Q&A from a local junior researcher

We were thrilled to hear from a local student recently, looking to have some questions answered for their research project. Really great questions, and we loved answering them so much we wanted to share them. If you have a question for the community forest, feel free to reach out to us - we love hearing from you.

1) When you are logging do you consider the well being of trees?

Absolutely – tree health is one of the most important priorities.  If we don’t have healthy forests with well-growing trees, we won’t be able to provide logs that people use in their daily lives.  We take a broader planning approach to also consider species other than humans that need the forest as well, but even from a strictly business perspective, the well being of trees is directly related to the well being of any organization that logs to earn profit and provide wood to people. 

Just as important as the well being of the trees growing today, are the trees that we’re planting after we log.  A great deal of planning and expertise goes into planning and executing what will grow well in each place, and then those seedlings are monitored for up to 18 years after planting to make sure they’re doing well and going to grow into a healthy forest. 

2) How many trees do you cut down approximately while logging?

This is a hard question to answer precisely, but a rough estimate for us is 7,200 trees last year.  The amount logged is usually measured in cubic meters not number of trees, and there is a provincial system that tracks amount logged in this unit of measure.  So we logged 12,935 cubic meters in 2024, we plan for 15,000 cubic meters so that is pretty close to an average year.  For context, a typical logging truck holds about 40 cubic meters – the number of trees will vary based on the size of those trees.

3) How do you pick which tree to cut down?

There are different reasons to cut trees down, I’m just going to talk about for the purpose of producing logs.  Planning to cut a tree down starts a minimum of 3 years ahead of time, for us it’s typically 5-7 years.  A primary consideration is the maturity of the trees.  When trees are first planted, they grow very rapidly, and the rate at which they grow continues to increase.  Eventually, growth rates slows to a plateau, and starts to decrease – they are still growing, but much slower.  Typically logging is planned in stands sometime at or after that maximum growth, and that can vary based on what type of trees they are and where they are growing – for the community forest it’s often around 60-90 year old trees.  Many other questions are asked to determine which trees should NOT be cut down, including:

-Are they very old or the largest, oldest trees in the area?

-Are they along waterways or wet areas?

-Are they important habitat for species-at-risk, or do they represent a sensitive or rare ecosystem?

-Are there high-use recreation trails there, and what will the impact on those be?

-Is it very steep?

-Will we be able to successfully replant and grow trees here after logging?

There are professionals like biologists, hydrologists and geoscientists who help answer some of these questions for us.  These are some very cool jobs for people who like forests, but they do have to write a lot of reports about what they see and learn on their treks through the forest.

4) How much does logging damage the soil? Beneath the actual tree that gets cut down?

We hired a local soil expert to analyse an area we logged a few years ago, as well as nearby areas which were not logged, to help us understand more about impacts on soil.  She collects samples twice a year and analyses them under a microscope to see what is living in the soil, and documents it each time to understand how it is changing in the area which was logged, compared to how it is changing in the area which was not logged.  We’re three years into a five-year monitoring study, and what she has found so far is that life in the soil increased a lot in areas that were logged.  She supposed this is because organic matter had been added (think some needles and branches across the surface of the soil as well as decomposing stumps).  Microbial and fungal soil life appears active and healthy after logging in this location, and our seedlings are growing well.  The lady doing this work is named Veronica, and I just heard she will be speaking at Earth Day in Roberts Creek for about 20 minutes so if that’s an event you usually attend, keep an eye out for her if you’re interested in learning more.

5) Do you think that you could improve your logging practices to be better for the environment?

I think there are always ways to improve to be better for the environment, in logging and also in other businesses and our daily lives.  We do continuously learn, collaborating with researchers with an openness to new ideas.  Working with the soil expert above is one example, and we do many things to find opportunities to improve.  I will give you another example someone recently asked me about – burning.  If you’ve ever been through an area recently logged, there are big piles which eventually get burned.  These are the branches and small tops of trees that are left after logging.  Burning is bad for the environment, right?  But we can’t leave the piles there because they pose a very high wildfire risk.  So is there another way to get rid of them?  We can transport an excavator by truck, to load bin trucks to haul the piles away to the green waste facility, where they will grind it up into mulch – all of these activities burning a lot of fossil fuel.  It sounds good – green waste! Mulch for your garden!  But, in reality it is burning fossil fuel in engines instead of the piles of branches, and that mulch will decompose and release the carbon the fire would have released anyway, just in maybe 10 years time – a higher carbon footprint overall.  We don’t think it’s better for the environment to burn fossil fuel to solve this problem, and we don’t know of any better solutions right now.  We have been looking at another option for about a year – it’s called an air curtain burner and comes with its own challenges but it could work.  It’s important for people to keep asking these questions and learning, because there will be a better solution one day and we won’t find it if we’re not looking.  So thank you for asking your questions, and keep on learning.