May 3rd

A new month  - All last month's will be under April of course.
9C and cloud this am.
Busy day yesterday, finished up our job at the polls at 8:15 pm but stayed another hour to help some of the others.
Todays main post is about forestry/ the Forest Service in BC.

FORESTRY!

WHAT HAPPENED?

One man’s view from the forest trenches.

  

Introduction

The idea of relating some of my observations and experiences in the BC Forest Service has been banging at me for a couple of years. My earliest experiences related here have no bearing on the fall of “The Forest Empire” but they will help to set the stage for the direction and in my opinion the demise of the stewardship of our forest lands.

These reflections cover a thirty-five year period commencing in 1953 although in fact they are somewhat supplemented by my teenage years as I grew up in a Forest Service household.

I will endeavor to make no judgements in the following pages, just attempt to relate what I was part of, what I saw and what I experienced. If my words cause some ire to arise, I offer no apologies. Cause that’s the way it was! 

Before I started.

  My experiences with the Forest Branch later the Forest Service began when I was five years old. The only important memory that I carry from those first years is that in those days Rangers were appointed to the job on a combination of things, one not of the least importance was “keep your nose clean”. Most of them were older fellows way back then and had generally followed the route of being first a patrolman in the summer, then becoming an Assistant Ranger and finally a Ranger. A very few were later selected to become Supervisors.  All training was on the job, their education level was generally somewhere between grade eight and grade eleven although a few had made it all the way to grade twelve.  Assistant Rangers were transferred without argument on an average of every two years. Rangers would move from the worst districts in terms of isolation and lack of schooling for their children as soon as a more desireable location became vacant.

  Shortly before I became a teenager I started traveling with my father in the summer months on his week long trips by Forestry boat. We visited the many logging camps, some floating, that used to be prevalent on the BC coast. Almost all logging operations were high-lead in those days with a mix of one or two man hand-logging operations. They were an absolute contrast in methodology. Even in those days there were some restrictions as to the size and specie of tree to be harvested. Obviously where ever there was high-lead it was either cut down or smash down. All trees, correction, most trees ending up at the donkey engine were either hauled or dragged to the water side dump or as in many cases, a donkey engine would be placed on a raft and everything was dragged straight into the ‘chuck’. The hand-loggers on reflection were actually the forerunners of selective logging and although without intention were carrying out reasonably environmentally sound operations.

  The role of the coastal Forestry staff was to map out the road system (where applicable), ensure the logging operation had not crossed the predetermined boundaries and carry out fire tool inspections and enforce hazard restrictions on logging shows and fight fire during the summer months. High-lead logging did not exist in the interior of the province in those days, skidding of felled timber was done with small tractors and horses. Again a type of selective logging was occurring as large trees were too big to skid or to mill and of course no one would log balsam and only tie-hackers would look at a pine tree.

  My real introduction to Forestry and logging started in 1953 when I became a compassman in the BC Forest Service.  Timber cruising in those days was a basic process of running strip lines across the contours and tallying trees over fourteen inches at breast height. Height samples were taken periodically to obtain an average so that a calculation of total volume could be made. In 1954 I transferred to the Prince George Forest District.  Cruising was basically the same except that we tallied trees down to ten inches breast high. Balsam was not measured only acknowledged as being present as was cedar or hemlock when it was encountered.

  Later when I was old enough to become an Assistant Ranger (twenty one), my real education of the role of the Forest Service and it’s relationship to the industry got underway.

  In the mid 1950’s there were no tree farm licenses in the interior and Timber Sales were sold by public auction. This method generated fair revenue to the Province as the bidding would start from an upset price as calculated by Ministry staff. The logging companys had their own method of calculating the value of the timber which was basically a combination of the cost of logging, milling and selling price. Most sales were bid above the upset value which was what was called stumpage plus royalty. This stumpage would be due to the province for every boardfoot (later cubic foot and now cubic metre) of harvested wood. In the interior the one “fly in the ointment” was occasional spite bidding where one operator would deliberately bid a block of timber beyond it’s value hoping that a rival would purchase it and suffer financially.

    Tree harvesting or “stand treatment” as it was called was very basic prior to 1950 but in the early ‘50’s new treatments were introduced, many of them with merit and some of them dismal failures. It was obvious to those of us charged with administrative responsibility that a successful treatment in one stand or one geographic location was not necessarily a correct treatment in other locations, yet the decision making staff became enamoured with ‘fads’.

  For example; single seed tree selection which was a simple treatment of leaving a few dominant trees standing with in a cutting area was eminently successful in the dryer Douglas Fir dominated stands. Fir are more resistant to windthrow, the stress of  being exposed after all neighboring trees had been harvested resulted in bumper seed crops for one year to three years. Inevitably most of these seed trees would die but in their place there would be well established seedlings throughout the logged area.  Someone got the idea that this same treatment should be carried out in spruce stands.  Spruce are not resistant to wind. The idea was one of many disasters. The next trial was to leave small patches of spruce, the idea being that a small block would be more wind resistant.  Again the winds leveled these remaining trees and in the process created small scattered patches of twisted and entwined trees that were economically unfeasible to salvage.

  Many other experiments were tried, marking to cut, marking to leave, strip logging, differing diameter limits were a few.  Somehow no one was able to grasp the idea that if you open up or disturb spruce stands blowdown will follow and delay in salvaging will result in population explosions of spruce bark beetle. Even road construction had disastrous effects as it allowed wind access and the corridors compressed the wind resulting in increased velocity.

  One memorable and ludicrous treatment was attempted for a few years in the 1960’s.  By this time clearcutting was becoming more prevalent as a result of  the earlier disasters.  Clearcutting as most readers know is a cuss word to many who profess to be environmentalists.  In an effort to hide the ugly expanses of clearcut along major transportation corridors, it was decided to leave a buffer zone between the logging and the highways.  Naturally the first windstorm that came along wreaked havoc  and the perception of standing forests was not only destroyed but these zones became the epitome of a logging disaster.

  All the various stand treatments that went through the revolving door of “forest management” were successful in the correct specie or the correct soil or the correct elevation or the correct exposure.  Where a treatment proved to be successful no one took the time to study the results and all the factors that allowed the success.

  One memorable example for me is in the Rocky Mountain Trench about half way between McBride and Valemount. I can only cite this example as my witnessing was a result of coincidence over time.

  The example was a Timber Sale on a steep hillside, probably eighty percent spruce the remainder being balsam, cedar and hemlock.  I cruised this Sale in 1956.  Following the policy of the moment a seventeen inch diameter limit was put on the spruce with other species optional but diameter limits of thirteen inches.[1]

  In 1957 I was transferred to McBride as an Assistant Ranger and this Sale lay within my responsibility area.  The company that had applied for and purchased the harvesting rights decided to log it late in the summer as it was fairly close to their sawmill and being on a steep hillside was well drained. They established the main skid roads in late winter as they shut down their winter operations. This left a proliferation of high stumps along the down hill side of the trails.

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[1] A diameter limit was the minimum size to be harvested on a stump eighteen inches above ground level on the up slope side.