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"Digitization to move data not people"? Does this mean more effort into automation or remote control of equipment?

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Those opposed to log exports prefer the US duties imposed on lumber blatantly subsidized by the insistence that Canadian logs, whether owned by the Crown or privately, be sold to the lowest bidder. At the margin, this puts those sawmills down but satisfies the politics of envy and resentment.

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The NRDC doesn't care about the relative merits of Canadian forest practices. It is in business to raise money by creating demand for action against industries hysterically depicted by their various campaigns. Canada is their prime target because through Canadian Crown land and resource ownership, their costs of success is that of political lobby rather than the much larger market price of private land (such as most of US and European forests) reflecting economic rents. NRDC and its peers will only move on to their next campaign when their targets are eliminated and for Canada, that means preserved in its entirety.

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This is an interesting and welcome technology to utilize our renewable resource. Wood is good.

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I find it difficult to take a report like this seriously. If what this report says is true then you have to agree that logging an area will have a similar impact. Does anyone stop and wonder if putting aside so many areas into reserves has contributed to the build up of fuel. How about the fact that the opposition to logging has pushed harvesting away from communities and thus allowed fuel loads around communities to build up. Why are we are surprised and shocked when a fire rips through a residential area. Putting back fire on the landscape is not going to solve the problem. Managing our forests for well spaced healthy resilient forests will. We need to control insect, wind damage, and disease impacts to significantly reduce fuel loads. This will go a long way to making us safer. Putting large areas off limits to logging is proving not to be so beneficial to the public lands. Come on folks , wake up before it is too late. George Delisle

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Very confident that UBC cluster of talents will achieve their goal with excellence. Good luck and keep up the great work.

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It is one thing to plant trees, but another to manage them. I know of so many plantations that were planted with good intentions and then forgotten. People need to be encouraged to thin, prune, and focus on crop trees and get rid of the trees with no future. Not many out there willing to do the hard work involved. However for the ones that do, very rewarding. Cheers

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No fire concern - there's still snow on the ground. This is to prevent get-togethers around a camp fire.

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How can anyone involved with the forest Industry be happy with the latest NAFTA update. The forest sector was not even on the radar when this was discussed. We were part of the forgotten tribe called Western Canada. We have got screwed for the last 30 years more or less with so called free trade with the States. The independent log suppliers were even worse off as they never received a dime of the tariffs that were returned to Canada. The major manufacturing plants received huge sums of money when most of the tariff was returned. What did they do with it? They went down south of the border and bought up mills down there that are now competing with our mills in Canada. I guess we got the government we deserve when we think they did us a big favor by screwing us again. George Delisle

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From my experience in the Southern part of British Columbia indicates that a similar impact from repeated fires in the dry Interior shows up in how our forests regenerate and grow. I have examples of a 650 + year old tree grown in the presence of forest fires that is the same size as a tree that is only 65 years old grown in the absence of fire. The elevation, location, soils, moisture regime, aspect, and climate are the same, the only difference I can see is the presence and absence of forest fires. Partial cutting these stands do not appear to impact the growth rate and may even increase the incremental growth if managed properly. Biodiversity can also be maintained better with a partial cut regime compared to forest fires. With this in mind I question the "let it burn" philosophy that is prevalent in today's natural resource management ideology. Can society afford to put even more carbon and other pollutants into the atmosphere and lose incredible amounts of carbon stored in our forests? The impacts on wildlife are immense in bad wildfires. Maybe it is time to go back to managing our forests for forest health instead of letting fires burn. A healthy forest is a more resilient forest able to survive fire better. There is no such thing as fire proofing a forest, we can only mange it to be more resilient and make controlling the fire easier. cheers George Delisle

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While I agree that we need to adapt, we don't seem to put enough concern for people caused fires. We need huge rewards leading to the arrest and conviction for arson attacks and large penalties for stupidity!!!! If we could reduce the number of fires each year by a third, it would be an immediate benefit, while we work on reducing fuel loads and producing more fire resilient forests. The preservation mentality needs to be reworked if we are ever able reduce the impacts of wild fires. We need to take a very serious look in the mirror and ask are our preconceived ideas actually contributing to the fire problem. Cheers George Delisle

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Tell it like it is Derek and expose the falsehoods of the Wildlands League. I often wonder if that group every leaves their office to see the trees growing in the wild?

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Quality Hardwoods is also a very innovative company, having invested in wood pellet boilers about 10 years ago, to heat the plant and the dry kilns.

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An interesting article but not sure what it has to do with the forest industry?

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Long over due!!! We have got to get away from this "killing trees" mentality.

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The NDP can be blamed for the mountain pine beetle. When the infestation first broke out in Tweedsmuir Park they decided not to log it as they feared they would lose the green vote. They are the ones to blame.

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Congrats WSN Team, Excellence in workplace health and safety, means having a foundation for staff to achieve excellence in body, mind and soul. Great to see some recognition for that, and having it publicized as an example to all workplaces. Keep sustaining and promoting those ideals in your daily activities.

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Wow that was unusual. I just wrote an incredibly long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn't show up. Grrrr... well I'm not writing all that over again. Regardless, just wanted to say wonderful blog!

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Figures. Environmentalists cannot wait for good science to raise the alarm, stretch the truth, or outright lie. Remember the spotted owl on west coast and the chaos to forestry there. Now the studies show they were never really affected by logging operations.

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Not sure why a fishing story is in a Forestry newsletter. But monitoring the fish population does not address the overfishing by the unregulated Native fishery, who can use gill nets and fish out of season, greatly impacting the fishery for all.