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2006 to 2016 Woodlot Licence Plan for W1832
It is Planning Time again.
We are now engaged in a Woodlot Licence Plan process to make the shift to the results based Forest and Range Practices Act administration world, and to thus continue salvaging beetle killed Lodgepole Pine.
The new results based legislation makes for quite brief plans, as you will note. This certainly is a shift from our initial plans, in which we endeavored to explain to the community exactly what we were going to do, before we did it. Now we say "We won't break any laws, and will achieve the results required by the legislation." Pretty thin gruel for a Concerned Party, but that is the regulatory environment now.
We can offer the assurance that we have not changed our philosophy, and we will continue to operate in a responsible manner. Everything has changed, but in many important ways, nothing has changed.
The Woodlot Licence Plan is a strategic document, that describes in broad brush strokes the strategies we will use to maintain the many values present on the woodlot landbase.
The proposed Woodlot Licence Plan shows the location of areas in W1832 where timber harvesting will be avoided, areas where timber harvesting will be modified, and areas where timber harvesting will proceed as per usual. The Plan also proposes strategies to address wildlife habitat values, and non-pesticide based measures to control the spread of invasive plants.
It turns out that "Avoided" really means "No Log Zone". We were informed in December 2005 that if we said that a Riparian Reserve Zone was an "Area Where TImber Harvesting Will Be Avoided", which seemd pretty accurate to us, we could not build a road through the RRZ to cross a creek. While we certainly have no intent of logging Riparin Reserve Zones and Wildlife Tree Patches, we may need to cross them with roads. Ergo, these features, are placed in "Areas Where Timber Harvesting Will Be Modified". Timber harvestng will in fact be extensively modified in these locations: None will occur, except for road crossings.
"Modified" thus means all of:
- partial cutting to leave ecological structure and functions behind after harvest,
- identifying small ecologically sensitive areas during harvest planning and staying out of them, and/or
- not harvesting at all except for road right of ways required to access other areas.
"Proceed as usual" would mean partial cutting, except that our logging efforts are now wholly dedicated to pine salvage. Where healthy tree species other than pine exist, they will be retained for hydrological, visual and wildlife management purposes. However, many pine stands are pure or almost pure pine. These areas are effectively clearcuts with variable dispersed retention when we, and the bug, are done.
Enough babble. What are we actually up to? Well, pine salvage, as usual. The pine beetle population on the Woodlot continues to spread, and we plan to continue harvesting dead and imminently threatened pine trees. This means that most or all of our logging activity will be in pine leading species stands for the foreseeable future.
There are also countless pine trees in mixed species stands on the woodlot, all susceptible to beetle attack and many already dead. We believe that we will never salvage the pine in most of the mixed species stands, as we have out hands full with the pine leading species stands.
Once the pine beetle has eaten itself out of house and home, and almost all of the pine on the woodlot is dead, we may have season or two of salvage and clean-up left. But the day will come, soon, when there is no more economically feasible pine salvage timber left. At that time, we stop logging, and things get very quiet for a quite a few years. We will be planting and tending, but significant logging will likely not occur again until after 2016.
The proposed 2006 to 2016 Woodlot Licence Plan for W1832 and the WLP map are available for download in Acrobat 4.0 format below.
Proposed 2006 to 2016 Woodlot Liceince Plan for W1832 (4.3 mb PDF File)
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