FOREST AND ENVIRONMENT

Mills to see increase in beetle wood

IWA B.C. Interior mills expect to see timber from damaged forests

IN THE B.C. central Interior, there’s
an astonishing 4.2 million hectares
of forests infected with the mountain
pine beetle. To tackle this epidemic,
the Ministry of Forests has increased
annual allowable cuts from 23.3 mil-
lion cubic meters to 30 million.

Ministry information indicates
that over the next 16-100 years, there
could be a r9 per cent reduction in
annual harvests, down to levels of
18.7 million cubic meters, if the prob-
lem continues unabated.

There’s a lot more beetle infected
wood going into IWA mills these
days, as industry harvests play the
impossible game of catch-up to anin-
festation gone wild.

“If we don’t take it (the mountain
pine beetle kill) out, it will take us
out,” says Prince George Local 1-424
president Frank Everitt. As it stands,

most interior pine stands take about
80 years for recovery.

Williams Lake Local 1-425 president
Wade Fisher notes that mills in his
local have been milling more and more
beetle infesting wood over the past 10-
15 years. Infestations are rampant out
in the Chilcotin plateau. Dead and fall-
en stands of lodgepole pine con-
tributed to fires which bumed more
than 500,000 hectares this summer.

The pine beetle epidemic covers an
area greater than the size of
Vancouver Island, running from
Houston in the northwest of the
province, west of Prince George, down
through Quesnel and south of
Kamloops, where Local 1-417 presi-
dent Joe Davies says local mills may
see their cuts reduced due to burnt
wood and beetle damaged wood that
will be beyond recovery.

FILE PHOTO BY NORMAN GARCIA

Interior sawmills are increasingly inundated with infested timber.

PHOTO BY NORMAN GARCIA

& A Panamanian registered ship self-loads raw logs on the Fraser-Surrey docks, taking Canadian jobs with it.

THROUGH AN _ INCREASING
numbers of Orders-in-Coucil, the B.C.
Liberals are approving log export per-
mits from public lands at record rates.
That has been done in spite of Forest
Minister Mike de Jong’s commitment
to curb exports. On December 5, 2001
Mr. de Jong told a crowd of angry TWA
protestors in front of the Victoria legis-
lature that it was the government's
shared objective to halt log exports
from the province.

“Is there anyone in this province
that wouldn’t want every stick of tim-
ber harvested in B.C. processed in
B.C.” he stated to a questioner.
“Surely that should be the objective
and surely that is the objective. All I
can tell you, sir, is that’s an objective I
share with you and that’s what we're

g towards.”
But by the end of the following year,
Liberals would do just the oppo-
as log exports exceeded 3.7 million

cubic meters.
| On in four logs
harvested on the
Coast were sent
out of the coun-
try, mainly to
Japan and the
United States.
hy “The Liberals
2 have done an

Mike de Jong sazeiianiahia
allowing forest companies in B.C. to
fuel sawmills in the United States, at a
time, when our lumber has been hit
with heavy tariffs,” says [WA national
president Dave Haggard.

An estimated 100,000 trucks of
logs, enough to feed 5-6 sawmills, left
the province in 2002. Prime old
growth hemlock continues being
loaded for Japan and smaller second
growth species are being used as incre-
mental wood in U.S. Pacific Northwest
operations, putting American wood-

Whose letting the logs out?

® B.C. Liberals facilitate exports from public lands

workers to work during the Canada-
U.S. softwod lumber battle, while B.C.
millworkers sit at home. Meanwhile,
there are only lukewarm indications
that B.C. coastal industry would ever
invest in manufacturing facilities, as
Forest Industrial Relations pushed the
IWA onto picket lines to beat back con-
cessions. “Industry is demanding the
IWA take rollbacks and rip pages out of
the collective agreement for airy-fairy
promises of investment,” says Brother
Haggard.

It looks like this year’s log exports lev-
els, from private and public lands, could
exceed 2002’s. Companies, led by
TimberWest and Weyerhaeuser, are
pushing the log export issue.

Itwas reported in early November that
TimberWest was exporting about forty
per cent of its cut. Meanwhile, it has only
one remaining sawmill following the clo-
sure of the Cowichan Lumber mill in
Youbou nearly 3 years ago.

Local 1-417 members join to

oppose logs leaving area

On December 1, Local 1-417 mem-
bers joined a Louis Creek and Barriere
community coalition to leaflet the
public on Highway 5 in the North
Thompson Valley. Motorists, includ-
ing log haulers, were asked to sign a

PHOTO COURTESY NORTH THOMPSON STAR/JOURNAL,

= Near Barriere retired mill
worker Jack Wenzel joined in.

petition calling on the B.C. Liberals to
rescind their decision to eliminate cut
control, timber processing require-
ments and closure penalties. It also
demands that the government stop
the centralization of timber process-
ing, reverse decisions allowing corpo-
rations to bid on B.C. Timber Sales,
and stop all attempts to privatize
Crown lands.

Local 1-417 First Vice President
Warren Oja, who originates from the
Tolko Louis Creek mill that burnt down
this summer, said in a letter to all local
plant chairpersons, that the Liberals’
policies “will allow large lumber inter-
ests to consolidate their timber
tenures, close down operations in
small communities and off load their
historic economic responsibility to
these areas. “In our Kamloops local
alone, we have two recent examples
of this disastrous unfolding (i.e.
Weyerhaeuser Vavenby and Tolko
Louis Creek). We do not want this to
occur in any more of our rural com-
munities,” wrote Oja. A similar infor-
mation line took place on November
17 when local First Nations, workers
and community joined to leaflet.

DECEMBER 2003 THE ALLIED WORKER T 17