Terrace Bay: Costs discourage exports

Apr. 29, 2006. 07:49 AM | RICK WESTHEAD | BUSINESS REPORTER

Terrace Bay, Ont.— For the better part of 37 years, millwright Tom Long watched fleets of trucks and rail cars leave the Neenah Paper mill on the outskirts of this remote northern Ontario town, carting processed pulp and paper to buyers as far away as Oklahoma and Alabama.

Long would often watch the daily procession and wonder why the payloads weren't shipped beyond North America.

"The only thing you hear about nowadays is how much building China is doing," said Long, who retired last year after working at Neenah Paper for 37 years.

"They've got a billion people in China, and we're making fibre for Kleenex," the 56-year-old said. "All you have to do is get them to blow their nose with our stuff and we'd do great."

Sitting in a coffee shop in Terrace Bay, Long has just summed up an issue that has stumped Canada's forest-industry leaders and politicians alike: why has Canada failed to develop an overseas market for lumber and pulp and paper?

One problem is extreme transportation costs, said Don Campbell, vice-president and resident manager of Bowater Canadian Forest Product Inc.'s Thunder Bay operations, which include a sawmill and pulp and paper mill. Shipping to some of Bowater's customers in Korea — by rail to Vancouver and then by boat — can cost more than twice as much as getting the product to North American buyers.

But the benefits of increased overseas sales are obvious.

By selling more forestry products to countries such as China, India and Korea, Canada would be less dependent on the giant U.S. market. That might ease any ill effects of the newly signed Canada-U.S. softwood-lumber agreement.

Under the terms of the new agreement, Canadians will face quotas on U.S. sales when prices are low, although not when prices are high.

In an interview yesterday, Ontario Minister of Natural Resources David Ramsay pointed out that, unlike Canada's previous softwood-lumber situation, the new agreement allows room for Canadian exports to grow in lockstep with U.S. demand for timber.

British Columbia has been the most proactive province in pursuing markets beyond the United States, forest industry experts said. Three weeks ago, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell announced the province would spend $10.5 million to promote the province's wood around the world.

"We have to reduce our dependency on the American marketplace," Campbell said at the time. "If we don't reach to China, Korea and India, I can tell you, Russia and South America will be going there, and we'll have all sorts of competitors."

In 2002, meanwhile, Natural Resources Canada announced the so-called Canadian Wood Export Program, which provides for $35 million worth of public money over five years. Even so, Ramsay said fast-growing markets such as China's haven't figured in his plans.

`They've got a billion people in China, and we're making fibre for Kleenex'

Tom Long, retired millwright

"The U.S. is our primary market; we've been trying to get that straightened out," he said.

Still, Industry Canada statistics suggest that Campbell's marketing dollars are well spent — at least in parts of the world.

While the value of softwood lumber Canada has exported to its three biggest customers — the U.S., Japan and the U.K. — has dropped in each case over the past four years, lesser-known markets showed strong gains over the same time period.

For instance, Canada in 2005 exported $8.6 billion worth of softwood timber to the U.S., down 9 per cent decline from 2001. The $1 billion in lumber sold to Japan was down 30 per cent over the same period, while sales to the U.K. slipped 8 per cent to $64 million.

China, the fourth-biggest purchaser, bought $55 million worth of lumber from Canada last year, nearly double the 2001 figure. Other countries that have bought much more Canadian softwood in recent years include the Philippines ($40 million), South Korea ($27 million) and Mexico ($8 million).

To be sure, some long-time forest industry workers see reasons why Canadian wood isn't coveted overseas.

For starters, labour costs in Canada are more than in countries such as Indonesia and Brazil, adding to the final price. Moreover, in more temperate climates like Brazil's, it takes just 10 years for a newly planted tree to become harvestable, said Ron Falzetta, another retired Neenah Paper worker.

"It's at least five times that in Canada," Falzetta said. "We maybe have 90 days a year where there's guaranteed to be no frost. That's a short growing season."

Still, Falzetta and others said Canada can compete with other pulp and paper producers on quality.

Many of the trees Neenah Paper harvests are swamp spruce trees.

"After 50 years, those trees aren't any bigger than this," Falzetta said, putting his fists side by side.

"The rings are so close together you can't even see between them. That makes for strong paper."

Some industry officials said the forest sector is making strides toward helping it become less dependent on the U.S. For instance, instead of churning out two-by-four studs, some mills now focus on producing door frames and joints.

Some Ontario mills are in the process of producing laminated beams, which are coveted in earthquake-prone Japan.(+)

Domtar chief: "Canada has lost edge in forestry"

LYNN MOORE | The Gazette; CP contributed to this report
Friday, April 28, 2006

Domtar CEO Raymond Royer says the strong loonie has hammered his industry.

Canada is losing its advantages as a forest-products producing country, Domtar Inc. shareholders were told yesterday as the Montreal-based multinational reported a first-quarter net loss of $24 million.

The soaring Canadian dollar plus stiff competition from countries where trees grow quickly and wages are low form just part of the gloomy picture, CEO Raymond Royer said during the company's annual meeting.

"The strengths on which the Canadian industry was built - inexpensive and abundant fibre and energy - no longer exist. Canada has become high cost compared to the rest of the world," he said.

