News and event information for Williams Lake, BC - as it happens.

The tragic fire at Babine Forest Products has finally brought to light the question about whether there is a long term log supply for all mills and all communities in the Mountain Pine Beetle zone. This is a discussion that should have had much more profile than it has to date, it’s unfortunate it took a catastrophic event like this to raise the profile of this critical issue.

My heart goes out to the families of the workers who were killed and injured at the Babine fire. I spent many hours in that mill in my previous job with Weldwood of Canada as Babine was one of our flag ship mills. I wish Minister Bell and community leaders all the best in their endeavours to help the community of Burns Lake adjust and adapt to the loss of this mill.

It needs to be plainly stated that assigning a long term timber supply to Babine in order to get Hampton Affiliates to commit to rebuilding that mill will simply shift the pain of job loss to other communities in the region. The government cannot and must not take steps to secure a long term log supply for Burns Lake simply because their mill burnt down, government must continue to look at the whole picture and make decisions based on potential impacts to all the operations and all the communities in the Mountain Pine Beetle zone.

The issue of securing a long term timber supply for the Babine mill existed before it was gutted by fire. It’s a question for every mill and every community in the 17.4 million hectare mountain pine beetle zone. The timber supply region that surrounds Burns Lake is one of the hardest hit areas, as over three quarters of that timber volume is pine and 90% of that pine has been killed by the mountain pine beetle. According to the Chief Forester, by 2019 the vast majority of that dead pine will no longer be commercially viable (that is, it will be at the end of its 15 year “shelf life”).

Since 2001 the allowable cut for that region has been increased to process this dead pine as quickly as possible. Lock step with these increases in cut levels companies invested capital to increase their manufacturing capacity and new pellet plants have been built. This means that the manufacturing capacity in the region has been built to an abnormally high level of harvest — an unsustainable level of harvest. So, as the cut levels come down from the beetle uplifts and, likely, fall below historic levels of annual allowable harvest rates every mill in the area will struggle to feed their needs and some will have to close or curtail their operations.

We’ve known this day has been coming for ten years — since 2002 when it became evident that this beetle infestation was like no other and would likely wipe out most of the interior pine forest. We only have a few years left to figure out how we’re going to transition a host of forest dependent communities to a dramatically reduced log supply. That’s the real issue government must put considerably more resources to while it provides immediate assistance to the people of Burns Lake. Losing sight of the bigger log supply issue at this time will not serve anyone’s interests in the long term.

Bob Simpson
Independent MLA Cariboo North

 

 

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