B.C. exports Stein Valley in raw logs every year
Proof that logs for export are bypassing Boston Bar mill.
B.C. annually exports more than a complete Stein Valley worth of raw logs.
The B.C. government's recent decision to allow logging in the Stein is aimed at delaying inevitable timber supply shortages in the Fraser Canyon forest industry. At the same time, however, government policy allows logging companies to haul the best quality sawlogs past local mills for sale at higher prices to foreign countries.
The short term profitability of B.C. logging companies is maximized, but at the expense of the local long term timber supply. Loaded logging trucks roll past the Boston Bar mill hourly to sorting grounds in Chillwack, and Catternmole Timber Ltd. is reported to be exporting raw logs from the Anderson Creek area, just south of Boston Bar.
Destination of logging truck above - Chilliwack dry land sort where high grade logs are being selected for export.
Sections 135 to 137 of the B.C. Forest Act require that most of the timber harvested in B.C. be milled or processed in the province before the sale to foreign markets. The Forest Act, however, also allows B.C. logging companies to apply for permission to sell raw logs to foreign buyers. If local buyers do not make a reasonable offer on the logs within two weeks, the logs are considered surplus to the needs of local mills and may be exported as raw logs.
A certain volume of raw log exports in times of depressed markets might be understandable, but why is so much sold in this way when lumber prices are currently high? B.C. raw log exports have steadily risen over the last ten years, so that last year almost 10 percent of the B.C. coastal harvest, the cream of the crop, was sold to foreign markets, mostly to Japan. In 1986 B.C. exported 2,576,700 cubic metres in raw logs, the equivalent of 1.3 complete Stein Valleys, and since 1977 almost eight Stein Valleys worth of raw logs have been exported.
Boston Bar mill an economic failure
The B.C. Forest Products mill at Boston Bar is a good example of what is wrong with this province's forest industry. It has been a money-loser for all but the last year of its 14 years of existence. Only because of government regulations has it been advantageous to log and lose money, rather than to shut the mill and lose cutting rights. In a free enterprise forest economy this mill would have failed years ago.
Only a guarantee for the next 30 years of consistently high lumber prices, such as we've had for the last two years, would allow the Boston Bar mill to make a profit on cutting Stein's timber. That's impossible. Already the lumber market is on the decline. Boom and bust is a fact of life in the lumber industry.
The Boston Bar mill's 1986 profits were only achieved through exceptional market conditions and high-grading: high volume of logs sawn, stumpage payments to the province for the right to cut trees, and leaving all but the best logs in the slash. A direct result of the resource strategy is exhaustion of the resource base-running out of logs to mill.
The Lillooet TSA is currently being harvested at a rate of 80 percent higher than the Forest Service's projected long run sustained yield. When asked about the looming timber shortage, BCFP vice president Gerry Burch said, "If you see it coming, you can accommodate it. It's the shocks that hurt. At some point the wood supply will dry up sufficiently not to have a mill at Boston Bar, but there'll be lots of warning." The warnings are already there, in government documents, and evident to all who drive or fly over the area.
If the Stein is logged, the biggest losers in the long run would be the local communities, both native and non-native. The Stein timber will only temporarily shore up an inefficient industry. No new jobs will be created. At the same time, a wilderness tourist attraction, which could provide economic diversification and stability, will be lost. These lost local opportunities, together with environmental and heritage losses, amount to a huge, uncounted subsidy to the logging industry.
Ironically the timber shortage is now used to justify demands for more timber and larger subsidies to keep the industry alive in its unchanged form! The irony is complete when native groups, environmentalists and local communities are accused of trying to alienate productive forest land from the industry when they are simply trying to hold on to a very small part of what little is left.
With a diminishing resource base, better management of the already logged-over areas is the key to the mill's future. Investment in the best growing lands can produce more wood on less land than logging marginal areas like the Stein. Mill job security is also better achieved by getting the most value out of the old-growth forest when it is first cut. The two changes work out well together. In Finland logging companies harvest half as much softwood timber from a forest land base one-third the size of ours. They plant more than twice the number of seedling that we do in B.C. and intensively farm, by thinning and fertilizing, more than 30 times the area that we do here.
The contrast in approaches can be seen clearly by looking at the example of reforestation. The vast amount of land that has not been reforested is well documented. But what about the process of reforestation itself? Today, this consists of low-cost one-shot planting by migrant contractors. In contrast, true stewardship of the forest can only be implemented when local people are given long-term responsibility for the regeneration of forests in their region- in other words, forest farming. This would provide long-term local economic benefits, make the forests more productive and reduce wide-spread spraying of herbicides to control competing plant species. This would also take pressure off marginal forest lands and inaccessible areas like the Stein.
The conflict is not really between forestry and wilderness, but between corporate inefficiency and community stewardship.