And Domtar - which last November announced it would slash 1,800 jobs, close some Canadian operations and eliminate 17 per cent of its annual paper production - is responding by taking its production out of Canada and closer to its U.S. market.

Domtar's paper business - mainly office and commercial printing and publication papers - is its most important segment, representing about 61 per cent of its sales.

About 65 per cent of its paper is produced in the U.S. and 90 per cent of its sales are made to U.S. customers.

Before 2001, almost all of Domtar's mills were located in Canada. Now, there are only "one and one-half," the major one being in Windsor, which can supply 75 per cent of the Canadian market, reporters were told.

A pulp mill in Lebel sur Quevillon was shut indefinitely in November because of "economic conditions." Unless savings amounting to about $120 per tonne are found, the mill will not be viable, Royer told reporters.

Earlier, Quevillon's mayor and plant workers urged the company and its shareholders to get the mill back on line.

At Quevillon, fibre and labour costs alone cost $510 per tonne - excluding processing costs - while similar market pulp from Canada's competitors can be had for about $600 per tonne, Royer told the town's mayor and shareholders.

Domtar has paid $204-million in contested softwood lumber duties since the dispute began in 2002. Anticipating a possible settlement of the dispute yesterday, Royer said that should 80 per cent of that be returned to Domtar, "it would go straight to the bottom line."

The cash would lower the company's debt-to-equity ratio from 58 per cent to 55 per cent, he said.

Domtar's $52-million decrease in operating profit was largely attributable to a $33-million negative impact of a strong Canadian dollar, higher prices for energy and freight as well as lower average selling prices and shipments for lumber products, the company said.

Higher average selling prices for paper and pulp, higher paper shipments and lower softwood lumber duties helped offset the negative forces at play during the quarter, the company said.

Royer pointed out that 15 pulp and paper mills have closed in recent months in Canada, and a smaller number in the United States, cutting supply.

"We have a better balance between supply and demand, and I think this is now translated in prices," Royer said. "We are seeing price increases we have not seen in a long time."

Domtar's first-quarter loss reversed a $10-million profit in the same quarter last year, but the company has lost money on an annual basis for three years.

The firm said its loss amounted to 10 cents per share diluted, compared with net earnings of 4 cents per share in the year-earlier period. That was better than an average analyst forecast of 16 cents per share.

lmoore@thegazette.canwest.com

What is the value of a tree?

from the April 26, 2006 edition
Antoinette Campbell loses an oak: Her a/c bill goes up $120 a month - the toll on her city is even bigger.

By Ethan Gilsdorf|Christian Science Monitor

URBAN DEFORESTATION: Heavy forest in Washington, D.C., decreased by 64 percent between 1973 (top) and 1997 (bottom). Before and after maps show that forested areas (in green) once covered a third of the district but now cover only a tenth.

Antoinette Campbell was justifiably shocked when city workers mistakenly chainsawed a 60-foot oak tree last May that shaded the eastern facade of her Washington, D.C., home.

"It was a personal something I had with that tree," says Ms. Campbell.

Besides the emotional distress, the error had an unexpected consequence: She noticed her air conditioner began running a couple hours earlier each morning.

Conventional wisdom is that just one shady tree can save a homeowner $80 a year in energy costs, but Campbell claims her bills skyrocketed once the oak disappeared - up to $120 more some months.

Yes, humble street trees cool the air, reduce pollution, and absorb storm-water runoff, say forestry experts. But the benefits aren't only ecological, they say. Property values are 7 percent to 25 percent higher for houses surrounded by trees. Consumers spend up to 13 percent more at shops near green landscapes. One study even suggests patients who can see trees out their windows are hospitalized, on average, 8 percent fewer days.

Events around the country for Friday's National Arbor Day will highlight the fact that citizens and civic leaders are finally investing in the so-called "urban tree canopy."

But efforts like these aren't a moment too soon. Overall, urban trees in America are threatened, says Deborah Gangloff, executive director of American Forests. "Every city we've looked at, about three dozen, shows a decline of about 30 percent of the urban tree canopy in the past 10 to 15 years," she says. In some cities, the loss from disease, development, and neglect has been catastrophic. In Washington, D.C., for example, 64 percent of heavily forested areas disappeared between 1973 and 1997 - forest that once covered a third of the district now covers a tenth.

And the creep of suburban sprawl seems unstoppable. In the next 50 years, total American land mass reclassified from forest to urban is expected to equal the size of Montana, suggests US Forest Service data. To reverse the trend, cities like Jacksonville, Fla., San Francisco, Albuquerque, N.M., Des Moines, Iowa, and Indianapolis have ambitious reforestation plans. Los Angeles wants to plant 1 million trees. The Sacramento region has a goal to double the urban canopy in 40 years; Baltimore plans to double its own a decade sooner. Washington, D.C. is partnering with tree-planting groups and nonprofits like the Casey Trees Endowment Fund, an organization with a $50 million grant to combat the precipitous canopy decline.

