Article printed in the Winnipeg Free Press newspaper:

When cutting down forests is the right thing to do

:By Bill Redekop

June 22, 2008

ELMA -- Here's something different--a pro logging story.

Grant Kurian is one of the loggers sweating it out to haul away trees knocked over in the Whiteshell's "blowdown" last year.

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Grant Kurian's logging company, near Elma, has been working clearing trees knocked over in the Whiteshell Provincial Park's blowdown last year. He says the destruction has created a major fire hazard. (Mike Deal / Winnipeg Free Press )

Winds reached speeds of over 150 kilometres per hour in the blowdown, leaving a giant swathe of felled trees in its wake.

The dead softwood--mostly jackpine and white spruce--presents an enormous fire hazard unless it's removed. Dried softwoods with the browned needles still on branches will burn like gasoline.

"If a fire ever got really going, that (Whiteshell) park would be gone and everything in it," Kurian maintained.

There are about 3,500 cottages, plus numerous campgrounds and resorts, in the park. So for a change, people are happy to see Kurian and even cheer him.

He's used to seeing a different response. A recent example was school children who drew men in the woods with chainsaws and black Xes drawn across them.

"The words we hear are 'bad clearcutting loggers,'" he said.

Kurian doesn't look like Snidely Whiplash. With shoulder length hair, scruffy beard and an earring, he looks more like a guitar player in an aging rock band.

He's a third generation logger who's built up one of the biggest logging outfits in Manitoba, near Elma, an hour's drive east of Winnipeg.

Kurian runs Grant Kurian Trucking Ltd. His wife Roberta runs SEER Logging Inc. They operate as separate entities but obviously work closely together.

Combined, they employ about 50 people. SEER Logging owns seven chippers costing $1 million each, four bunchers (that bunch timber for making piles) at $500,000 each, and 10 skidders at $250,000 each. The trucking operation has a fleet of 20 rigs costing over $3 million in total.

Kurian has a message people may not like to hear. He argues that trees felled by last year's blowdown were older, weaker trees that wouldn't have been there in the first place excpet for provincial park regulations.

"We went up in a chopper to look at the destruction. It only blew down the mature trees, not the new growth," Kurian maintained. "They were mature forests that, in our minds, should have been harvested."

Harvesting mature trees is healthier for a forest than leaving them standing, he maintains. It replaces nature's way of managing forests: fire. But fire isn't appropriate now because of human habitation (although controlled fire is used extensively to promote healthy forests in Riding Mountain National Park).

Manitoba Conservation now estimates it will take up to three more years to remove downed trees, which are in hard-to-reach areas over rough terrain. Loggers are hauling away timber to pulp and paper mills in Pine Falls and Dryden, Ontario.

Another example of what can happen when a forest isn't managed is the pine beetle that's devastating forests in British Columbia, Kurian said. "The environmental people said it's a natural thing and leave it alone," he said.

Now the pine beetles are spreading and moving this way. It's adapting to our harsher climate and there are signs it's developing an appetite for spruce trees, too. "We have a plague on our hands," he said.

The term clearcutting began in B.C. where loggers clearcut sides of mountains, causing rock slides, he said. The term is now used to describe most logging practises where swathes of mature trees are harvested.

Most trees are harvested that way because stands of trees tend to be the same age and mature at the same time. However, today loggers face hefty fines for cutting new growth in a logging area. Twenty years ago, government officials approved such cutting because it removed obstacles to replanting.

Loggers are also required to leave 50 metre buffers between 400 metres areas that are logged out.

The forestry industry has been devastated in recent years. Dozens of mills have closed across Canada, wiping out 47,000 jobs since 2003, due to factors like the nosedive in American housing, a drop-off in demand for newsprint, and the fact that China can import our timber, process it, and ship it back to us for cheaper than we can process it ourself, said Kurian.

The article was viewable online at:
www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/story/4189760p-4780465c.html

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