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FactsFax - Issue #457
Central Interior Logging Association - May 1, 2008
Community Development Trust
The Ministry of Labour met with industry associations April 21 to discuss set-up of a Community Development Trust. The Trust is aimed at supporting impacted BC forest workers in three priorities over the next three years:
1. Transitional assistance for older forest workers and those who have been laid off; 2. Tuition assistance of up to one year for temporarily laid-off workers who wish to diversify or upgrade their skills and training at designated BC post-secondary education insitutions; and 3. Expanded silviculture, reforestation, afforestation and forestry programs that provide new job opportunities in tree-planting and management in urban areas and in restoring forest lands affected by the mountain pine beetle and the wildfires of 2003 and 2004 that would otherwise not be reforested.
Industry associations participating with the ministry include the four provincial logging associations, coastal and interior manufacturing associations and the western fallers associations. Government is also seeking input from labour organizations in formulation of the Trust.
CILA recommends highway upgrades
Minister Kevin Falcon was in Prince George on April 21 to present the government's transit and transportation plan and hear input on the plan from industry leaders.
CILA chair Shane Garner and executive director Rick Publicover recommended that monies be invested in improvements in highway infrastructure on both the Cariboo Connector and Highway 16 west of Prince George to improve safety and efficiency of movement of people, raw materials and finished goods.
Minister Falcon indicated that the province is seeking partnership funding for the Cariboo Connector from the federal government's "Building Highway Canada" program and stressed the urgency of receiving the funding in order that projects could be initiated this summer. The CILA has written to members of parliament Jay Hill and Dick Harris in support of the highway upgrades.
Beetle forests emit high carbon levels
Carbon emissions from BC's pine-beetle-killed forests are equivalent to Canada's average annual forest fire emissions, according to a new report from scientists at the Ministry of Natural Resources Canada. Instead of manufacturing oxygen as they should, the damaged forests are becoming a source for global warming, putting more pressure on the need to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
The study states that it will be much harder for Canada to meet global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when a huge section of BC Forests are producing carbon dioxide.
Werner Kurz, the study's co-author, says, "What we're saying is what has historically helped us attain moderate growth rates of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere is, at least temporarily in this region, interrupted by the beetle."
Researchers estimate that from 2000 to 2020, a 374,000-square kilometer area of BC forest (an area larger than Labrador) would produce 270,000 megatonnes of carbon. Kurtz said that's about the same amount of carbon produced by Canada's entire transportation sector over a very large period.
"So these are very large numbers in terms of impacts to the atmosphere," he said.
The province's chief forester, Jim Snetsinger, states that the problem needs to be kept in perspective, noting that pine-dominated forests are about 20 percent of the land base, while 80 percent of the remaining forested land will still be growing.
The extent of this natural disaster outlines the need for quick government policy implementation on its bio-energy strategies (co-generation, bio-fuels such as bio-diesel and pellet production) to encourage utilizing the beetle-killed timber and prompt reforestation of beetle-killed areas. The Western Silviculture Association is already concerned about the reduction in the number of trees being currently planted by major forest licensees due to the downturn in the lumber sector.
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