Monthly Archives: November 2017

Les Leyne

There’s a brief window ahead for loggers to go into forests ravaged by fire last summer and extract what they can. The opportunity lasts only until scorched timber starts to rot, a few short years, at best. More than a million hectares of forest were burned this year — almost 10 times the average for wildfire seasons — so it’s a huge area of opportunity, but it will be economically viable only for a relatively brief time.  Forests Minister Doug Donaldson has been pushed in the legislature by B.C. Liberal critics to do what he can to expedite the salvage job….After touring B.C. to get input on what should be in next February’s budget, the finance committee released a report that takes special note of the wildfires’ impact. … It highlighted two recommendations — increase funding for forest management generally, and “incentivize the remediation and salvage of burnt timber.”

A driver of a logging truck that veered off a road west of Lake Cowichan and plunged into water has died, an employer confirms. TimberWest said the fatal accident involved an employee of a contractor working for the company near its Honeymoon Bay operation. …The Ministry of Environment confirmed that the single logging truck was two kilometres past the Nixon River Bridge when it veered off the road into standing water. The truck was reportedly submerged, according to the ministry. …The ministry said the truck belongs to a sub-contractor for Caatza Logging. 

BC coastal communities dependent on wood fibre are stepping up their advocacy for changes to provincial forestry practices that will help keep region’s mills operating, according to City of Powell River mayor Dave Formosa. Formosa addressed city council during its November 2 meeting and referred to a meeting of mayors and senior officials from BC Ministry of Forest, Lands and Natural Resource Operations that was held in Victoria on October 30. “It was quite a meeting,” said Formosa. “Basically, we talked about the urgency for fibre in the industry.” Five mayors from Vancouver Island and Sunshine Coast communities, along representatives from first nations and industry, met with the government officials to talk about changes that could implemented to improve the amount of wood fibre that is available for sawmills and pulp and paper operations.

Lake Cowichan: A fatal logging truck accident occurred on Wednesday morning involving an employee of a contractor working for TimberWest near the Honeymoon Bay operations adjacent Lake Cowichan on Vancouver Island. “We express our deepest sympathies to the family, friends and colleagues affected by this tragic accident. A fatality within our forest community deeply impacts all of us,” said Jeff Zweig president and CEO of TimberWest. “We are working closely with the RCMP, WorkSafe and our contractor on the investigation.” TimberWest has lent its full support to authorities in the ongoing investigation.

Peter Trower

Peter Trower spent much of his youth working in logging camps. When he saved enough money, he’d come to Vancouver, blow it, then go back. It’s a standard tale of the B.C. woods from the 1950s and ‘60s. But Trower wasn’t a regular logger — he was a writer and artist. When he started publishing poetry and prose in the late ‘60s, he turned his experiences in the bush into subject matter for his work. He drew acclaim as an authentic voice from the woods, a true B.C. original — the logger poet. Trower died Nov. 10 at Lion’s Gate Hospital in North Vancouver after suffering from Alzheimer’s for a couple of years. He was 87, which is nothing short of remarkable, given his dissolute lifestyle. …“He got the (George) Woodcock Award (in 2002), and the Chalmers Award for his final collection of poetry.

A change-up in the bait and spacing of trees used to capture mountain pine beetle could help to reduce the pest’s destructive path across forests in Western Canada. Researchers at the University of Alberta (UofA) discovered they could catch more of the beetles by tweaking existing bait and altering the spacing of trees baited to catch them.  …While there are two types of chemicals that can be used in bait to attract beetles to a tree, only one type is typically used in bait. But Klutsch’s research doubled up, including both types of chemical in the bait.But Klutsch’s research doubled up, including both types of chemical in the bait. “We added both (chemicals) along with the mountain pine beetle pheromone, and that led to greater catches of mountain pine beetle,” Klutsch said.

Lori Daniels

The Province of British Columbia apparently knew what to do to lessen the intensity of wildfires by 2017. The reports they’d commissioned in 2003, after the catastrophic Kelowna wildfires, were explicit, but the recommendations were costly….The government followed the suggestions, but only on about a tenth of the area in B.C. which the report had recommended should receive fire-prevention treatment. Now, B.C.’s forests minister Doug Donaldson is determined to do better, he told National Observer in an interview last week. But with a budget of $140 million to spend over the next three years on fire prevention in the province, some say the money won’t be enough to protect B.C’s communities from the next big burn. Lori Daniels, a forest ecology professor at the University of British Columbia, is one of those who is skeptical the money will be close to enough.