January 2001 - Logging and Sawmilling Journal -

Ontario's Algonquin Forestry Authority is successfully meeting the demands of different stakeholders while overseeing logging operations in Algonquin Park.

Forest companies and provincial governments that are facing conflicting demands on the forest land base could likely pick up a few tips from Ontario's Algonquin Forestry Authority (AFA), which has been meeting these types of demands for quite a while. The AFA, a provincial Crown agency, oversees forest management including logging in Ontario's most well known provincial park, Algonquin Park. What's more, it has been doing that in a low-key fashion for more than two decades. During that time, it may not have won over all the environmentalists to its side. But over the past 25 years, the AFA has certainly made sure that such groups, along with other interested parties, such as local cottagers, are part of the planning process for forest management. "It's a process," explains AFA operations manager Danny Janke. "You have to listen to people and, more importantly, you have to understand them."

That does not necessarily mean there is always going to be a meeting of the minds about land use, says Janke, who has participated in many of these discussions. The parties may only reluctantly agree to a compromise. "It's all about having discussions, reviewing problems and looking at solutions. People need to sit down and figure out a way to make it work. "There are different groups with their own specific interests and there are groups that are against logging period," adds Janke. "But if you have the best forest management science, you can defend what you are doing. And we have an open door policy. If people want to see what we are doing in the park, we will take them out and show them."

While the AFA does not hold any exclusivity on the approach of involving stakeholders in forest management planning, they do seem to have earned the respect of these groups. Such cannot be said of all forest companies and provincial governments. One of the keys to the success of the logging operations in the 7,600 square kilometre Algonquin Park is keeping it separate from the recreational activities going on in it. "The biggest thing is keeping logging and recreational activities separated by time and to minimize conflicts," said Janke. "With recreation, we know where the high use areas are and you try to plan your operations around that.

The summer time, for example, is the peak time for campers and hikers, and we will do operations around, rather in or near, the high use areas." They are not, however, hiding what they are doing. "We are proud of the job that we do," says Janke. Even in the summer months, hikers and campers still see logging trucks heading down side roads and out of the park, on their way to one of the local sawmills that depend on the logs from Algonquin. The Algonquin Forestry Authority celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2000. No major celebrations were held for the AFA, it was pretty much business as usual. It was hardly business as usual when the AFA was set up back in 1975, though. It was clear then that conflict was growing between the different users of the park.

Back when the AFA started, "stakeholders" was not even a broadly used term and the environmental groups were small and unorganized. In the 1970s, the provincial government eventually formed an inquiry into management of the park, public meetings were held and a master plan was developed. The plan saw the forest licences of local sawmill owners replaced with allocations, with annual volumes. That system still holds today, with there being 10 allocation holders. A total of 12 mills receive part or most of their supply of wood from the park on a regular basis, while another five to 10 mills receive periodic supplies of wood. Setting up a governing forestry authority in the park made sense from a number of perspectives. Prior to the AFA, each of the licence holders had their own road systems in place, leading as directly as possible to their own mill. There was no coordination, with road systems often not connected to each other.

The Annual Allowable Cut for the park, under the present five-year plan which expires this year, is 545,000 cubic metres. But due to the low quality and small size of some of the wood and no pulp mill in the region, they generally harvest about 410,000 cubic metres a year. In the 1999 harvest year, about one half of that was pulpwood, about 37 per cent was softwood sawlogs and 13 per cent was hardwood sawlogs. Besides white pine, the other principal species harvested are sugar maple, yellow birch and beech." That additional wood could be harvested," notes Janke. "But it is a matter of supply and demand. The demand is not there from the low end wood side. The majority of the wood we are not using is low end pulp wood." There is an oversupply of pulpwood and pulp chips in the central region of the province.

Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources currently has a request for proposals out for surplus pulpwood, some of which is in the park. There has been a conscious emphasis within the forest management plan to take out the smaller wood. As a result, the AFA and the sawmills it supplies are seeing a slow, but steady, improvement in the quality of the wood. "We're starting to go back into some cuts and we're seeing the yield of sawlogs get better. For the last 25 years, we've put in the time and made the investment and the mills we supply have paid the price. But starting now and more so in the future, it will be payback time because the forest is now starting to generate a higher value product." The road infrastructure for accessing the wood is also pretty well all in place.

Partial cutting is the logging method used in the park, almost exclusively, with every single tree to be harvested marked. The AFA uses selection or shelterwood systems. These systems are based on removing designated trees, but retaining better quality trees which are uniformly spaced for seed and shelter and establishing natural regeneration. The new forest develops under the existing forests and forest cover is maintained at all times. Species such as maple, beech, yellow birch, white and red pine and hemlock are managed with these systems.

About three per cent of harvesting is done in the form of clearcutting in small patches, for species such as poplar, jack pine and white birch that require open sunlight conditions to germinate and grow new seedlings. Almost all of the wood in the park is harvested using cut and skid methods, although some of the logging contractors are experimenting with mechanized logging. "We're still in the early part of the learning curve of feller buncher operation in a select cut area," says Janke. "Are we an advocate of more mechanization? No, but we are an advocate of more innovation and reducing costs, if we can do that.

There may be a place for these methods in what we do here. But it seems the feller bunchers are really more for the clearcut operations in northern Ontario, rather than what we are doing. They have to have a certain productivity because of the capital costs involved." Janke says it is getting harder for their contractors to find cutters, which certainly works in favour of utilizing feller bunchers. With sometimes a short logging season, coupled with the risks of logging and working in the bush, other jobs look more attractive. "Younger people don't seem to want to get into the business."

