One of the region's largest logging companies is speaking out for the first time in favour of an area-based timber supply model instead of the current volume-based model.
Greg Stewart, president of Sinclar Group, told the timber supply review committee visiting Prince George on Friday, that he believes the area-based model makes sense in normal circumstances. The costs of trucking wood or trucking in treeplanting resources, when the same sort of wood is available nearby but in some other mill's control, doesn't make sense. Meanwhile, the quality and quantity of wood left after the mountain pine beetle epidemic remains the central issue.
"The conversion to area-based will not magically grow more trees overnight, but neither will sticking with volume-based," said Doug Stewart (no relation), director of the forest tenures branch of the Ministry of Forests. "What to do about that mid-term gap is the biggest question for everyone."
Area-based timber supply would give a mill or other forestry interest, such as a First Nation, municipality, community group, or small-scale private forester, the exclusive and permanent timber rights to a parcel of forest.
Under the current volume-based model, the licensees in any given area are given a total they are allowed to cut but they have to work out among themselves where that will happen within the whole forest district.
"The general thinking around the area-based system is, if you give tenure holders more security of the land base, there will be better investment on the land," said Doug Stewart.
That investment could include everything from silviculture to roads and bridges, Stewart said, while also allowing for the licensee to do the inventory surveys, which the government currently does.
Of the approximately 85 million cubic metres of timber harvested in B.C. in any given recent year, 65 million of that is cut under the volume-based system and the rest is divvied up into small parcels of area-based operations.
The committee will hold meetings in Vancouver, Merritt and Kamloops before halting on Thursday. Written submissions are also being gathered. The committee must then produce a set of recommendations in a report to the legislature due Aug. 15.
