“We will be planting the least number of trees that we have in the past 40 years, at a time when there is an absolutely massive need for investment in replanting,” Macdonald said.

At the moment the forests in B.C. have already suffered with one million destroyed by forest fires and an additional 15 million by pests (largely the mountain pine beetle). This year the government is planning to plant 190 million trees, which is down from 225 million in a typical harvesting year. The biggest planting year in B.C. was in 1989 when a further 300 million trees were planted. Next year the number of trees planted is expected to decline further to 175 million.

According to Bell the majority of the planting is as part of reforestation obligations by logging companies harvesting Crown land. At the moment there is a two year lag between logging and replanting so the current planting decline reflects the downturn in the industry set off by the collapse of the US housing construction market.

The government’s pine beetle and fire reclamation programme has a budget of $42 million this year, with $400 million allocated over the next five years. So far 20 million trees have been planted this year. Bell this programme, called Forests for Tomorrow a ‘good, solid programme’.

To bring attention to the issue the Western Silviculture Contractors Association has launched a website at www.forestfacts.ca. In 2008 the association says that there were 6,000 tree planters working in B.C. and Alberta this year that number fell to 4,000 despite the widespread fires and beetle epidemic.

Unfortunately Bell said that the solution to the pine beetle epidemic wasn’t as simple as just replanting the affected areas.

“What we’re finding is stands that were killed 10 or 15 years ago have developed a relatively large understory, and that understory offers greater potential for the mid-term timber supply than going in, taking down the dead pine that’s left, damaging the understory that was in place prior to that, and replanting,” Bell said.

“The chief forester’s office has done a lot of work on this, and we analyze each stand individually before making a decision on whether to allow the stand to remain and the understory to survive, or knocking it down and replanting. And that’s what the Forests for Tomorrow program are all about.” He concluded.

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The information session will result in two reports being drawn up: one by Dr. Thom Erdle of the University of New Brunswick; and one by Don Roberts, managing director of CIBC World Markets Inc. Dr. Erdle chaired a taskforce on forest diversity and wood supply; while Dr. Roberts chaired one on forestry investment opportunities.

Erdle presented eight possible alternatives based on managing the forests for different values. They ranged from managing primarily for wood supply to managing mainly for conservation and diversity. Maintaining the status quo, concluded Erdle, was not sustainable.

He explained that the committee, which included representatives of industry, environmental groups and universities, had identified seven “cornerstone forest management issues”: wood supply, protected area, conservation forest, old forest, plantations, harvest treatments and forest composition.

Roberts said that while some forestry investment products like newsprint are in a downward spiral, demand for others will increase and new products will emerge. The timber products with the most investment potential, according to Roberts, are softwood framing lumber, MDF (medium density fibreboard) and particleboard.

Forestry Update is sponsored by Greenwood Management. For more information on investing in Forestry please click here