The fund's urban forester program trains volunteers like Campbell, who lost her oak, to conduct on-site censuses that, combined, will locate, measure, and identify every tree in the city. The data is crunched by a US Forest Service computer model, which produces a precise environmental and economic value for each tree. For example: A 50-foot American linden at the corner of Potomac Ave. and E Street in the southeast quadrant of Washington stores 1,476 kilograms of carbon and removes 124 grams of sulfur dioxide from the atmosphere each year. To remove that same amount of pollution would otherwise cost society $5.44 annually. Multiply that by D.C.'s 1.9 million trees and the benefits add up.

Urban trees also reduce the runoff of pollutants into waterways, a problem caused by impervious surfaces like concrete. Foliage slows rain so it gets absorbed better, rather than overwhelming drainage systems, explains Ms. Gangloff. For example, a 2005 study of municipal trees in Boulder, Colo., found that the average tree intercepts 1,271 gallons of precipitation annually, saving the city $523,311 in storm-water retention costs.

For cities struggling to meet the Environmental Protection Agency's air quality goals and build adequate wastewater treatment facilities, trees offer high return on investment. The Boulder report estimates the city gets a $3.67 return on every dollar spent on the urban forest.

"It's worth considering the value of these trees when making policy decisions," explains Dan Smith, a Casey Trees spokesman. The value of tree maintenance, for example, can't be minimized, he says, because a 30-inch-diameter tree removes 70 times more pollution per year than a 3-inch tree does. This is why he's unhappy that over the past five years, federal support of urban greening - such as tree-cover analysis, goal-setting, and technical support - has declined.

Like the urban trees themselves, the programs must also be nurtured. And that's nothing to shake a stick at.(+)

Walk in woods shows greed running rampant

By Ben Parfitt | Mar 26 2006 | BCNG Portals

A long-time logger I know once quipped that “greed and stupidity make a lethal cocktail and this industry’s been drinking doubles for a long time.”

These words took on new meaning for me recently while touring two radically different forestry operations a half-hour drive’s east of Prince George, near the eastern front of the pine-beetle outbreak now sweeping through the Interior.

These days, Prince George is awash in wood. Trucks laden with logs are everywhere, coming into the city from all directions and, in some cases, heading out because so many trees are coming down that not even milling powerhouses like Prince George can consume them all.

The first site lay just south of the Yellowhead Highway, off a logging road covered in fresh snow. Driving up the crystalline corridor where a moose had cut a fresh trail earlier that morning, small-scale logger Dave Jorgenson pointed to a thick stand of towering trees.

“That’s what I logged.” Down a thin skid trail, Jorgenson stopped to explain how he had taken roughly 1,000 trees out of this forest, 95 per cent of them killed earlier by beetles. The fruit of that labor now lay by the logging road in neat rows beside Jorgenson’s idled green forwarder.

However, he wasn’t so much interested in what he’d logged as what he’d left behind.
Following logging, three-quarters of the trees remained untouched, many of them tall, commercially prized spruce. And climbing up out of the shade rose other young spruce and balsam trees.

After driving five minutes east, we veered north into a clearcut that branched in so many directions it defied description.

Jorgenson reckoned at least 50,000 trees had come down in this now-barren landscape, enough wood to build a major subdivision. All the trees here were allegedly “salvaged” to extract economic value before the “pine beetle-attacked” trees lost their use for lumber or pulp.

The trouble was many of the trees were perfectly healthy spruce trees. Greed had trumped common sense.

As we passed by a long deck of stacked logs, all of them spruce, not a pine among them, he shook his head. “If they’re logging a spruce tree right now, that’s a pine tree they’re not logging. And 10 to 15 years down the road when that pine tree is rotting, there won’t be that spruce tree either.”

If all the forests those marauding beetles are attacking these days were homogenous tracts of pine trees, then the massive salvage logging operation now underway on public lands might make sense.

But as work by scientists with the Canadian Forest Service, B.C.’s Ministry of Forests and the University of Northern British Columbia is showing, just over one-quarter of forests attacked by the pests are comprised of trees that are 80 per cent or more pine.

This means the vast majority of stands now being salvage logged have some pine in them but are also comprised of other trees, like spruce in the north and fir in the south.

In fact, in many attacked stands almost all the trees are non-pine, while in others a significant minority of trees are non-pine and perfectly healthy.

Such a continuum should dictate very different approaches to logging. Instead, a cookie-cutter approach is used.

Clearcuts race across the landscape - clearcuts where perfectly healthy trees are logged and vigorously growing young trees in the understorey are mowed down as well, thus denying future generations wood - all on the specious grounds the forest is dead and must be salvaged before losing its value.

If a concerted effort was made to put a stop to the clear-cutting of so-called mixed forests, it is interesting to note the province might not have to ratchet up Interior logging rates to today’s record highs.

Nor might many Interior communities be faced with the humbling prospect of precipitous declines in future logging rates, the price paid for today’s over-consumption.

For the sake of a saner and more sustainable future, let’s hope provincial Forests Minister Rich Coleman listens to what forest scientists are saying.

Ben Parfitt is resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ BC Office and author of Battling the Beetle: Taking Action to Restore British Columbia’s Forests.(+)

Satellite photos show one-third of forests chopped up by industry: report

By BOB WEBER | Canoe | March 21, 2006

EDMONTON (CP) - Roads, logging, energy development and other industrial activities have already chopped up almost one-third of Canada's forests, according to a report to be released Wednesday by Global Forest Watch.

