicely the same reasons as Clayoquot or South Moresby. 
>
>?  I'm having trouble understanding your point here.  Who doesn't invest
>on public lands for what reasons at Clayquot?  Do you mean they don't 
>replant because their concession runs out?  So they just strip public
>lands and leave?  My, isn't that a fine way to treat the public!  
>

Where'd you get that idea?  Until 1988, all reforestation on forest license
land was the responsibility of the government; all tree farm license land
was the responsibility of the licensee.  Since then, all reforestation has
been the responsibility of the licensee, and the obligations incurred at
the time of harvesting are carried (by law) on the company's books until
the new stands are "free to grow" (the actual amount of time this requires
is a bit fuzzy, but it's generally conceded to be > 10 years).

I think what Robert was saying was "who would want to make this type of
committment without some hope of long-term stability".  Remember that
companies make infrastructure investments like mills that require 10 to
15 years to write down, coupled with development of roads, and in a
business where profit is quite cyclical.  Some long-term stability of
wood supply is essential in order to provide sufficient positive cash flow to keep things going.  >>The government has demonstrated that investors in forest enterprises have
>>little reason to believe that over the long periods of discounting you
>>speak of they will see any return on their investments.
>
>Meaning that the forest concessionaires are failing in their duty to 
>regenerate trees?  Meaning that the TFL system is a failure?

If the TFL system fails, it will be because of a decreasing level of
commitment to forest companies with TFLs.  Remember that most forest
companies get less than 20% of their wood from TFLs, and many don't
have TFLs.

>
>Consider another alternative to the problem of encouraging forest investment.
>The Oregon Forest Practices Act was passed around 1974, and it states,
>more or less, "If thou cut trees, thou shalt regenerate trees."  Oh, there
>was weeping and wailing amongst industry at the time, but it turns out they
>could live with such a law rather easily.  Compliance is usually around 
>99%.  Not that their aren't other problems, damage to streams and fisheries
>and such.  But it's a good start.  It's a success, many states now have
>such laws.

Including BC.
>
>This was a *state* response to a problem of deforestation.  There were a 
>couple of problems addressed in this law:  in the Coast Range and Cascades,
>heavy timber harvest (virtually all clearcutting) was severely damaging 
>fisheries.  On the eastside (high, dry, lodgepole/ponderosa country)
>clearcut harvest was occurring on sites that could not regenerate, due to
>soil damage, so that (private) forest land was being converted to sagebrush.

This is not a problem in BC.  There is some site degradation due to
roads and landings, and everyone would like to see this problem minimized.
However, loss of forest land to non-productive status in BC has been
minimal.  Much more has gone to agriculture or urban status.

>
>It being in the public interest to preserve fisheries, and keep forests
>productive, a bill was hammered out whereby those who profit from timber
>harvest were required in some assure that trees come back, and some level
>of protetion was given to fish-bearing streams (revisions to the riparian
>protection are being hammered out, extending buffers above the fish bearing
>streams and providing for recruitment of instream woody debris, neither of 
>which industry likes One Bit).  

Again, this is also true in BC.  Forest companies in BC have long had to
deal with the federal department of fisheries and oceans, as well as both
provincial and federal environment ministries/departments.  I think that,
if you bother to look, you will find that BC is much more heavily regulated
than you seem to think.

>
>With the highest standard of living in the world, perhaps Canada could
>try something innovative like this, rather than allowing private interests
>to deforest public lands in the name of propping up something from the
>colonial era like the TFL system?

Who told you we weren't?  Plus, we don't have the problem of largely
uncontrolled logging on private lands, and we don't have the USFS, BLM,
and various state and local governments squabbling over jursidiction
and rule-making.  Finally, we don't have the same preponderance of
small, financially unstable forest operators common in the (US) Pacific
Northwest, logging and going broke before their planting obligations are
met.

>
>>So it seems to me that a healthy approach in resolving land use conflicts,
>>as well as improving general or specific economic benefits, would be to
>>persue a policy of providing some true long term security in tenure to forest
>>companies in exchange for the surrender of some existing tenure agreements and
>>their conversion to other resource uses, such as recreation.  
>
>That is certainly an approach that industry would like to bring to the table.
>However, note that industry has been greviously deficient in fulfilling their
>contractual obligations to date.  The Crown might well be best served by 
>simply nullifying their current contracts and starting from scratch.

Sez you!  I'd love to see your source and figures on this statement; it
sounds suspiciously like hot air to me.

>
>What evidence do you see that it is in the public's best interest to convert
>large tracts of coastal temperate rain forest (for example) into industrial
>fiber farms on the long term?

You seem to have this hang-up about fiber.  Forgetting that cedar, for
example, it little sought for pulp purposes since it ruins digesters,
you might be interested to find that most coastal operators are as
interested in sawtimber (in good market conditions) as in pulp.

Are you sure you aren't thinking of the rather shabby long-term agreements
that the state of Alaska has with its two major logging interests?

