The Future of British Columbia's Top Industry
790 WordsFeb 3, 20183 Pages
History of forestry in British Columbia British Columbia has relied on forestry as an economical export resource for about 100 years. In B.C we have two main forests, the coastal forest, which contains the dominant species of the western hemlock (figure 1.). But, also contain red cedar and Douglas fir below the 51st parallel. (Text pg. 128- 129) This is typically a very dense sprawling forest, with large trees. Opposed to the interior forest, that mainly is populated with lodge pole pine and spruce trees. These trees are both small and spread further apart from one tree to another. (Figure 2)
We as a province mainly harvest from the coastal forests for two main reason. First, here we can harvest in greater volumes per square hector. Providing that we are clear cutting. This is because one there is more trees in a smaller area and two the trees are simply just bigger. And finally the biggest reason is transportation of the lumber. We typically harvest close to water ways so we can cut down the trees and then just place them in the water to transport downstream to lumber and pulp mills.
The best way to see the history behind forestry in an economic sense is to look at the soft wood lumber export history knowing that soft wood is what we predominantly find in our coastal forests due to the mild climate that B.C’s coast has.
In table one we can see the documented exports from B.C in recent history from 1988-2000 and in that time we can actually see the lumber price go