In a report compiled from more than 1,000 NASA satellite photos, the organization found that nearly all intact forest left in Canada was in the territories and the northern parts of the provinces. Nearly two-thirds of that undisturbed forest was found in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and the Northwest Territories.

Alberta, with only four per cent of Canada's intact forest, has allowed activity in nearly all its woodlands, the report found.

It's the first time a study has taken a uniform look at how much untouched forest is left and where it's located, said Forest Watch director Peter Lee.

"There've been many regional studies, but nothing that's been done nationwide," he said.

"Government and industry do not ask those kinds of questions. They don't want to know the answer."

Lee's report used Landsat photos with enough detail to pick out objects 28 metres in size. It defined an intact forest as an untouched area of at least 100 square kilometres in the northern boreal forest and 50 square kilometres in the temperate forests of the Maritimes, southern Ontario and B.C.

That may seem like a high standard, but Lee said it depends on the context.

"If you're a woodland caribou, it's not very high. If you're a grizzly bear, it's not very high."

In all, the report examined about 6.5 million square kilometres of forest.

Alberta's forests have suffered the heaviest industrial impact, the report found. Only seven of 63 management areas still have more than half the forest intact.

The activity has had predictable results on wildlife habitat.

Less than half of Alberta's woodland caribou habitat and only one-quarter of its grizzly bear range still contain intact forest sections.

"Everybody is aware of how rapidly Alberta is proceeding with industrial development in its forests," said Lee.

Forestry and energy development are a "double whammy" in the province, he said.

Still, the report found that 70 per cent of Canada's forests remain whole and healthy.

Lee said the data can be used to monitor changes in the forest landscape. The information is also useful to environmental groups wanting to develop habitat protection campaigns and to forestry companies working towards environmental certification. (+)

BC Losing Beetle Battle

By Brennan Clarke | Saanich News | Mar 17 2006

In the theatre of war, most battles are fought to be won or lost. But for public officials charged with fighting the province's pine beetle epidemic, the name of the game is damage control.

Just seven years ago, the province's mountain pine beetle infestation was limited to 164,000 hectares. By 2002, the pest had ravaged close to two million hectares and last summer the total amount of affected forest topped 8.7 million hectares.

"Most of the mature pine forest in the Interior is now engaged," said Rod DeBoice, B.C.'s provincial beetle co-ordinator. "It's been an exponential increase."

While the province isn't ready to admit defeat, DeBoice admitted that the best chance of slowing the destruction - barring a sudden reversal of the decade-long trend toward unseasonably warm winters - will come when the voracious little creatures simply run out of trees to eat.

"Most natural epidemics end up eating themselves out of the host," said DeBoice, who is known to his colleagues as the "beetle boss."

"Younger pine forests are not susceptible and by 2013, 80 per cent of what we call mature pine forests will have been destroyed."

Rather than trying to stop the spread of mountain pine beetle west of the Rocky Mountains, those efforts last year shifted east of the Rockies as researchers discovered pockets of mountain pine beetle in Peace River country on both sides of the B.C.-Alberta border.

"In terms of the actual battle, most of that is now taking place in the Peace District where there's a small scattering of beetles east of the Rockies," said Bill Riel, a researcher with the Pacific Forestry Centre in Victoria.

"We're pretty confident we're not going to be able to stop them in B.C. There isn't really much we can do about it."

Given the sheer magnitude of the problem, cutting down infested trees isn't a viable option, Riel said. Not only would it be impossible for even the most radical cutting program to keep pace with the infestation, flooding the lumber market with millions of hectares of additional lumber could have serious economic consequences.

"Those are socio-economic issues that have to be dealt with at the political level," he said.

Pine beetle researchers are still trying to figure out how the tiny insect, which has trouble surviving in sub-zero temperatures managed to traverse Canada's highest mountain range.

But the leading theory, said Riel, it that beetle populations have designated fliers that find their way into air currents high above the forest where winds carry them for hundreds of kilometres.

"They way they move is by flight and one theory is that some of them are programmed to try and get up above the canopy for what we call long-distance dispersal," he said. "They become like a particulate."

The problem has even caught the attention of the U.S. Forest Service, according to an article that appeared in the Washington Post earlier this month.

The article said U.S. Forest Service officials are "watching warily as the outbreak spreads," but noted that the United States is less vulnerable because it lacks the "seamless forest of lodgepole pines that are a highway for the beetle in Canada."

Colder temperatures may help keep the pine beetle at bay on the east side of the Rockies, Riel said.

"That's why we have a chance to control it there," he said. "They're in some areas, but they're not doing exceptionally well."

So far, Mother Nature hasn't co-operated. Environment Canada reported this week that the 2005-06 winter was the warmest since record-keeping began in 1948. Temperatures for December 2005 through February 2006 were 3.9 degrees Celsius higher than normal. December in Victoria saw the mean daily temperature at five degrees Celsius, a full degree above the 30-year average, while the mean average in January was 6.5 degrees Celsius, compared to the norm of 3.8 degrees. While they're not experts in climate change, most pine beetle researches blame the bug's proliferation on global warming, Riel added.