>
>>This would
>>likely be accomplished through the sale of legal title to Crown Land and
>>the establishment of park areas.
>
>I question whether this approach is one that serves the broader public 
>interest.  Then again, 96% of the land belonging to the feds does sound a
>bit too much.  Still, how does one get good value from a large scale land
>auction?  By going slowly, I suppose.  There is always the danger of a
>large scale transfer of wealth from public to private hands, a la Reaganism.
>
>It seems to me that a healthy approach in resolving land use conflicts,
>as well as improving general or specific economic benefits, would be to
>require a forest practices of a high standard on all public lands.  
>Amongst the goal managed for would be:
>
>	long rotations
>        sustained yield
>	preserving the natural biota
>	ecological balance, maintaining good distribution of native habitats
>	extreme care to protect the soil
>	good economic returns
>
>Contrast this with clearcut forestry, which emphasizes only the last.

Sorry, but all of the above are considered in both TSA and TFL planning
in BC, and have been for quite some time.

>	
>>clearcutting can be both an economically and silviculturally efficient
>>system that does not unduly effect the potential for ecosystem recovery. 
>
>That it is the most economically efficient in the short term in terms of
>fiber production I do not argue.  Of course, it's not going to produce high
>value saw timber, so your little plantations will have to compete with the
>radiata pine from Chile, New Zealand, and the large scale cutting that will
>be going on in Siberia.

Again, the hangup on timber quality.  Take a look at the lovely second growth
forests up the Sunshine Coast; it's definitely sawtimber quality.  As you
state, our growth rates are not high enough to compete with 20-30MAI warm
country pulp stands.  They certainly are high enough to ensure decent
renewable sawtimber production.

>
>I grew up in the Southeast US, and when the old growth in BC is gone, you'll 
>no doubt be taking lessons in efficiency at harvesting your plantations from 
>that area.  Harvesting fiber farms is much more labor efficient, meaning less 
>people needed in the woods, for starters.  No more chainsaws, just drive up
>in a Cat that hugs the tree and cuts it off at the base.  

Sorry, we already do this, in the interior, and we're pretty good at it.
That's why Georgia Pacific and the like have been lobbying to get countervail-
ing tariffs instituted.
>
>But does it really not unduly effect the potential for ecosystem recovery?
>What about interior species?  Once you've made the commitment to 
>clearcutting, it may be 200 years before much of the native fauna can
>survive on that piece of ground.

That is just so much bullshit!  Have you ever been to any logged over
areas?  I have seen and touched 40 year old Douglas fir standas in central
BC that are declared prime mule deer habitat.

>                                  Coastal temperate rain forests tend 
>toward a patchy spatial distribution of stands with a single dominant
>age class.  The biodiversity in these forests is highest at two of these
>dominant age classes:  very young and very old forest.  In very young, 
>there are grasses and herbs, then the canopy closes at age 20 or 30,
>and doesn't open up until around age 150+.  No commercial outfit will 
>grow stands this long, so these stands will never reach ecological maturity.

What if the terms of their management commitment requires longer rotations?
This is already becoming an accepted requirement in many BC Timber Supply
Areas.

>So once you began fiber farming on plantations, an important ecological 
>component of the forest is lost until you stop.
>
>What about damage to the soil?  There are better and worse sites:  in the
>OR Coast Range, the soils are deep, steep, and nutrient rich.  If you're
>going to hammer land with clearcuts, this is a pretty good area, because
>the soil can handle some erosion and remain productive.  Many clearcut
>sites in the Cascades, with thin volcanic soils, can't regenerate trees
>twenty and thirty years later.  This is not good forestry.

Granted, but much depends on the size of the clearcut, in terms of totally
denuded ground, at any one time.  And this is at the center of much of
the discussion in terms of Clayoquot.  One of the goals is to slow the
rate of harvest so that a reasonable amount of young stands balance out the
NSR.
>
>>there are
>>issues around clearcutting that deserve attention as well as many clear
>>examples where clearcutting results in disturbance that hampers tree,
>>plant, wildlife and microbe regeneration to an unacceptable degree.
>
>Agreed.  I maintain that, because of the drastic nature of clearcutting,
>the onus is certainly upon its proponents to show that it will not be
>destructive to the public resource on any given site.  But when you talk
>about timber concessions where they clearcut by the square mile, with
>little or no regard to riparian areas, aspect, sensitive soils, etc, 
>it's not very surprising that lots of areas don't recover.  It's not
>surprising that public outrage builds up, either.

Sorry, but ESA classification and harvesting practices designed around
sensitive areas (for soils, plantability, wildlife, or whatever) has
been standard in this province for a good many years.

More discussion about how clearcutting is untenable because hundreds or
thousands of hectares of clearcut blocks cannot possibly ever return to
real forests deleted.

Check out Mt St Helens if you want to see how well a forest can come back
in the face of real adversity.  Check out Vancouver's north shore if you
want to see how well a large coastal area, raped and pillaged less than
one hundred years ago, can return to a real ecosystem.

Please, people, can't we discuss some of the world's REAL environmental
problems?  Like 100 million North Americans driving to work every day?

Chris Hermansen                         Timberline Forest Inventory Consultants
Voice: 1 604 733 0731                   302 - 958 West 8th Avenue
FAX:   1 604 733 0634                   Vancouver B.C. CANADA
clh@tfic.bc.ca                          V5Z 1E5

C'est ma facon de parler.