Exploring Interfor's Tree Farm License 38 in Squamish
Tree
Farm License 38
After lunch, on Thursday afternoon, we continued our tour of Tree Farm License 38 of the International Forest Products Limited (INTERFOR) company near Squamish, BC.
Gordon used the stand right above our lunch stop to talk about variable retention. The stand had been harvested recently but they had left approximately 90 stems per hectare to minimize the harvesting footprint. The trees that were left represented 10% of the original stand. Interfor replanted the stand instead of leaving it because natural regeneration would take too long for Interfor to be in compliance with government regulations.
From there we traveled to the Deminger Interpretive Trail,
where teachers had an opportunity to walk through an old growth stand and see
some really big trees.
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Interfor Plantation
Gordon then took us to one of Interfor's plantation stands to explain how Interfor is managing forests. While they are trying to make money they accomplish that by mimicking mother nature but on a faster time scale.
The stand we visited was 40-year old second growth. In the 60s it, like many of the era was clearcut and then burned. It was replanted with only douglas-fir resulting in a dense stand. Because douglas-firs are shade intolerant, only the biggest trees with access to sunlight above the crowd are able to thrive. As the douglas-firs grow, lower branches fall off naturally as sunlight didn't get to them. Despite this, hemlock, cedar, and yew came up anyway. Today they plant mixture of fir and cedar. Now grows a mixture of species.
Interfor's management takes this natural process into account while recovering mortality. The stand was spaced in 1992/3, mimicking natural mortality due to competition. If trees weren't removed they would be naturally thinned anyway by competition, the less fit trees dying and rotting away. More recently, crews selected, based on their silvicultural knowledge, the fittest trees which they pruned of branches up to 5.2 meters (~16 ft) so that the trees would provide clear lumber at least 16 ft long in the future. In five years (if there's a market,) they will take out unpruned trees (commercial thinning) for pulp wood. Then in 20 years, half the stems would be harvested leaving 200 trees (density?) and the rest would be left for future investment while they replant underneath.
The management that Interfor is doing reflects and investment in the future. Pruning, for example, is expensive ($5/tree) but down the road it should be worth it because it's easier to sell a tree with clear wood. But considering that the TFL is crown land, Interfor is subject to government and regulations. They might not have their license renewed down the road or regulations might change affecting what they can or can't cut. In the spring for instance, new legislation was passed that took 20% of Interfor's cut to be given to small businesses and First Nations (Timber Sale BC.)
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Shovelnose Creek Fish Habitat Restoration
As
our last stop in TFL #38 we visited an artificial channel flowing into
Shovelnose Creek that is the site of fish habitat restoration project conducted
by Gordon in 1996. Salmon need calm pools for spawning.
The creek had been inundated several years previous by a mudflow from Mt. Cayley that diverted the river through the creek where we were standing. Interfor has done a lot of rehabilitation on the creek in order to reclaim the creek for salmon spawning and rearing habitat. As we could see by the numerous smolt present, it seemed to be successful.
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Dinner at Howe Sound Inn.
Thursday's dinner was at the Howe
Sound Inn in Squamish. After dinner, the Deputy Chief Forester of British
Columbia, Ken Baker, gave a PowerPoint presentation on forestry in BC.
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