“We have more standing timber in
Sweden than we have ever had, and
each year we add another twenty
million or more cubic meters to the
total. And we have more moose and
deer than ever before, too. When I
was a child, it was a real event to seea
moose. There were newspaper stories
.- . ‘Mr. So and So saw a moose in his
field last week’. Now, we have so
many of them that we are trying to
encourage more hunting.”

HAT was one summary of

Swedish forestry offered by

Tage Klingberg, a leader of

one of Sweden's woodlot

owners’ cooperatives, to Bill

Routley, First Vice-Presi-

dent of Duncan Local 1-80 and I as we

toured Scandinavia, getting a glimpse

of how forestry can be practiced on a
genuinely sustainable basis.

Just as important, from IWA-
CANADA’s (and the Bruntland Re-
port’s) point of view: The Swedes
employ over two hundred thousand
persons in their forest industry,
though they are currently cutting a
good deal less than we do — about 65
million cubic meters there, compared
with 90 million cubic meters in British
Columbia.

How do they do it? There are sev-
eral keys. One is that about 10% of
the gross value of every cubic meter of
wood harvested is plowed back into
the forests. They plant some 500 mil-
lion seedlings per year, compared to
our 200 million, partly because they
plant much more thickly, and partly

e Jan-Ake Lunden, chief forester with
the Southern Swedish Forest Owners’
Association, inspects spruce seedlings
owned by forest owners’ cooperative.

because they are much less inclined to
wait for “natural regeneration”.

But they also scarify 170,000 hect-
ares, brush 370,000 hectares, fertilize
180,000 hectares, thin 223,000 hec-

ares.

The thinning is one of the major
differences. One quarter of the Swe-
dish annual cut comes from thinnings,
and the pulp companies pay well for
those thinnings, down to a three
centimeter (just over one inch diame-
ter) top.

In fact, most forest land in south-
ern Sweden is privately owned, by
small “woodlot operators” who could

not undertake the thinning operations
unless they paid for themselves.

Just think of that for a minute. A
world class pulp and paper industry,
that sells its products on the same

¢ High quality stand of Scotch Pine in a forest jointly owned by local parish farmers for

the last 1000 years. Knowledge as to the best techniques for managing such stands is
widespread among forest managers and owners.

markets as Canadian companies do,
for the same price, and makes hand-
some profits, after paying $45 or so
per cubic meter for a diet that consists
largely of thinnings four meters long,
and down to a 1% inch top!

Just think how many more jobs our
industry would provide if they firstly,
planted twice as thickly, after scarify-
ing, secondly thinned three times dur-
ing a rotation of eighty years, and
thirdly, left all sawlogs for sawmills
that are not only cut right down to
finished lumber, but dry-kilned as
well.

And the environmental and forestry
standards are extremely high. The
average size of openings in Southern
Sweden is about five hectares, and
that assures, among other things,
that every landscape has a pleasing
texture of different age classes. There
are no great stretches of “clear-cut”
such as those that are so controversial
here. And as mentioned above, every
mill is equipped with a dry kiln —
none of the preservatives that IWA-
CANADA members have to handle,
risking themselves and the environ-
ment, are allowed.

And the Forest Act, which applies
to public and private land, requires
that there be a detailed plan for every
parcel of forest land, that after har-
vesting, trees must be planted, that
“dense new and young forest must be
cleared (brushed) and thinned,” and
that “some portion of every parcel of
mature forest “must be felled.”

UT there are three other great

differences, more subtle than

any law, and to my mind more

important — the existence of
an overall forest industry strategy,
taxes and fundamentally different
attitudes.

A Danish forester, in charge of a
large national forest just north of
Copenhagen, outlined the basic ele-
ments of the Scandinavian forest
strategy. “It is clear that we cannot
compete with equatorial countries in
terms of growing ‘fibre’. They can
produce a crop in ten or fifteen years,
where it takes us at least sixty years
for softwoods, at least one hundred
and twenty years for hardwoods.

“Tt is also clear that we don’t want to
compete with those countries in terms
of labour costs or conditions, we have
to aim for quality wood, good lumber
for building, clear wood for fine
furniture.

“So we have to keep that in mind
right from the beginning, planting
thickly (down to one meter spacing),
so that we get small branches, an
therefore, small tight knots.”

10/LUMBERWORKER/SEPTEMBER, 1989

That sounded sensible to Bill and I,
so we asked what he would expect to
grow with the three meter grids stipu-
lated by the B.C. Forest Ministry. He
was brutally frank: “You'll grow junk.

HE next difference to em}
size is the way the Swedes have
designed their tax system to en-
courage people to grow more and
better wood. About half of S

forest land is owned by 200,000

lot owners, with holdings of si Ro
100 hectares typical. Most of them live —
and work in Swedish cities, leaving —
the management and work invol ‘
in their forest holdings to large wood- —
lot owner co-operatives like “Sodra”,
or to private societies set up to ad-
vance good forestry. These people
generally earn good salaries that are
subject to the very high Swedish in-
come tax rates. Wealth over a certain
limit is also taxed, but forest land and
forest inventories have a light rate.

So the typical Swedish forest owner
sees his forest inventory as a kind of
bank account that is only lightly
taxed, a place to store value for a
rainy day, or for future generations. So
he will design his forest harvest
maximize current income, b'
increase the value of the remaining
timber.

The contrast between the harvest-
ing practices of these Swedes and
those of Canadian corporate execu-
tives, could not be more stark, espe-

TYPICAL MANAGEMER
CENTRAL AND }

80 90 100

The knots will be huge. You will never
be able to saw that timber. But we're
glad to hear that that is what you are
doing. That means one less competi-
tor for us.”

A silviculturist with us pointed out
that at least on the coast, and perhaps
some of the damper interior sites,
hemlock naturally seeds itself be-
tween whatever is planted. So per-
haps, in spite of ourselves, we might
produce some sawlogs.

To sum up the contrasting strate-
gies: Where we plant one seedling,
they plant two or three, and employ
three or four times as much labour,
because they plant for quality. When
our industry plans to plant and then
never lay human hands on the site until
the next clear-cut sixty years later,
the Scandinavians brush at least once,
then thin three of four times. And
where we harvest timber that can
only produce pulp, the Scandinavians
produce strong, high quality lumber
with small, tight knots, lumber that
they can remanufacture in many ways
and sell for premium prices, and beau-
tiful hardwoods for flooring and furni-
ture. Very different strategies.

Another way of summing up the
difference, is to recall that Sweden
gets three times as many jobs from
each unit of timber than B.C. does.

0. 5. 10)15)20), nema
—)
[st thinning

for pulp
& fuel woods

© Standing on a private woodlot just ou
Routley, Duncan Local 1-80 First-Vice-Pt
holding short lengths of commercial thinn
much shorter than those thinnings sent
metres in length and can taper down to a
very efficient with full utilization of their

Sere