The Pine beetle devastated British Columbia’s interior timber supply from the late 1990s onward, and its effects are going to continue to be felt by the province’s sawmills and manufacturing operations for the foreseeable future.
That was the gist of a recent NAWLAsponsored webinar led by BC fiber supply experts Jim Girvan and Rob Schuetz of Industrial Forestry Services in Prince George, BC. Girvan noted that they were publicly called “the doomsday boys” by the minister of forestry after predicting in 2010 that the Pine beetle would force the closure of 16 sawmills by 2018. “We turned out to be right on the money,” he said.
The epidemic started southwest of Prince George, in the province’s center, after several warm winters allowed the Pine beetles to thrive. The insects attacked mature trees by boring through the bark and mining the phoem, a living tissue in vascular plants that carries organic nutrients. “Basically, the beetle kills the Pine tree, which then turns red when the needles have died. The needles eventually fall off and the tree becomes a fire hazard,” Girvan explained.
Eradication of single trees failed and by 2002, the Pine beetle had spread rapidly north, south and east. Some of these areas contained mixed species, which resulted in a lower percentage of trees being killed.
The beetles’ rampage peaked about 2004-05, when 140 million cubic meters of Pine were killed in a single year. Overall, about 18 million hectares (45 million acres) of British Columbia’s Pine forests were destroyed–750 million cubic meters, which is equivalent to 2.6 billion board feet of finished lumber.
“Once the trees are dead, they harden,” Girvan said. “They tend to crack and can remain standing for a number of years and are actually quite viable, but that really depends on the moisture of the site. On wetter sites, the wood tended to rot and fall over more quickly, whereas on dryer sites it tended to last quite a bit longer.”
Even about 10 years after the Pine beetle had killed a stand of timber, about 50 percent of the standing volume is able to be harvested and used in the production of lumber. “Over time, more and more of the original volume killed was unusable for the production of lumber and was going to pulp and biomass streams. Today there is still some volume left in those stands that is merchantable, but the low volume makes it costly and oftentimes uneconomic to harvest,” Girvan said.
From 1990 to 2000, the allowable cut (AAC) set by the Crown was about 50 million cubic meters. As the Pine beetle chomped its way through the province, the cut was increased so that the dead trees could be harvested. “Many mills upgraded and there were a few expansions. But in 2009, the economic recession basically collapsed the industry, reduced harvests and prevented the continued salvage of dead timber.” As of 2020, the allowable cut remains about 50 million cubic meters. “The AAC will continue to fall until about 2025,” Girvan noted.
Sawlog demand, which stood at 55 million to 60 million cubic meters in 2005, also dropped as a result of the curtailment of 14.5 million cubic meters of capacity. Twenty-six mills (22 sawmills, four rotary) closed while others dropped shifts. Yet 6.5 million cubic meters of excess capacity remain.
So what’s in the future? Girvan forecasted that the ACC in the British Columbia interior will be just under 40 million cubic meters, or about 20 percent less than pre-beetle allowable cut, through 2035.
“Fire is a big deal now in the BC interior,” he said, adding that two of the province’s worst fires on record occurred in 2017 and 2018. “2019 wasn’t too bad, but even here in May we have had 112 fires and one of them, as the government says, is ‘of note’ which means it’s big,” Girvan remarked.
Spruce beetles have become another challenge. “Like the Pine beetle, the Spruce beetle turns trees red after they have been killed so they’re easy to monitor using aerial surveys,” he said.
Schuetz took over: “The Spruce beetle has a significantly different impact on the forest stands.” Since Spruce trees are typically more shallow-rooted and grow on steeper slopes and wetter sites than Pine, the dead ones generally can be harvested for only three to five years before they become uneconomical, he said.
“Whereas the Pine beetle killed Pine trees and a lot of those trees were still standing 10, 15 and some of them almost 20 years later, a lot of these Spruce stands are just starting to fall over,” Schuetz said. “With the Pine, it also changed the color of the fiber with blue stain. With the Spruce, it’s causing what’s called internally a diesel rod. The wood doesn’t look any different, but it reduces the grade after the lumber has been manufactured and results in a significant reduction in the value of the trees.”
By the end of 2019 in the Prince George area alone, about 120,000 hectares of Spruce had been moderately to severely attacked by the beetle. That is three to four times larger than the area that the Spruce beetle attacked in the 1980s, “and there’s no end in sight at this time,” Schuetz said.
The mountain caribou poses a different sort of challenge for British Columbia foresters. It has been deemed a threatened species under Canada’s Species at Risk Act and conservation measures that ban or limit logging have been undertaken to save it. A plan recently signed by the federal government and local First Nations will serve as a template for other areas in the province. The province is continuing to analyze the plan’s effect on the caribou herds, local economies and fiber supply, Schuetz said.
“Looking forward to 2025, we think an additional six mills might need to close in order to bring sawlog supply into balance with demand and allow all mills to operate at full capacity,” Girvan said. “The alternative may be that some mills might operate at less than their full capacity, but at minimum we believe that four interior mills are going to have to close before we get to the end of the impacts of these issues.”
Schuetz predicted that the lower fiber supply would be putting at least one pulp mill at risk, along with two power plants that use bioenergy, and one pellet plant.
Girvan and Schuetz are both registered professional foresters. Girvan, who holds an MBA, has over 40 years of experience in the wood industry. Schuetz, president of IFS, has spent 33 years in the business. Their full forecast for the British Columbia interior is available by contacting David Battaglia, vice president of sales and marketing, FEA, at (+1) 770-265-7150 or dbattaglia@getfea.com.
