Now that the Williams Lake Allowable Annual Cut (AAC) has been reduced to three million cubic metres, local politicians and mills are wondering how the Minister of Forests will divvy up the timber, something he’s expected to do within the next five to eight months.
“The AAC, which provides certainty, was the first step, the apportionment is the next,” Cariboo Regional District chair Al Richmond said.
“We are going to be watching with great interest to see what the minister allocates to BC Timber Sales.”
Richmond said with BC Timber Sales not getting their wood on the market it reduces the amount of timber available to licensees to purchase and inflates the price.
Echoing Richmond, Tolko’s Caribou Woodlands Manager Tom Hoffman told the Tribune companies are anxious to know how the timber will be split up.
“If BC Timber Sales gets a certain volume, they will have to start to perform,” Hoffman said. “With the extra volume that was there before, they didn’t have to perform.”
Hoffman also suggested cutting and road building permits need to be sped up, and the process streamlined.
“With the reduction of volume there will be more pressure now that things get done in a more expeditious and processed way.”
Recently the CRD endorsed a resolution for consideration at the upcoming North Central Local Government Association conference in May calling on the provincial government to deliver the full allowable cut under the BC Timber Sales program and a complete science-based inventory of the available timber supply. City council has also endorsed the resolution.
Responding to the Tribune, Ministry of Forests spokesperson Vivian Thomas said BC Timber Sales has a goal to provide credible representative price and cost benchmark data for the market pricing system through auctions of public timber.
Recent objectives by BCTS, she outlined, are to sell its full allowable annual cut (AAC) over the business cycle, consistent with sustainable forest management, generate net direct and indirect provincial government revenue over the business cycle, and pursue continuous business improvement within BCTS, across government and third party partners and customers.
“To support selling its full AAC, each business area is developing plans to sell annually no less than 90 per cent of its AAC, subject to local area demand and supply factors,” Thomas explained.
“And when market demand permits, business areas will target sales of accumulated undercuts, and marginal economic and poor quality timber.”
