James Steidle

UBC forest scientist Gary Bull, along with some others, makes some false and misleading claims related to the pellet industry in their letter to the editor. Bull’s letter claims 85 per cent of pellets province-wide come from sawmill residues.  Only 15 per cent is from “logging debris and low-quality logs.” …If you drive by Drax’s Meadowbank facility yard, it is clear what most of this is — a lot of high-quality aspen, birch, and cottonwood, perfectly good wood for OSB, plywood, and engineered wood products. …By falsely calling these deciduous species “low quality,” Bull is contributing to a game of smoke and mirrors… Mr. Bull should recognize deciduous is not a “problem forest type” of “low quality logs.”  What we have is a “problem industry type” governed by a “problem bureaucracy type” with too cozy a connection between them, and Mr. Bull et al. would be well-advised to admit that.