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Sidebar: Code Impact Considerable On BC's North Coast

By Jim Stirling
Copyright 1996 Contact publisher for permission to use

Armed with a shovel, wheelbarrow and foul weather clothing, a MacMillan Bloedel employee scoops mud from the top and sides of a wooden bridge deck. His goal is to reduce the amounts of material from logging traffic passing through cracks in the decking to the fish-bearing stream below. The mud is wheeled away and disposed of in an approved manner well away from the stream.

"We do the best we can," explains Mike Richardson, woods foreman with MB's Queen Charlotte Division in Juskatla, BC.

The MB division was one of the first in the province to work with fisheries and the forest service on stream management issues, many years before the introduction of BC's new Forest Practices Code. MB has been on the Islands since the early 1960s. The Yakoun River's importance as a salmon sustaining drainage and world-renowned recreational fishery has long been recognized. The Haida call the Yakoun the River of Life. The Yakoun dissects MB's operating areas on Graham Island. Other important streams include the upper Tlell, Maman and Hanna rivers and their tributaries.

But developing timber harvesting plans in environmentally sensitive areas under the new Forest Practices Code is fraught with challenges. Company officials emphasize a commitment to a code. But there's definitely a transition stage for companies, contractors and the forest service to determine the still-evolving regulations and interpret standards.

The impacts have been considerable. The amount of paperwork and administration has increased for everyone involved with woods operations. Divisional engineering staff have mushroomed from six to 16. More may follow. Part of that is due to the reduced opening sizes permitted under the code. The maximum allowed is 40 hectares compared with past approvals up to 200 hectares. The 40 hectares is not an average or net size either, point out company staff. Remove riparian zones, buffers, road right-of-ways and any other deferred areas and the harvestable block may be only 20 hectares.

Spruce makes up about 10 per cent of company crew harvest with the largest stems in river valleys now often protected by the code. Connecting the smaller harvesting areas means more roads and bridges. In 1996, the company plans on building 80 km of new road and 180 km as a division to achieve its cut. Close to 100 per cent of roads on Graham Island need ballasting, more than in any other MB division. A two-month construction window for bridges across most classifications of streams compounds the planning problems.

Learning to live with the Code is one reason why issuing cutting permits is well behind schedule. Another reason is the whole issue of forest land use and sustainability on the Islands is under heated public debate and analysis; a subject to be covered by LSJ in an upcoming issue. Permits have to go through the consulting process which, in the Charlottes, includes input from the Council of Haida Nations.

The result of delayed cutting permits means future logging plans - and jobs - are in limbo. And where harvesting is permitted, development and logging operations overlap. With falling, yarding, loading and road building all active in the same area, it takes a logistical shoehorn to fit in equipment. Productivity and operational efficiencies take a tumble and using green roads increases maintenance costs. The forest service is well aware of the problems and is doing what it can to alleviate them.

MB is using a digital mapping microstation to help speed up the approval flow of its forest development plans. The versatile machine is a first for MB. It can start with regular maps and create three-dimensional computer models using software programs developed by Pacific International Mapping Corporation of Victoria, BC.

The microstation-produced logging plans contain huge amounts of information about the existing landscape and the details of proposed harvesting upon it. The plans clearly indicate all reserve and buffer zones, stream classifications, gullies, proposed roads and bridges and the harvesting system layout designed for each block. The ministry uses a similar system, simplifying the revision process.

Visual constraints are an important consideration in the Queen Charlottes. Alterations to the viewscape caused by harvesting activity are strictly controlled. The microstation can evaluate the visual effects of various logging patterns on a given hillside viewed from land or water, right down to changes in ambient light conditions. "We can generate any view impact to 1/100th metre if we want," says Lou Prussner, geomatics technician.

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