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| INSIDE THIS ISSUE... |
| GUEST
EDITORIAL
Weyerhaeuser is optimistic about reform for the Coastal forest industry "finding the collective courage and strength to set us all back on a path toward prosperity" Sarah Goodman Communications Manager Weyerhaeuser - BC Coastal Group  The
real challenge facing the coastal forest industry today isn’t a trade war,
periodic environmental boycott threats, astronomically high costs or even
a broken stumpage system. The real challenge is accepting and getting on
with solutions that may feel as gut-wrenching to implement as 29 per cent
duties are to swallow.
As Rich Hanson, Weyerhaeuser’s executive timberlands vice-president, said at the Truck Loggers’ Convention in January, the coastal industry can be rebuilt into a “viable, competitive, and profitable player in world markets.” From New Zealand to North America, Rich has a global perspective on the forest products industry so his vote of confidence is as is important as his call for dramatic change. “To put it simply, the forest industry on the coast of British Columbia probably faces more, and more urgent challenges, than any other jurisdiction I am aware of in North America. It seems to me that overcoming these challenges will require major change and a willingness by all stakeholders - companies, labor, contractors, government, communities and others - to share in the inevitable pain that will be encountered on the road to achieving a more competitive future state,” said Rich. Led by Craig Neeser, Weyerhaeuser’s BC Coastal Group vice-president, last fall the company put forward five fundamental elements of reform to help set the coastal industry on the path to long-term viability and renewed competitiveness. First, the coast must deal with the fact that too many mills are chasing too few logs, particularly with the park withdrawals and the 30 per cent harvest reduction that has occurred in the last decade. Last November, our company made the very difficult decision to close two coastal facilities. Unfortunately, this decision took an enormous toll on the 500 people affected. But it also allowed the company to protect and strengthen its five remaining coastal sawmills, and the accompanying employment, by redirecting logs to those facilities. Second, the coast needs a stumpage system that is more market-based. The current stumpage system is fundamentally broken and has contributed to declining employment, investment and profitability in the coastal forest sector for more than a decade. Transitioning to a market-based stumpage system requires allocating a substantial volume of the coastal Crown harvest to competitive bidding and this will require tenure reform. To achieve such reform, Weyerhaeuser has said it is prepared to offer 25 per cent of its coastal Crown tenure, in concert with other licensees, in return for non-cash compensation. Third, the coast must relinquish its title as the highest cost forest-producing region in the world. Reducing costs will mean taking a hard look at the current labor and regulatory framework and identifying opportunities to increase flexibility and our reliance on results-based regulatory mechanisms. Fourth, and perhaps most obvious, is the need to resolve the softwood lumberdispute as quickly and as fairly as possible to stem further market share losses. But it’s important to remember that the coast was in trouble long before the softwood lumber dispute. Rusty Woods, John Ragosta and friends could give up their protectionist racket tomorrow, duties would disappear but a massive reform would still be required for the coast to find its way back to competitiveness. Finally, number five on our list of reforms, re-investment in existing or new mills. Such re-investment will be possible and needed following progress on our first four points of reform. Although there is currently an over-capacity of mills for large logs, there is a growing shortage of capacity for processing the on-coming stream of smaller, second-growth logs. In other words, the coast needs to realign its manufacturing base to match the changing profile of the timber base and to meet the demands of a changing marketplace. The five-point plan put forward by Weyerhaeuser is just one option for achieving the type of change required to renew the coastal forest sector and the company hopes others will come forward with their vision for getting to a better future. Today stakeholders may not agree on the exact action plan for change. But it is a form of progress that government, communities, labor, companies, First Nations and others all agree that change is required. The task at task at hand is finding the collective courage and strength to make the difficult, and sometimes unpopular, decisions needed to set us all back on a path toward prosperity. |
| Does your company have a philosphy about the reform of the BC forest industry? Feel free to contact timberlines@timberline.ca with any editorial ideas or your thoughts about this topic or any others. |
| On
The Web
www.forest-trends.org
www.forestryimages.org
www.forestindustry.com
A new joint venture offers full service consulting to clients East of Alberta. To better serve our clients in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario, GeoSpatial International and Timberline are pleased to announce finalized plans for a joint venture - GeoSpatial Timberline. The new company will offer high end, professional foresty, land use planning and managment and other natural resource research and consulting services. Forestry will be a significant market sector, although business will be expanded into other sectors such as remote sensing and information services consulting. For more information, contact:
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Remote
sensing applications in forestry
"Satellite imagery isn’t the only remote sensing data source that is providing industry with new and improved ways of collecting forest data" Co-authored by: Geoff Hall GeoSpatial Timberline, Thunder Bay Joanne White Timberline, Victoria Warren Nimchuk Timberline, Prince George Aerial photography has long been one of the fundamental information tools used by forest managers to assess forest resources and monitor forest operations. Although aerial photography will remain a valuable tool into the foreseeable future, demands for timely and cost-effective operational information are leading to the greater utilization of satellite imagery and other remote sensing tools in forest management operations. The last five years have seen a number of new satellites launched into orbit, as well as an improvement in desktop image processing capability, both of which have combined to make access to this type of technology more affordable for forestry applications.
