October 7, 2005
Federal funding not enough, says UBC Forestry professor
by Amanda Stutt, News Writer
British Columbia recently received 100 million dollars in federal funding to address the mountain pine beetle infestation plaguing BC’s forests and threatening the sustainability of the forestry industry.
“The pine beetle epidemic is the worst natural disaster ever to hit our forests,” remarked BC Premier Gordon Campbell. The mountain pine beetle is native to BC’s Lodgepole pine forests, but recently the number of beetles attacking trees in the Interior has spread at an uncontrollable rate.

According to UBC Forestry Professor John McLean, “The beetle is doing what it has always done, clearing out old wood...but now the beetle will attack young trees.”
“The Lodgepole pine is being killed before we can use it,” he said.
The pine beetle has historically attacked and killed old pine during warm temperatures, and then died out during the winter months, preventing excessive damage being done to the forest.
But Professor McLean explained that the beetles are now surviving the winters because temperatures are not dropping low enough—a consequence of global warming.
According to Professor George Hoberg,   Forest Resources Management Department Head, in addition to climate change, human intervention such as fire suppression, is to blame for the infestation reaching such a magnitude.
“We repress fires because we’ve been operating under the idea that it’s the right thing to do to manage the forest,” he said. “In the past several decades we’ve really reconsidered that...the result is that we’ve ended up with this very overcrowded, unhealthy forest in many areas because we’ve prevented fire from playing its natural ecological role,” said Hoberg.
He added that the epidemic could have been prevented if action had been taken at the outbreak of the infestation in the 90s.
Massive salvage harvesting operations are currently underway in order to make use of the wood that is affected by the beetle infestation, and that means a temporary raise in the maximum annual allowable cut, after which will follow a reduced allowable cut.
McLean explained that, “They are logging as fast as they can go.”
“The politicians are concerned about the necessary cutbacks that will follow the raise in the annual allowable cut. It will have a negative effect on communities...investments in mills will not be returned...it will present an economic challenge...there will be far less profits,” he said.
In regards to how realistic the recent spending initiative is and how it can help BC’s economy, Professor McLean commented, “They have to do something about limiting the spread with the crude instruments that we have. It’s the best they can do.”
Professor Hoberg said that he believes that the initiative is a beginning, but that greater co-ordination will be required to put it into action.
“This is considered only a small downpayment on a much larger investment from both levels of government...this is not enough,” he said. “We need to move from the high-level planning to more detailed plans about specific policies and how to coordinate them across different agencies.”
Professor Hoberg emphasised some major issues that need to be addressed if the spending initiative is going to work.
“I think the government needs to come up with a new governance framework that allows them to address this issue without having to worry about the multiple jurisdictions of different agencies...there is not sufficient coordination at this point. There also needs to be protection for environmental values and a strategy for reforestation after salvage.”
<>Karen McDonald, Communications Director from the Ministry of Economic Development, said, “The legislation we introduced last week for additional funding, 50 million dollars to the Mountain Beetle Initiative (MBI), 30 million of which will be targeted towards pine beetle. But it’s up to the MBI to decide how it will be administered.”
But Hoberg said that it is the economy of the whole province that will be affected.
“The biggest impact over the long-term is going to be on the economy of British Columbia in communities in rural areas. That will affect the lower mainland as well because our economy is tied to the resource-based economy in the interior,” he explained. “People are not sufficiently focused on the magnitude of that problem yet.”
Trish Fougner, Public Affairs for the Ministry of Forests and Range, said that the community planning initiative is still in the works.
“They are still consulting communities and will have a plan shortly on how much and where.”
<>For Hoberg, however, the main concern is how to maintain the economies of communities that have historically been dependant on the forest industry.
“Diversifying the economies is going to be an immense challenge...to find other sources of investment and economic activity to replace forestry.”
Another concern is how all this will affect the already tense cross-border lumber issues said Hoberg.
“It’s a very big issue. It makes it more difficult for us to resist entering into an agreement that limits the volume of lumber exported to the United States,” he said. “We are going to be creating a wall of wood that needs some market and it would be quite disruptive to the American market if there aren’t some kind of limits put on that.”