Today's News

December 31, 2005: Logging frenzy destroys pine-beetle study area

B.C.

Logging frenzy destroys pine-beetle study area

 

Larry Pynn

Vancouver Sun

 

Saturday, December 31, 2005

 

THE PROVINCE I Logging of pine beetle infested forests in the B.C. Interior is so rampant that one researcher had part of her study area mysteriously wiped out -- and still doesn't know who did it.

Ann Chan-McLeod, a research associate at the University of B.C. who specializes in the impact of altered landscapes on wildlife, said she requires a control area of undisturbed lodgepole pine forest against which the impacts of altered landscapes can be compared.

She was more than a little dismayed when she returned to one such control area for her pine beetle study southwest of Prince George to find it had been logged.

"In a good study, you need a control," she explained in an interview. "I try to get areas that have some permanence because I want to be doing this for a little while. But I go there in the spring and it's gone. Nobody even knew about it."

Chan-McLeod had asked the major timber company operating in the area, Canfor, to leave the site alone. Canfor denied doing the cutting, which shifted the suspicion to any number of small-scale salvage operators, who are permitted by the provincial forests ministry to take up to 2,000 cubic metres of wood, areas typically smaller than 15 hectares.

Chan-McLeod doesn't know to this day who cut her control area. And while she's managed to salvage her study through another control area left unscathed, the incident highlights just how challenging her job has become amidst the frenzy of logging activity in pine beetle country.

"It's difficult," she confirmed. "I understand salvage operators have quite a bit of free licence."

The province has increased the annual allowable cut by 13.7 million cubic metres to 81.9 million cubic metres to combat the beetle and harvest as much timber as possible while it's merchantable. The size of clearcuts has been increased to hundreds of hectares from 60 hectares in the northern Interior under the Forest Practices Code.

The latest estimates suggest the infestation will peak in 2006, with the destruction of 90 million cubic metres of merchantable timber.

Forest companies are supposed to retain up to 20 per cent or more of the landscape for wildlife stands, streamside protection, and old-growth stands. But researchers have expressed fears to the province that those targets are not being met.

"It's something I'm concerned about," said Jim Snetsinger, the province's chief forester in Victoria. "We're keeping a close eye on it."

Phil Burton, manager of northern projects for the Canadian Forest Service in Prince George, believes logging of lodgepole pine forests could be more surgical.

Forests ravaged by the beetle still contain living trees -- mainly spruce and subalpine fir, and to a lesser extent Douglas-fir -- but they are too often sacrificed along with the rest of the clearcut.

"There is definitely a significant by-catch," he said.

Chan-McLeod said the impact of the current pine beetle infestation is so vast that there are no good historic studies to accurately say how wildlife will be impacted by both the death of the trees and the subsequent large-scale harvesting.

Scientists emphasize that no one should dismiss the value of retaining patches of pine, even if it is beetle-killed. Dead trees provide food for birds such as a woodpeckers, as well as roosting and nesting habitat, along with some cover for larger mammals against predators.

"It's not simplistic," Chan-McLeod said. "I don't think anybody really knows. But there will be winners and losers. You'll benefit some species and harm others."

lpynn@png.canwest.com

 

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=0688eec2-efed-44d0-b066-8563cc2ef2d8

Topic(s): Forestry News, Poor Performers, science news

Posted By EcoBC

RSS
 
More Today's News Articles



Website By: Pencilneck Software Corp. Design by: Brad Hornick Communications