General News · 26th January 2023
Carrie Saxifrage - CCFC
Last summer I had the pleasure of meeting Rachel Holt, PhD. She has worked on forest management in BC for over 25 years, including the Forest Practices Board and Technical Advisory Panel. I recently asked her to put our community forest efforts into the Provincial context. Here is her response.
In the old days, every little town in BC had a mill, creating a range of products that were either dispersed, or used locally. In the 1990s, tenure was consolidated, and today we have 5 major licensees holding more than 80% of the wood volume - with large mills that produce commodity products (like 2x4s) or ship their lumber offshore.
As a result, BC has very very low jobs per cubic meter of every tree cut. It is the worst in Canada, and Canada is far worse than Scandinavian countries.
Developing a value-added industry is the only way out of our dilemma here in BC, where the available timber volume is already dropping precipitously because of historic over-harvesting. It must drop even further when we start to prioritize ecosystem health and consider carbon.
This means increasing the jobs that are created from each tree cut. We must 'do more with less' - and value added is a significant part of that solution.
Most places are limited by the available timber volume. Cortes doesn’t have that problem, because of the community forest. Premier Eby just allocated $90 million to help develop the sector, so that the value-added sector can invest in new infrastructure.
Reminder: Value-added community meeting at the Klahoose Multipurpose Hall this Saturday, January 28 from 11-3.