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Race against the beetle

There will be more work for loggers as a Sundre-based forestry company ramps up activities in the West Country.

There will be more work for loggers as a Sundre-based forestry company ramps up activities in the West Country.

Sunpine Forest Products, owned and operated by B.C.-based West Fraser Timber, anticipates stronger prices will aid in its efforts to harvest trees that are at risk of being infested with mountain pine beetles, forestry superintendent Tom Daniels said on Monday.

The demand for building materials had nose dived after a dramatic fall in housing starts in the United States, one of the company’s most important markets. The demand is starting to recover, as are timber prices, which had fallen to the lowest they’ve been since the 1970s, said Daniel.

Lumber that had been selling for $600 per 1,000 board feet is now climbing back from a low of $170, he said.

While housing starts and prices have started to recover, the province has asked Sunpine and other logging companies for aggressive action to check the spread of mountain pine beetles.

Foresters started gearing up three years to protect the region from an infestation that now affects the Bow Valley corridor, concentrating their logging activities on older stands that appear to be the beetle’s favoured diet.

Now, they’re also looking at the potential for an invasion from the north after a flight of beetles that blew in last summer, said Sunpine.

“We’re always worried that we could get a flight coming from BC as well into this area.”

The province has asked that the logging companies take out 75 per cent of the trees deemed most susceptible to pine beetles over the next 20 years. The best the logging companies can do is about 54 per cent, said Daniels.

Foresters look at the total amount of timber that can be harvested over 100 to 200 years, and then make their plans for the next 20 years based on those projections, said Daniels.

There is a great deal of flexibility for adjusting those plans to help meet current needs and to help check the spread of infestations and disease.

The problem along the Eastern Slopes has been that aggressive fire fighting has created an overabundance of older stands that would not have existed years ago, he said.

“The area around Rocky (Mountain House) and Sundre is especially at risk with 60 per cent of the pine forests being over 80 years old and over 80 per cent of the area being comprised of pine forests,” writes Daniels in his report.

Research now shows that clear cutting and prescribed burns coupled with well-managed reforestations are effective in improving biodiversity and wildlife habitat while reducing the risk of a major fire, he said.

While Sunpine did not have to lay any people off during the recent recession, the company anticipates that it will hire more crews to meet its logging goals in the next year, said Daniel.

In addition, a federally-funded forestry strategy aimed at reducing the risk to communities from wild fires will provide a few more jobs, he said. Lewis Contracting, based in Rocky, has won the contract to remove trees adjacent to communities within the Clearwater Forest.

Sunpine won a bid to purchase the timber, which it is processing for building materials and firewood.

bkossowan@www.reddeeradvocate.com