"We're really looking at the whole climate change issue. We've seen very unusually favourable conditions for the beetle," he said. "They're showing up in places we haven't seen them before. They're sort of a canary in the coal mine."

Given the scope of the outbreak, DeBoice said it would take a severe cold snap to make a dent in the problem. Ideally, the cold weather would hit in the early fall or early spring, since the pine beetle goes into dormancy and produces a kind of internal anti-freeze that helps it withstand the coldest parts of the year.

The province remains determined to battle the beetle, but it's also taking a realistic approach to the problem that includes replanting, repairing damaged streams and forest ecosystems, recovering value from infested wood and retooling the economies of Interior communities that will no longer be able to depend on the timber supply.

The province committed $100 million last year which will be spent over the next three years. There's also $161 million in a fund called Forests for Tomorrow that will be doled out through the 2008-09 fiscal year and a $185-million fund called the Northern Development Initiative Trust that generates ongoing interest that can be used for pine beetle-related issues. (+)

Rash of wildfires hits state of Virginia

46 blazes break out across Va.; high winds, dry conditions cited
BY PETER BACQUE | TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER | Thursday, March 16, 2006

Wind-spurred wildfires flared up around the state yesterday, closing roads, forcing evacuations and prompting additional burning bans.

Officials shut state Route 30 in West Point for hours yesterday as fire departments from the region battled to subdue a fire at the Smurfit-Stone paper mill and clogged the highway with firefighting equipment.

The fire began in a yard where recyclable paper is stored, said West Point Police Chief William L. Hodges. That blaze kindled grass fires in the lawns of nearby homes, though no injuries or damage to structures were reported.

Residents fled in the face of a 50-acre fire in Gloucester County, while low humidity, strong winds and dry conditions sparked a 200-acre fire in Clarke County.

Firefighters were making progress at bringing the Clarke and Gloucester blazes under control late yesterday, officials said.

The day's high winds helped spawn the rash of fast-spreading fires, officials said. For instance, winds gusted as high as 41 mph in Richmond and 45 mph in Northern Virginia.

"A little tiny spark can grow quickly with these 20 to 25 mile per hour winds," said John Campbell, a spokesman for the state Department of Forestry.

Forty-six fires broke out during the day yesterday. So far this year, 577 wildfires have burned 3,732 acres in Virginia, not including fires in the national forests, the state forestry agency said.

In Richmond, firefighters battled a brush fire on Belle Isle yesterday, and on Tuesday two fires burned about 35 acres of woodlands in Chesterfield County.

"Virginia is more than 5 inches short on rainfall," said John Miller, director of resource protection for the state Forestry Department. "Combine this dry ground with the warm weather and the high winds . . . and you have the perfect recipe for wildfires."

Central Virginia has a chance of rain overnight tonight and again early next week, said Bill Sammler, the warning-coordination meteorologist with the Wakefield Weather Forecast Office. But "it's not looking like there are going to be any big rainmakers for us."

More than 30 firefighters from the U.S. Forest Service worked on the still burning 1,200-acre Quarry fire in Bedford County's steep terrain yesterday.

"We're having some smoke come up," said the service's Ted Coffman. "Parts of it are burning inside the [fire] lines."

Still, said Coffman, spokesman in Roanoke for the 1.8-million-acre George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, "We're lucky."

Chesapeake Fire Marshal W.K. Hibner Jr. announced a ban yesterday on all open burning in that city until further notice.

Chesapeake firefighters have extinguished two dozen brush fires so far this month, compared to three in the first half of March 2005. Fire officials said most of the fires have been caused by cigarettes or yard-debris burns that got out of control.

In Richmond County, the Department of Forestry used three bulldozers and help from local volunteer fire companies to contain a woodland fire.

"Because more than 90 percent of all wildfires are caused by humans," the Forestry Department's Miller said, "we're asking everyone to check the weather and think before burning anything."

Virginia has a 4 p.m. burn restriction in place from Feb. 15 to April 30. The law prohibits open-air fires before 4 p.m. and after midnight.

"People are still going out there to burn," Campbell said, "but just because you legally can do it, doesn't mean you should."

Deep low pressure over southeast Canada combined with high pressure across the mid-Atlantic states produced the strong dry winds yesterday, the National Weather Service explained, but the winds will subside today.

Richmond has received only traces of rain so far this month, and just 4.36 inches of rain since Jan. 1, putting the capital 4.15 inches below normal for the period, the Wakefield Weather Forecast Office said.

Contact staff writer Peter Bacqué at pbacque@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6813.
Times-Dispatch staff writers Bill Geroux, Lawrence Latané III, Andrew Petkofsky, Jamie C. Ruff and Carlos Santos contributed to this report.

Ash Borer invasion: The Emerald Ash Borer is destroying trees in four southwestern Ontario counties. And experts say the pest is heading this way

The Expositor (Brantford)| Wed 15 Mar 2006 | Page: C1 / Front | Section: Crossroads
Byline: John Paul Zronik | Dateline: BRANTFORD | Source: The Expositor

BRANTFORD - Just to the west, millions and millions of destructive Asian insects are laying waste thousands of ash trees in four counties.

