New Forest Plan for New Brunswick

[SwampDonkey]

The wood will have wider growth rings and I'm pretty sure most won't be 80 years old before they are cut. The 80 year thing is good on paper, but I have seen Frasers try to get fibre from thinnings that were spaced 12-15 years before. I marked harvest trails in some and the wood was mighty small. A 4-5" dbh fir or spruce doesn't yield much. It certainly doesn't provide a 50 foot marketable stick. The trees are only about 30 feet tall, max. There has to be an intermediate thinning. A one time spacing leaves the trees too tight within 15 years. When you find big wood in the forest, the trees are not thick. On one private woodlot owned by a town, they cut red spruce over 3 foot through and hard maple 4 foot through. It was at one time a watershed under protection. But towns are on wells these days with water towers. So budgets often come off woodlots. The feds did the same with Agriculture Centres. Go look at their woodlots, they were all cut 20-30 years ago due to cut backs from government. Now they have sold the seed farm in Bon Accord. That's always the end, selling off assets.

[Mark Wentzell]

There has to be an intermediate thinning.

That's the one big thing missing from the NB silviculture program. We're very good at pre commercial thinning and planting but any treatments after that seem to be lacking. The Irvings do quite a bit of commercial thinning on their own ground but I don't think much is done on crown, I doubt if any is done on private ground. I noticed the YSC marketing board subsidizes semi commercial thinning but I don't think there is provincial subsidy money for it.

[SwampDonkey]

I think YSC and SNB boards use levy money for those treatments. I am pretty sure than the SNB board keeps a woodlot account for owners to do followup work on their land.

The Private Woodlot Silv Manual doesn't indicate any such treatments or rates. Long ago, the provincial government said they would not subsidize treatments that removed any commercial fibre. When the Cooperation agreement was in effect with the Feds they did have such programs, even pruning in some provinces (they did a lot of hemlock pruning in BC). There were some small scale Hardwood Crop Tree Release treatments. You had to have some fairly decent hardwoods to qualify, which only makes good sense. There wasn't enough of that work being done though to be significant. Many softwood secondary thinnings were soon clear cut anyway since folks don't seem to let their wood grow much in size these days.

[Ken]

Over the past couple of years some of the provincial silviculture monies are also available for commercial thinning in stands that are heavily dominated by tolerant species.  The program is directed at restoring the Acadian Forest stand type.  I did a few of these commercial thins last year and am currently doing one that is dominated by yellow birch.  Ironically the one that I am working on now is a stand that I pct'd in the late 90's.  We are removing in the range of 7-8 cords/acre.  I remember that the stems in this stand were quite big when we did the pct work.  I will get some pictures next week as it is coming out very nice.

[SwampDonkey]

That's good to know they have changed their policy a bit. We have lost our best hardwood ground up this way to potato fields. Glassville and New Denmark areas have more hardwoods left because of the terrain up there. Lots of big hills hard to farm. That makes cutting wood a challenge to. For the last 30 years the McCains have pushed hard for more land clearing. I've seen a lot of plantations bulldozed to clear back as well.

Yes, I now see in the manual where they offer $700/ha to the boards for this. And has to be premapped for approval. It's a paragraph outside of the regular rate structure.

However, I have seen some 20 year old hardwood PCT that still have a large percentage of stems barely merchantable. If there were fir and popple in the mix they were significantly larger and merchantable.

[chester_tree _farmah]

Hi SwampDonkey - so from your posts here and in other sections of this site I am getting the impression that Irving owns things over/up there? Is it just NB or all over Canada? Yes they are all over in Maine but I think they got that way by having clean, well kept stores. Back when that wasn't the norm around here. Now every one else does too.

[SwampDonkey]

They were able to expand because of diversity of the company and some major government handouts and back room deals. They got millions of acres of forest lands that belonged to the NB Railroad Co during the Lord Beaverbrook years for next to nothing. About everything they do as far as big announcements on expansions/upgrades/contracts costs the NB and Federal governments. Hard to loose when you feed on the government.

Then there are little jems like these over the years.

http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/eng/03503.html

[chester_tree _farmah]

I hear you man. We have political issues over here too. Did anything come of those charges? I don't know your judicial system well. Can it be delayed for years on end like down here? If you have a good lawyer? $$$$$$

[SwampDonkey]

Still in the courts.

One time, back a few years ago, the feds investigated them over something else. The Irvings said they didn't have to tell'm anything and they didn't. And that was that.

They are also in court with our forest products marketing boards as well. Boards are woodlot owner organizations.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/forest-products-contracts-require-boards-approval-1.2422525

[SwampDonkey]

Well the march on the legislature has begun yesterday over this plan.

CBC News Article

[Mark Wentzell]

Not surprised to see Rod Cumberland leading the charge. 

The one thing I learned from that article was there's a such thing as a "forest Sociologist"  :-\

[chester_tree _farmah]

What is that? Sociologist?