Merv Wilkinson leads tour explaining how he has successfully used selection logging to manage his old growth woodlot during the last 45 years. Photo by Mark Wareing
Merv Wilkinson
Merv Wilkinson has been selectively logging his 55 hectare old growth forest on Vancouver Island since 1939. In addition to substantially increasing the commercial value of the standing timber, he has maintained, and in some cases improved, other forest values, provided one-third of his family's income and generated jobs for contract loggers and mill workers. Merv has proved that selective logging of at least one kind of old growth coastal forest is safe for workers, ecologically advantageous and economically viable.
Let's make Vancouver Island's temperate rainforest work for local residents, not multinational corporations
Thousands of new jobs through selectively logging Vancouver Island's older second growth forests now
The Vancouver Forest Region currently contains more than 500,000 hectares of second growth forests over 40 years of age. Many of these stands are on Vancouver Island. The volume of timber that could be cut through a first pass commercial thinning of these stands average about 100 cubic metres per hectare. Selection cutting of these stands, if done according to ecoforesty principles, would also improve them. These 500,000 hectares could begin producing an extra 2.5 million cubic meters of wood a year now - and the volume of this type harvest will increase as more second growth stands reach the age for such commercial thinning.
The positive impact of this volume of wood on the coastal economy would be enormous. Depending on the harvesting system used, 1,400 to 4,200 people could be employed tending these second growth forests.
The difference between community and corporate forest management
A community has objectives other than maximizing profits from logging the woods around it. These include securing permanent employment for as many local residents as possible, ensuring its drinking watersheds are uncontaminated and drinking water is pure, keeping the surrounding area beautiful enough to support recreation and tourism, and maintaining healthy streams to support the salmon fishing industry.
Multinational logging companies have made it clear through actions and words that they only have one major objective - maintaining corporate profits. Reported in the July 1991 edition of Canadian Business is a statement by MacMillan Bloedel President, Robert Findlay: "Bluntly, there isn't any possibility of (MB) expansion in B.C....when we make large investments we'll put them where they can get the best return. That's not in B.C. and it's probably not in Canada"
It's time to take community control of the forest lands on Vancouver Island.
Tony Duggleby, an operator with the Small Business Forest Enterprise Program (SBFEP) claims, that
"if this program was allowed to operate over all the
forestry lands, it could eliminate B.C.'s deficit in one year."
Another small
operator claims that B.C.'s Annual Allowable Cut could be reduced by 40% with no
job loss. Here are two examples of people creating jobs and logging in more
ecologically sound ways.
Tony Duggleby is a handlogger who operates under the Small Business Forest Enterprise Program on the coast. His company, Eclectic Logging, generates three times as many jobs and generally seven but even as high as 15 time the revenue generated per cubic metre of wood harvested by the major forest companies. Additionally, the SBFEP loggers pay, on average, twice as much as the big forest companies in stumpage on Vancouver Island. Tony believes that community based forestry, in conjunction with a competitive market system offered under SBFEP, would build dynamic communities and generate a much greater respect for the forests, more jobs and more revenues that the "big" forest industry.