And the pests, known as Emerald Ash Borers, are heading this way.

"I have no doubts it will continue to spread east," says Jerry Dowding, Emerald Ash Borer project manager with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. "It's an invasive insect. There are no known predators in North America."

Adult ash borers are long, slender and metallic green in colour, measuring between 8.5 and 13.5 millimetres. For their size, the insects do a lot of damage, killing infested trees in just two to three years.

Since its arrival in Canada, first documented in 2002, the Emerald Ash Borer has only shown an appetite for ash trees. According to Natural Resources Canada's Web site, more than one billion ash trees in the province could be threatened. In the U.S. and Canada, damage caused by the insect is estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars.

It is thought the insects made their way to North America in wooden shipping crates while still in the larval stage via airplane or ship.

Essex County and Chatham-Kent are both under full quarantine because of ash borer infestation. Parts of both Elgin and Lambton counties are under partial quarantine, with full quarantines pending because of the bug's spread.

The quarantine means the movement of ash trees, including logs, firewood, lumber, wood chips, bark chips and other wood debris, out of infested municipalities is prohibited.

"We're talking hundreds of millions (of ash borers) in Essex County alone," Dowding says. "It's a primary tree killer, which means it attacks and kills healthy trees.

"We're finding it right up to Thamesville now."

Willfully violating the quarantine can result in fines of up to $250,000 or two years in jail.

CREEPY

As it creeps eastward, the insect moves closer to taking up residence in this area. Elgin County, already under partial quarantine, borders on Norfolk and is just one county removed from Brant.

Dowding said the ash borer could make its way to Brant County soon, but it could take years to get here.

"It could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week," Dowding says. "If someone moves infested firewood or logs, it could be on your doorstep tomorrow. If allowed to spread naturally, it could be years before it reaches Brant County."

Dowding says the movement of firewood played a big part in the bug's spread through Essex County. In firewood, the bug can fully develop and be transported over great distances. Researchers speculate its natural range to be one to two kilometres.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is charged with preventing the further spread of the insect in southwestern Ontario.

Dowding says the ash borer first appeared in Detroit, possibly between 10 and 15 years ago, near the city's airport. But it wasn't until 2002 that people realized what was killing ash trees in the area.

"Prior to that, no one took the time to investigate why all these trees were dying," Dowding says. "Up until (2002) people assumed it was a disease or drought.

"When we first found it, we knew nothing about it."

Two ash borers must have made it to adulthood in North America after a journey from Asia, as it takes two of the bugs to reproduce.

When it was discovered that a previously unknown metallic green insect was killing the ash trees, samples of the bug were sent around the world in hopes of identifying it. The insect's origins in Asia were eventually discovered, but it had no common name. A Michigan researcher dubbed it the Emerald Ash Borer.

Since 2002, the insect has spread into Windsor and on to other municipalities in southwestern Ontario.

Is the spread of the menacing insect under control?

"Definitely not," Dowding says. "What we're trying to do is slow the spread of this insect. We recognized from the outset that there was no way of stopping it."

A single infested ash tree can contain up to 10,000 insects, Dowding said. Not even cutting down ash trees in areas where the bug has been found would be enough to stop its spread.

In Canada and the U.S., governments and organizations are working to combat the spread, including the Canadian Forest Service, the Ministry of Natural Resources, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and universities.

The Emerald Ash Borer has caused its share of problems south of the border as well, killing between eight and 10 million ash trees in U.S. states including Michigan, Ohio and Indiana.

"It's difficult to describe the spread because what we're finding out is that the insect is near impossible to identify in small numbers," Dowding says.

The ash borer can be in an area three to four years before people begin to realize that there's a problem.

As the insect spreads, Dowding says there's a chance a natural predator will find the ash borer a suitable source of food. He says a type of native wasp and woodpecker are showing interest in eating the pests. In Asia, natural predators keep the Ash Borer in check.

During winter months, the ash borers remain inside trees. This time of year, larva can be found five or six millimeters into the wood. Having gone through its larval stages, the grown Emerald Ash Borer emerges from the inside of trees in late May or early June. They then begin feeding on the leaves of ash trees. The adult leaves a D-shaped hole after exiting a tree.

Other native insects can kill ash trees, but not as fast as the ash borer. They also don't leave the characteristic D-shaped hole, but an oval or round one.

Adult Emerald Ash Borers only eat the foliage on ash trees, causing minimal damage. But in the larvae stage, the insect is devastating, feeding on the inner bark of trees and interrupting their ability to send nutrients and water to all parts of the tree.

Scott Porter, Brantford's urban forestry co-ordinator, says the city's parks and recreation department has taken a proactive approach in anticipation of the Emerald Ash Borer's arrival here.

"It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when this thing spreads," Porter says. "It just takes one piece of wood with a male and female in it for it to spread.

"If it does come... there's not really much you can do."

Porter says the city has just over 4,200 ash trees, not including those on woodlots or private property.

To alert residents of the ash borer's potential arrival, the city last year distributed flyers in hydro bills. It has also published information about the insect in its civic news publications and leisure activity guide.

