The British Columbia government has failed to sufficiently replant the forests it manages and needs to develop a plan, Auditor General John Doyle said in a report today.
"Significant areas of the forest are presently damaged by wildfire, diseases or pests such as mountain pine beetle, and the decision whether to replant lies with government," he said. "Unlike industry, government is not legally obligated to reforest. As such, very limited replanting has occurred."
The government is responsible for 90 percent of the 22 million hectares of forested land that are available for timber production and harvesting in the province, Doyle wrote.
In less than 30 years, three massive bark beetle epidemics in the northwest have dramatically changed the North American landscape.
In the first Bow Valley Naturalists meeting of 2012, award-winning journalist Andrew Nikiforuk gave a presentation titled The Beetle Economy: A Modern Tale of Collapse and Renewal.
Nikiforuk explained that the only way to renew a forest is by allowing fire or allowing bark beetles. For years, humans practiced fire suppression, leaving much of our current forests aged. This, along with climate change, are some of the main reasons for these epidemics.
The B.C. New Democrats are claiming the Forest Practices Board has confirmed that former forest minister Pat Bell has been grossly understating the true problems facing B.C.'s forests.
New Democrat forest critic Norm Macdonald said Bell needs to explainwhy his estimate of crown lands that have not been adequately replanted was less than 10 per cent of the total the Forest Practices Board revealed Thursday.
"Either the minister was badly misinformed or he was purposefully understating the problem facing our forests," said Macdonald. "The Liberal government has utterly abandoned B.C.'s forests. Treeplanting and silviculture work has been reduced even after cutting increased and at a time when fire and pests like the beetle are already taking their toll on the forests."
Jim Snetsinger, British Columbia’s Chief Forester, told a convention of the Western Silviculture Contractors’ Association this week that the historic mountain pine beetle infestation in interior B.C. wasn’t as destructive as first feared.
“In 2006, we were projecting a mountain pine beetle kill of 80 per cent of pine by 2013,” Jim Snetsinger said. “Our 2011 models . . . now tell us mountain pine beetle will kill about 61 per cent of susceptible pine by 2021.”
Unfortunately the news isn’t all good. Snetsinger said the mountain pine beetle continues to kill large numbers of lodgepole pine. More than half of merchantable pine in the Interior has been lost to date, even though the mortality peaked in 2004-05.
B.C.'s chief forester painted a mountain pine beetle picture both good and bad Thursday for silviculturalists gathered in Kamloops.
The good news is the historic infestation that destroyed Interior pine stands through the middle of the last decade wasn't as destructive as first feared.
"In 2006, we were projecting a mountain pine beetle kill of 80 per cent of pine by 2013," Jim Snetsinger told a convention of the Western Silviculture Contractors' Association. "Our 2011 models . . . now tell us mountain pine beetle will kill about 61 per cent of susceptible pine by 2021."
