By Cheryl Jahn

Commercial thinning a forest practicing option

Dec 10, 2020 | 4:40 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – In the early 1960s, the Grove Fire burned a large portion of what is now the Willow River Demonstration Forest. Fifty-five hectares of that 600-hectare demonstration forest is undergoing a process called “commercial thinning.”

“Commercial thinning is an intermediate harvest or a stand-tending harvest that happens at the mid-point of a forest’s life cycle, from plantation to harvest. So say, about Year 50,” explains Mike Trepanier, Manager of the demonstration forest.

“Typically, smaller trees, less vigorous trees are removed and they’re used as forest products. You may get some saw logs, but you’ll get bioenergy and pulp log and that sort of thing coming out it. Meanwhile, you’re leaving the best trees more space, light, more room, more light, more nutrients to grow into bigger trees, faster.”

It’s a technique used in other jurisdictions, but rarely in BC where the traditional model for harvesting is clear cut. And Trepanier says there’s a reason for that.

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“It just not something we have to do. Where in Europe, they manage every hectare to the maximum. We’ve had an abundance of resource and we really haven’t gotten there yet.”

But, in the court of public opinion, the traditional harvesting practices are less appealing and there simply isn’t the viable wood to harvest, meaning the wood taken out from commercial thinning has value.