The city employs two foresters. They, along with workers doing maintenance on city trees, are keeping an eye out for signs of the ash borer. Porter says the city is keeping the lines of communication open with Brant County, Six Nations and the Grand River Conservation Authority when it comes to the bug. Ash trees have also been taken off the city's planting list.

Clayton Thompson, Brant County's forestry officer, said he hasn't seen any signs of ash borer infestation in the county.

"It isn't in our area and probably won't be for some time if it comes at all," he says.

Thompson says some county residents are keeping an eye out for the ash borer. He recently responded to a call from a resident concerned they discovered an Emerald Ash Borer, but the insect turned out to be a millipede.

"It's always a good idea to keep an eye out for it, but its not here yet," Thompson says.

If the insect were to invade Brant, Thompson says the impact could be as devastating as in areas where it has taken up residence.

"It would probably be just as bad here as it would anywhere else," Thompson says. "We do have some young stands of ash in Brant, so they could affect those.

"But I don't expect to see one and I hope I don't."

Dowding said it's a good idea for everyone to keep an eye out for the bug.

"Everyone right across southern Ontario should be looking out for it," he says.

If people find evidence of an Emerald Ash Borer, Dowding says they should call 866-463-6017.

Tick-borne Lyme disease threat grows: Guidelines discussed

National Post | Fri 10 Mar 2006 | Byline: Tom Blackwell

John Scott was supposed to be in Toronto yesterday to tell government officials what it is like to have suffered for 20 years from Lyme disease. But he never showed up -- the disease's continuing ravages left him too sick to make the 100-kilometre trip from his home in Fergus.

"It's been hell on wheels, really," the 60-year-old former agrologist said. "I've just had to change my life completely in terms of what I can and can't do. I used to be very outgoing and community-minded and I've had to back off that completely."

It is a toll that increasing numbers of Canadians may face. As government experts waded into an emotional debate over the illness's scope yesterday, they acknowledged that Lyme, a bacteria spread by tiny ticks, is a growing threat across Canada.

Not only are Lyme-carrying ticks settling permanently in more parts of the country, but itinerant ticks from the United States are routinely bringing the disease across the border on the backs of migrating birds, said Dr. Harvey Artsob, a Public Health Agency of Canada official.

"There is no question we are seeing the spread of [Lyme-] established areas," he said. "When we project with other aspects, like climate change, we think the problem, the issue of Lyme disease in Canada will only become greater."

His comments came at the start of an unprecedented meeting between federal and provincial officials and patient advocates to discuss updating official guidelines on Lyme, which patients say has been vastly underdiagnosed.

Controversial issues around the 15-year-old guidelines include the adequacy of testing in Canada and a definition of the illness that critics say is too narrow.

Differences of opinion are still great. But the very fact that patient groups were invited is an important step, one officials have never taken in the United States, where the Lyme debate has spawned lawsuits, investigation of doctors and even state legislation to free up doctors to treat patients, said Jim Wilson, president of the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation.

"What we're doing right here today is different than anything that's been done in the United States. I'm hoping that this can be the door that needed to be opened. I think we have a chance here to set a global model."

Lyme disease is transmitted by certain tick species -- the blacklegged, or deer, tick in Central and Eastern Canada and the western blacklegged tick in B.C., after the bugs have picked it up from mice, birds and other small animals.

In humans, it can often cause a circular rash around the site of the bite, possibly followed by flu-like symptoms and progressing, if untreated, to weakness, painful joints, abnormal heartbeat and neurological problems, like paralysis and dementia.

It can be treated with antibiotics if caught early enough, though it is a matter of debate whether drugs have much effect late in the course of the illness.

Dr. Artsob said established populations of Lyme-carrying ticks have been identified in Long Point, Rondeau and Turkey Point in southwestern Ontario and around Lunenberg, N.S. Another area in Nova Scotia, Admiral's Cove, is being investigated, as is a part of southeastern Manitoba that had three human cases in a row, he said.

LYME DISEASE IN CANADA

WHAT CAUSES IT A bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi.

HOW HUMANS GET IT Bites from the blacklegged (or deer) or western blacklegged tick, usually when walking through vegetation. The tick contracts the disease from mice and other small animals.

WHERE LYME-CARRYING TICKS LIVE IN CANADA Known populations in Lunenberg, N.S., and southwestern Ontario communities of Rondeau, Long Point and Turkey Point.

THE SYMPTOMS Many patients develop a circular rash, which can be followed by flu-like symptoms. If untreated, that can be followed by migraines, weakness, abnormal heartbeat and neurological symptoms.

HOW IT IS TREATED With antibiotics.

HOW TO PREVENT LYME If spending time in wooded areas that might be tick infested, wear long sleeves and long pants and spray clothing and skin with insect repellant that contains DEET.

Warming creates havoc in British Columbia forests

By Washington Post | Mar 02, 2006 - 07:05:45 am PST

QUESNEL, B.C. -- Millions of acres of Canada's lush green forests are turning red in spasms of death. A voracious beetle, whose population has exploded with the warming climate, is killing more trees than wildfires or logging.

The mountain pine beetle has devastated swaths of lodgepole pines, reshaping the future of the forest and the communities in it.

