The Barkley Community Forest Corporation is chopping its annual cut by more than half and hopes to branch out by planting roots for more recreational opportunities.
The community forest was launched in 2014 in partnership between the District of Ucluelet and Toquaht First Nation and has since generated about $3 million in shared profits for the two parties.
The Corporation hosted open houses in Ucluelet and Macoah last month to bring both communities up to speed on a new forest management plan that reduces the annual allowable cut from 27,000 cubic metres to 12,600.
“That cut was based on the inventory data that was passed on from the previous major licensee and operability and harvesting assumptions that were maybe a little optimistic,” the corporation’s general manager Erik Holbek told the Westerly News during the Ucluelet open house on Oct. 24.
“You have to understand too that it was based on assumptions from a different time. Maybe some of those assumptions were held on too long…When we started forestry in B.C., we needed roads, we needed hospitals, we needed infrastructure, we needed a lot. Public needs and public expectations have changed. Maybe some of the assumptions that we used to go into those timber supply analyses were a little slow to catch up.”
The forest has had a 27,000 cubic metre AAC since its inception 10 years ago.
“This plan’s not going to live forever either,” he said. “The last plan lasted for 10 years, if this plan lasts for 10 years that would be great, but we’ll probably want to redo it in five-ten years and make sure that our assumptions that we’ve put in here are holding true and hopefully we’ll have even better inventory data as time goes on.”
He added that another key driver behind the drastically reduced cut is the age of the forest’s trees.
“A lot of the community forest is second growth stands that were logged fairly quickly in the first pass and most of them are not ready for harvest right now, they’re 50-60 years old,” he said, adding the new model for cedar trees is to let them grow for about 90 years.
“We want those second growth stands to grow in volume and value so when we harvest them there’s more volume per hectare, there’s more value per hectare and there’s less waste. That takes time. So, in order to allow those stands to grow, we’ve got to reduce the cut in the shorter term.”
He expects the 12,600 cubic metre annual cut to remain in place for about 35 years before the forest sees annual increases with the goal of reaching 20,000 cubic metres 75 years from now.
“It’s a plan for the next generation as much as it is for this generation,” he said.
The revised plan includes a new biodiversity management strategy to help natural habitats grow and excludes more area of the forest from the allowable cut range.
“We haven’t excluded the opportunity to harvest there. We might harvest to increase old growth attributes or do some thinning, those types of things, but it’s not contributing to the timber supply,” Holbek said. “We want to make sure that we’ve got representative ecosystems within the community forest that are allowed to grow into an old forest condition…The assumption is that an old forest has the species and the structural diversity to provide habitat for lots of organisms. We do not want old forest just on rock nobs and low productivity swamps, we want old forest in a range of ecosystems that the community forest encompasses. We’ve designed this so that it provides connectivity and representation of the range of ecosystems within the forest.”
The corporation is also looking to diversify its community contributions through recreational opportunities, including mountain biking and hiking trails and is putting together a recreational master plan.
“It’s in its infancy right now,” Holbek said. “We want to look at what other opportunities are out there and if there’s local groups we can partner with to help make them happen, then that’s what we’d like to do.”
Clearcutting was listed as one of the forest’s harvesting methods and Holbek defended the practice.
“Clear cutting is the most efficient way to harvest trees and to regenerate species that are not shade tolerant. It’s become, I think, synonymous with bad forestry but that’s an oversimplification. Clear cutting, in the right place and in the right context, is not inherently bad,” he said.
The corporation has planted 273,000 trees with red cedar topping the list at 75,500, followed by 17,500 hemlock, 14,000 yellow cedar, 10,000 balsam fir, 3,000 Douglas fir and 2,000 Sitka spruce.
Holbek said diversity helps create safeguards in a changing climate.
“Regardless of why you think the climate is changing, I think it’s pretty obvious that it is. Planning for climate change in a forestry context is challenging. We’re trying to plant species that are native to here, but also ones that we think are going to persist through that rotation age of 90 years,” he said. “To be honest, it’s a best guess. One of the best strategies I think that we can employ is planting a diversity of species, so if climate change affects one particular species, we don’t have all our eggs in one basket.”
He suggested that along with the $3 million in profits for the District of Ucluelet and Toquaht First Nation, the forest activity has also generated about $10 million in economic activity from everyone who makes their living from it, like loggers, tree planters, road builders and engineers with about 30 full time equivalent jobs created.
“Economic activity isn’t just direct output from the community forest. It trickles down into the community. We pay the logger, the logger comes into town, rents a hotel room, goes out for dinner, fills up his truck; so it’s not directly what the community forest has outlaid,” he said.
