The District of 100 Mile House received a candid look at the current and projected timber supply for the 100 Mile House Timber Supply Area last week.
On Tuesday, Aug. 11, Kane Copley, a strategic land manager for the Ministry of Forests, attended council’s regular meeting to deliver and explain the results of the 100 Mile House Timber Supply Area Timber Supply Analysis Discussion Paper. Copley said the review was conducted this year and based on information gathered from January to May.
In his presentation, Copley outlined that the Ministry of Forests regularly reviews the timber supply for all areas and tree farm licenses throughout the province. These reviews are done to examine the impacts of current legal requirements and forest management practices on the timber supply, environment, economy and social conditions of the local area.
“Information gathered in this review will be used by the chief forester when determining a new allowable annual cut (AAC) for the 100 Mile House TSA,” the report read. “According to Section 8 of the Forest Act, the chief forester must determine an AAC for each TSA and TFL (tree farm licence) in the Province of B.C. at least once every 10 years.”
The 100 Mile House TSA covers approximately 1.24 million hectares of land in south-central British Columbia and is administered by the 100 Mile House Natural Resource District. It’s bordered to the west by the Fraser River, to the east by the Cariboo Mountains and Wells Gray Provincial Park, and TFL 18, on the north by the Williams Lake TSA, and on the east and south by the Kamloops TSA. The main communities within the TSA include 100 Mile House itself, 108 Mile Ranch and Clinton.
“Approximately 71 per cent of the land base of the TSA is productive forest, which is referred to as the analysis forest land base (AFLB). Approximately 68 per cent of the AFLB (48 per cent of the total TSA area) is available for timber harvesting,” the report states. “This portion of the land base is also known as timber harvesting land base (THLB). The dominant tree species in the TSA are Douglas-fir, spruce, and lodgepole pine.”
Copley said there are several types of land that fall under 100 Mile House’s TSA that are not included when calculating the AFLB. They include swamp, wetlands, alpine areas, parks, woodlots, old growth management areas, wildlife habitats, special reserves around certain lakes, recreational areas and research plots.
“When you take all that out, that’s where that 48 per cent comes in and we go from a land base of 1.2-million hectares down to 596,000 hectares,” Copley said.
Following this explanation, Copley presented council with a graph illustrating what the AAC has been set at in the South Cariboo between 2014 and 2024. The graph shows that, except in 2018, the actual volume of timber harvested never exceeded the AAC. The AAC was set at two million cubic metres from 2014 to 2017 and one million cubic metres from 2018 to 2024. In addition, the AAC mandated that only 500,000 cubic metres each year could be live trees, which, for the most part, license operators met.
Copley noted that from 2014 to 2017 the AAC had been increased in an effort to salvage trees killed by the mountain pine beetle. Currently, the AAC remains set at one million cubic metres, pending the chief forester’s decision following this review.
One of the things that has changed since the last review was conducted, Copley said, is the damage done by wildfires over the last several years. In 2017, 109,000 hectares burned, in 2018, 8,000 hectares burned and in 2021, 81,000 hectares burned.
“Then, of course, we all know what’s going on this year. That’s going to be an additional impact as well,” Copley said. “Unfortunately, the Clinton Community Forest was heavily impacted. Those areas are included in the TSA.”
At this point, Copley said the harvesting of trees killed by the mountain pine beetle has largely become incidental, with foresters taking them along with other trees during a harvest.
Based on information gathered this year, Copley said that the ministry has determined the 100 Mile TSA could sustainably harvest 702,000 cubic metres per year for the next nine decades ending in 2113. Following that, the AAC is projected to increase to 1,288,000 cubic meters per year. He noted there is an allowance for another 50,000 cubic metres of dead pine until 2033, after which any remaining pine killed by the pine beetle will no longer be considered viable.
He noted originally the lower harvest volume was predicted to be necessary for only five decades. Copley said it was expanded to nine following the recent wildfires.
“A lot of that is because the fires burnt over a lot of our immature stands. That was our future growing stock,” Copley said.
Copley said the review included predicting how the AAC could be changed if the last decade of wildfire activity in the South Cariboo repeated itself. He said that impact could be substantial, dropping the AAC from 702,000 cubic metres a year to 440,000 cubic metres a year.
They also looked at what the AAC could look like if loggers utilized the whole tree. Copley noted this is something TSAs don’t typically look at, instead focusing on sawlogs alone.
“It shows there is a considerable amount of biomass there, over 300,000 cubic metres a year. If licensees were harvesting that 702,000 and utilizing the majority of the tree, we could basically utilize another 300,000 cubic metres,” Copley said. “That doesn’t mean that’s realistic, doesn’t mean that’s economic. This is just information. The assumption there is you would utilize 80 per cent of the tops of the trees, 80 per cent of the bark, 50 per cent of the branches and 10 per cent of the foliage.”
Following the presentation, Copley invited both council and the public to reach out to him with any feedback or questions about the presentation. He can be reached via 100MileHouseTSR@gov.bc.ca, while the full 100 Mile House TSA timber supply review documents can be accessed online at: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/forestry/managing-our-forestresources/timber-supply-review-and-allowable-annual-cut
“We are hoping to get these comments in by Aug. 25,” Copley said, noting the comments will be delivered to the chief forester.
Council also took the opportunity to quiz Copley on some of the details of his report. Coun. Donna Barnett asked him if he knew specifically how much dead pine killed by the mountain pine beetle was still out there and what its shelf life was.
“The shelf life, we’re saying for modelling purposes, is another 10 years,” Copley said. “Most of it died in 2005 or 2007. What we’re finding is, if it’s still standing, it’s still usable for saw log. It’s hard to believe, but it is.”
He noted that once a tree falls to the ground, it tends to rot right away and is no longer usable. Barnett then asked Copley how long burnt trees will remain harvestable.
Copley replied that it depends on the type of tree, with spruce remaining viable for a year and fir for three years. He noted that most of the burnt timber in the 100 Mile TSA are strands of Douglas Fir.
Mayor Maureen Pinkney thanked Copley for the update and said she hoped he would get a lot of feedback on his work.
