Democrito2000’s Weblog

By Daniel Ruiz Sandoval

The New Brunswick Task Force on Forest Diversity and Wood Supply has recently made public the report on Management Alternatives for New Brunswick’s Public Forest. This report presents a set of forest management alternatives to be implemented over the next 25-50 years. As the authors of the report point out, each alternative involves trade offs between the extension of protected natural areas (PNAs), conservation forest area outside NPAs, old forest and species composition on the one hand; and clearcuts, plantations, jobs, royalties and contribution to GDP on the other. Under the status quo the PNAs will continue to account for 4% of the total public forest area, conservation forest outside PNAs 28%, and old forest would reach 34% of the total forest area by 2062. By the same token, the area subject to clearcutting would amount to 81% in the next 25 years and plantation area is expected to reach 22% by 2062. According to the report, the status quo is also the option that offers the greatest number of jobs (7,600), the highest contribution to GDP (0.8 billion), and the greatest royalties (60 million / year).

However, the report explicitly recognizes that the status quo produces the highest economic returns “because of the relatively high spruce / fir wood supply and a short term, but unsustainable, harvest of other species made possible by the absence of a long-term, sustainability objective”. It also points out to “the need to generate increasing yields of a wider variety of commercial species and products to provide a diverse raw material base for wood based industries”;  as well as maintaining “the diversity and the ecological features” of the Acadian Forest in order to prevent “excessive reductions in species diversity”.

One alternative to the status quo is based on a new approach to forest management that maintains diversity by conducting harvesting in accordance with the natural disturbances the forest is likely to experience. In this way the post-harvest stands retain some of the natural conditions used by flora and fauna that live in the natural forest. Nevertheless, expanding the area harvested under natural disturbance tendencies at the expense of clearcut operations reduces the revenues obtained from the forest. The management option that maximizes natural disturbance based harvesting and minimizes clearcuts also reduces jobs by 1000 and contribution to GDP by 0.14 billion while royalties decrease by 6 million a year. This conservation focused framework increases NPAs to 10% of total forest area but decreases conservation forest outside PNAs to 8%. This actually makes sense as most of the harvesting would be carried out under ecologically sound methods.

In between these two choices there is a number of combinations with different trade-offs. One that attempts a compromise between economic profitability and nature conservation reduces clearcutting area to 72% and increases the natural disturbance based harvesting area to 34%. PNAs would expand to 10% but conservation forest would be reduced to 11%. A downturn of this option is that plantations are increased to 37%. The economic costs would amount to the loss of 400 jobs and contribution to GDP would decrease by 0.08 billion while royalties would shrink by 1 million a year. But even so, the expansion in PNAs may create job opportunities linked to tourism that the report does not account for. After all, it would be nice to put back in our license plates the legend “Picture Province” right? It is clear that there are no easy choices ahead and that is why it is necessary to promote public participation in order to reach a more informed decision. If you are interested in reading the details about the report you can download the summary or the full version at: http://www.gnb.ca/cnb/Promos/Forest/index-e.asp .