There are many other applications related to silvicultural effectiveness monitoring that are being adopted by industry. These include vegetation competition assessments to assist in the planning of herbicide treatment programs, post spray assessment of herbicide success, post fire regeneration assessments, free-to-grow analysis, and many others. However satellite imagery isn’t the only remote sensing data source that is providing industry with new and improved ways of collecting forest data. Timberline has been a pioneer in the development of 70mm Large-Scale Photography (LSP). 70mm LSP has been effectively utilized in B.C. since the early 1980’s. It has proven to be an extremely cost effective remote sensing tool supplementing ground plots and optimizing data. GeoSpatial-Timberline is working to increase the awareness of the feasibility, reliability, and versatility of this technology to new regions of the country, as well as develop further functionality on the existing system. 70mm LSP has most recently been the main source of data collection for several salmon bearing rivers in BC.
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| Forest
Practices Code headed for change?
The transition from process to results based policy administration. Makenzie Leine Timberline, Edmonton On June 15, 1995 the BC Forest Practices Code came into effect. It consisted of an Act, regulations, and accompanying guidebooks which would maintain a standard for forest management. The code would possess the force of the law, thus providing certainty to international markets of sustainable management of the forest resource and all of its associated values. Along with the implemented code came large administrative costs. A Price Waterhouse Coopers report claims that, excluding stumpage, provincial log costs rose from $37 to $57 per cubic meter from 1989 – 1998. With correction for inflation, the 1998 cost should have been around $45/m3. This eight-dollar difference was attributable to the forest practices code equating to about 680 million dollars per year. Many believe that this has forced harvest below AAC due to the inability of British Columbian companies to stay competitive. This poor performance in the industry has impacted BC’s economics as demonstrated by the growth in GDP; or lack therof, which from 1995 to 1999 was 8.8% as compared to 18.7% in Alberta, 19.9% in Ontario and 15.5% across the country (Statistics Canada). Premier Gordon Campbell stated in a speech (January 19, 2001) that “the regulatory burden has hobbled the industry and destroyed thousands of jobs”. In that same speech Mr. Campbell stated, “great science means great results”. Results based forest policy allows forest managers to replace government legislated or regulated processes with their own to meet local and specific objectives. This system will still bind forest companies to the code and its goals but will free the government of its administrative burden. This type of policy may encourage innovation and creativity with management strategy, increase potential jobs, allow for flexibility in management on the highly variable British Columbian landscape, reduce costs and, therefore, restore BC’s competitiveness. To allow for the continual improvement of the code, the legislation was amended to allow for testing of the regulatory framework while maintaining a minimum standard of practice. The BC government is exploring new ways to make the code more efficient without being at the cost of the environment. Pilot projects are currently being carried out on various tenure sizes in several areas. The project is open to public comment and more information can be found at http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/rbpilot/. On May 1st, the BC government released a discussion paper, "A Results Based Forest and Range Practices Regime for British Columbia", which outlines the policy surrounding the shift to results based forestry. This paper is open for discussion until June 30, 2002, new legislation will be intoduced this fall and the new code will be in place for April, 2003. The discussion paper, an open forum and more information about the shift is available at http://www.resultsbasedcode.ca. Articles in upcoming issues of Timber Lines will detail some of the science available to forest companies under a results based system, the evaluation of the results on the part of the BC government, information about changes in the policy, and will outline the current policy structure and methodologies for maintaining management standards in other provinces. |
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January
2002
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2002