Written by SCOTT STANFIELD
Citizen staff
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Friday, 21 November 2008 |
The community forest agreement has turned out to be an excellent thing for McBride, the Fraser-Fort George Regional District board heard Thursday at its meeting.
McBride mayor Mike Frazier notes the community forest, aside from logging, gives smaller users opportunities and access to a bigger range of things out of the fibre basket.
"It opens up a whole new world and a bunch of new opportunities in small businesses," Frazier said. "It's turned out to be a wonderful thing for us."
In 2002, the village of McBride signed a probationary community forest agreement that gave the surrounding area access to about 60,000 hectares. The annual allowable cut for the licence was 50,000 cubic metres of wood, or about 1,250 logging truckloads, according to Marc von der Gonna, general manager of the McBride Community Forest Corporation, who provided the board with a company update Thursday.
Since signing the agreement, company revenues have helped fund projects such as the Robson Valley Community Centre, which opened this year in McBride.
"We've paid out dividends to date of approximately $2 million," said von der Gonna, noting the MCFC, under the Job Opportunities Program, has hired out-of-work forestry workers to build trails and boardwalks.
Area H director Ken Starchuck asked what the MCFC is "doing to be innovative" in terms of making a dollar, considering the downturn in the forest economy.
"We try and look at the full profile of timber and the range of sizes and products that we can get out of an area, and try and market absolutely everything," said von der Gonna, who also serves as a director on the B.C. Community Forest Association. "We do a lot of sorting in the bush for a number of different products, and try and find all sorts of niche markets."
He said the MCFC tries to help small, local sawmills that are either one-man shows or run by a handful of people.
"We see our future economy being more diverse than just commodity-type products," von der Gonna said. "We think there is huge potential in the bioenergy market. We also like to focus on value-added, log home building, specialty products, and also opportunities for ecotourism."
The for-profit MCFC is owned by the village of McBride and consists of a seven-member board of directors. Along with von der Gonna, it employs a full-time operations supervisor, and part-time financial assistants. All operations are typically contracted out, but the company also sub-licences market loggers to harvest salvage patches for specialty products.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 21 November 2008 )
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