The logging contractors operating in the park under the AFA work under well established guidelines. The forest management plan dictates a 30metre no cut zone around any body of water. It also prohibits operating within 1.6 kilometres of a canoe route in the summer months due to the noise and, without Ministry of Natural Resources approval, roads can't be built within 120 metres of any body of water. There are also restricted haul hours in the summer months. Some areas of the park, such as wilder ness zones and historic zones, are not open to logging. But harvesting can take place in 72 per cent of the park in what is termed a recreational utilization zone. On the forest management side, the AFA has plans to have an environmental management system set up under ISO 14000 next year.

To make sure things are running smoothly, and within guidelines, they have a close working relationship with the logging contractors out in the bush. "In addition to the ongoing coordination we have with a foreman on each operation, we have annual training programs with the contractors and their crews. We did one this past spring on minimizing logging damage. One thing we're fortunate about with the AFA is that some of our contractors have been around since our inception, which is basically 25 years, so that stability is there." Some of those currently working in the park, in fact, are the fourth generation of their family to work in the park. That's not hard to believe considering logging goes back as far as the early 1800s, long before the park was established in 1893.

Logging first started in the 1830s when there was a requirement from Britain for the massive pines of the region. "The big pine was really what they wanted, so that was all that was logged." This was the "square timber era" during which very large white pine and red pine were felled and made into square sticks by loggers using nothing but their axes. Even though the demands on the AFA and the park have grown over the years, Janke said there is a strong understanding of the heritage involved in Algonquin Park and the responsibility contractors have to conduct logging properly. "There's always been the awareness that the mandate is to protect all the environmental values plus the unique wilderness experience. We were driven by that right from the start 25 years ago. There are new guidelines, more restrictions and more new science, but we adapt and we react. Right from day one, we've taken the soft footprint approach." J

anke has some advice for those attempting to get stakeholders more involved and increase public consultation. "Use the best science available in managing the land and make the process bottom up, rather than top down. Don't try to do things from the boardroom. Get out there and talk to people and listen."

AFA Tightens Up To Meet Guidelines

In the early part of 2000, the Algonquin Forestry Authority was in the news briefly for its logging practices. Two environmental groups, the Algonquin Wildlands League and The Sierra Legal Defense Fund, said the guidelines governing buffer zones to protect creeks and wildlife habitats were not being followed in the park. "They basically went out and did an audit of some areas," says AFA operations manager Danny Janke. "But from our perspective, we don't think you can say that it is statistically defensible."

The two groups noted there were some trees marked for harvesting within 30 metres of a creek, which goes against the AFA guidelines. "We have a forest management plan and we're going to follow it and we're gong to try and get 100 per cent, but forestry is not an exact science," says Janke. "You can walk along and find a tree that may be a bit close to a creek, at 29.5 metres. But you may go another 10 feet and find another tree that is 32 metres from the creek. It isn't fair to criticize the whole operation on that basis. "Did they find some things at fault? I'd have to say yes, they did. They found a few spots where the reserve areas were closer and were not as wide as they should have been. We've looked at it and we've beefed things up to make sure we comply in the future.

We're going to do more internal checks and more spot checks to make sure our reserves meet the guidelines." But Janke adds that, as anyone involved in the forest industry knows, you can put things down on paper when you're doing the forest management plan in the office, "but there are a lot of factors that influence what you do out in the woods." "It's not pavement or a field that you're working with it's a forest and it's bush. These things should not have happened, but in the end there was nothing in the violations that compromises that long term health of the forest in the park."

Huge Algonquin Blowdown Successfully Harvested

This past July saw the completion of a huge job for the Algonquin Forestry Authority and its contractors harvesting 300,000 cubic metres of wood that had been knocked down by a blowdown in July, 1999. "We pretty much moved all the cutting capacity of our contractors to handle the blowdown," says operations manager Danny Janke.

The AFA took some of the contractors who had been working in the west side of the park over to the east side the site of the blowdown added two more contractors. "We had about six contractors in there. We segmented the area, broke it down into pieces, and then assigned the pieces to the contractors. At one point, we had 70 cable skidders working in the blowdown. It pretty much meant we were going full tilt for the winter and spring and it was quite demanding." He notes that they were lucky through the winter, as they did not receive much snow, which could have impeded the harvesting of the downed timber. One of the biggest tasks was laying out the roads to do such a big harvesting job. The goal was to complete as much as possible of the job before the tourist season arrived this past summer they did not want to have an extremely high level of activity in the blowdown area during this peak tourist period.

This meant they still had to haul timber through some areas of the park that were used by tourists, but they knew the cleanup of the timber had to be completed quickly. If things went late, there could be problems with bug infestation and stain. In the early summer, during the last of the clean up, they started a night haul, beginning at 10 pm, with the trucks off the road by 6:30 am. "For a road that usually sees no logging trucks, we had 40 trucks travelling on it and it went well," says Janke. "We had no complaints."

While this blowdown was major, the AFA has seen them before and has experience in managing the harvest that results. In fact, there was a similar blowdown in the same area of the park in 1982, though it was smaller, amounting to about 235,000 cubic metres in a 5,000-hectare area. While blowdowns and the resulting harvesting process makes for an intense time, Janke notes that it could have been worse the park could have been hit with a twister, which has happened before. "At least a blowdown leaves the trees oriented all one way. A twister would have left them every which way."

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