'As for the logging roads to places where the value of the logs can't cover the cost of the roads my answer to that would be to make the loggers pay the costs of the roads. '
Seems so reasonable, doesn't it ... this is the BC way, for the most part, there are other tenures with other arrangements, but on the big tree farm licenses the company pays not only for roadbuilding and maintenance and fire suppression and security etc, but also is responsible for reforestation to 'free to grow' status, i.e. saplings tall enough not to be threatened by browsing or light starvation by brush, a project which is neither cheap nor easy ... and then, the logger pays stumpage to the crown on an ongoing basis according to harvest
On US federal lands, most if not all of these costs are borne by the feds, and the timber is put up for an auction which forms price discovery for its 'stumpage' ... well obviously this is a different sort of figure from the BC version, which is net of those costs .... this effect is amplified in hot lumber markets, when US companies speculate wildly in outbidding each other, not so much lately i hear but they did this hard years ago in peak cycles, so then the lumber price would go down like always and they'd be stuck with high-cost logs feeling big squeeze
In BC, the stumpage is repriced periodically, used to be quarterly but i'm not sure now, anyway it goes up when the market goes up and down when the market goes down, though there are limits on the downside .... which we see as eminently sensible, but to which the southern yellow pine lobby points and says oh look it is fault of the british columbians that we can't sell our twistey wood for big money like we could last month/year .... and it's true, they can't ... now normally in a situation like this we would sympathise, because the low market is hurting us too, but thing is what they do is organise a department of your federal guvmint against us, thusly we get the Commerzwaffe making war on our forestry communities here through good market and bad, something that we figure comes about because the average US national is not paying attention |
