Way back at the start of the Mountain Pine Beetle infestation in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, forestry workers and foresters were amazed at how quickly the voracious pest was spreading across the land.
Every lifecycle, the beetles would increase in numbers and destroy the trees that became their over-winter bedrooms.
With the lack of a hard freeze, more and more pine beetles survived to take flight in the summer and kill off more and more trees.
The once green forests were turning into a sea of red and people started noticing the great stretches of red creeping over the land.
There were calls for the Ministry of Forests to do something about the silent death killing off hectares and hectares of tall green pines.
By the time the fight to stop the advance of the Mountain Pine Beetle began, it was already too late.
The voracious bug was spreading throughout the province in unprecedented numbers.
Foresters and forest industry workers peered into the crystal ball and learned they could do nothing to stop the beetle.
Thoughts then turned to doing something about saving the communities that relied solely on forest industry jobs as the economic driver.
Communities formed committees to find ways to prevent milling and harvesting job losses from killing the communities.
There was talk of industrial diversity, re-training and other ways to prevent collapse in rural British Columbia.
While this was going on, forest harvesting companies realized dead pine would take much longer to deteriorate as first thought.
So the harvesting of dead pine continued and the mills were updated so they could saw and plane more efficiently.
When harvesting companies had to go further afield to harvest the standing dead pine, more green trees was added to the quota as an enticement to mill the pine before it was no longer merchantable.
Everyone was working more and extra shifts were put on – all was good.
Well, life was good enough to stop worrying about what the future might hold and, therefore, planning for diversity, training and saving rural towns went out the window.
Now, the reduction of fibre for the mills due to the lowering of the mid-term allowable annual cuts is just around the corner.
People are again turning their attention to the future, and so is the B.C. Liberal government.
Funding has just been announced for the $75-million, three-year BC Rural Dividend program.
It’s similar to what was talked about in the early days.
While it’s good to help rural communities with this funding, the money has to be spent on capacity building, keeping young people in their home towns and on community, economic and business sector.
The money needs to be spent wisely with our future in mind.