"It's pretty gut-wrenching," said Allan Carroll, a research scientist at the Pacific Forestry Centre in Victoria, B.C., whose studies tracked a lock step between warmer winters and the spread of the beetle. "People say climate change is something for our kids to worry about. No. It's now."

Scientists fear the beetle will cross the Rocky Mountains and sweep across the northern continent into areas where it used to be killed by severe cold but where winters now are comparatively mild. Officials in neighboring Alberta are setting fires and traps and felling thousands of trees in an attempt to keep the beetle at bay.

"This is an all-out battle," said David Coutts, Alberta's minister of sustainable resource development. The Canadian Forest Service calls it the largest known insect infestation in North American history.

U.S. Forest Service officials say they are watching warily as the outbreak has spread. The United States is less vulnerable because it lacks the seamless forest of lodgepole pines that are a highway for the beetle in Canada. So far, U.S. officials say, the outbreaks have been mostly in isolated clumps of remote wilderness areas of northern Washington.

"It's a rapid warming" that is increasing the beetles' range, said Carroll. "All the data show there are significant changes over widespread areas that are going to cause us considerable amount of grief. Not only is it coming, it's here."

"We are seeing this pine beetle do things that have never been recorded before," said Michael Pelchat, a forestry officer in Quesnel, as he followed moose tracks in the snow to examine a 100-year-old pine killed in one season by the beetle. "They are attacking younger trees, and attacking timber in altitudes they have never been before."

The tiny beetle has always lived in high areas from Arizona to northern British Columbia, and occasionally populations have grown in limited outbreaks. In Canada, where the beetle's favored lodgepole pine thrives, it has been controlled by winters with early cold snaps or long killing spells of 20 degrees below zero. But for more than a decade, forestry experts say, the weather here has not been cold enough for long enough to kill the beetle.

Scientists with the Canadian Forest Service say the average temperature of winters here has risen by more than 4 degrees in the last century. "That's not insignificant," said Jim Snetsinger, British Columbia's chief forester. "Global warming is happening. We have to start to account for it."

The result is a swarm of beetles that has grown exponentially in the past six years, flying from tree to tree. The advance is marked by broad swaths of rust-red forest, the color pines turn before they drop all their needles to become ghostly grey skeletons.

"It's depressing to see," said Steve Dodge, a British Columbia forestry official whose office is along the Quesnel River. This town of 10,000 sits in the heart of the province's vast evergreen woodlands. Steam billowing from the kilns of a half-dozen sawmills and pulp plants enshroud the town, which proudly calls itself the "Woodsmart City" in homage to its timber industry.

In an attack played out millions of times over, a female beetle no bigger than a rice grain finds an older lodgepole pine, its favored host, and drills inside the bark. There, it eats a channel straight up the tree, laying eggs as it goes. The tree fights back. It pumps sap toward the bug and the new larvae, enveloping them in a mass of the sticky substance. The tree then tries to eject its captives through a small, crusty chute in the bark.

Countering, the beetle sends out a pheromone call for reinforcements. More beetles arrive, mounting a mass attack. A fungus on the beetle, called the blue stain fungus, works into the living wood, strangling its water flow. The larvae begin eating at right angles to the original channel, sometimes girdling the tree, crossing channels made by other beetles.

The pine is doomed. As it slowly dies, the larvae remain protected over the winter. In spring, they burrow out of the bark and launch themselves into the wind to their next victims.

British Columbia is a buffet laid out before them. Years of successful battles against forest fires have allowed a thick concentration of old lodgepole pines to grow -- a beetle feast that natural wildfire would have stopped.

"It was the perfect storm" of warmer weather and vulnerable old trees, coupled with constraints that slowed logging of the infected wood, said Douglas Routledge, who represents timber companies in the city of Prince George.

At the province's Ministry of Forests and Range in Quesnel, forestry officer Pelchat saw the beetle expansion coming as "a silent forest fire." He and his colleagues launched an offensive to try to stop or at least delay the invasion, all the while hoping for cold temperatures. They searched out beetle-ridden trees, cutting them and burning them. They thinned forests. They set out traps. But the deep freeze never came.

"We lost. They built up into an army and came across," Pelchat said. Surveys show the beetle has infested 21 million acres and killed 411 million cubic feet of trees -- double the annual take by all the loggers in Canada. In seven years or sooner, the Forest Service predicts, that kill will nearly triple and 80 percent of the pines in the central British Columbia forest will be dead.

Pelchat is now spending his time planning recovery through replanting. In this area, a mature pine forest takes 70 years to grow.

Meanwhile, the beetle is moving eastward. It has breached the natural wall of the Rocky Mountains in places, threatening the tourist treasures of national forest near Banff, Alberta, and is within striking distance of the vast Northern Boreal Forest that reaches to the eastern seaboard.

"If that beetle is allowed to come any further, it will absolutely devastate our eastern slope forests," said Coutts, in Alberta. "If we're not prepared, it's going to infest all Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and then northern Ontario in 20 years. This is the battlefront."

Ironically, Quesnel is booming now. Officials have more than doubled the allowable timber harvest, so loggers can cut and haul as many dead trees as possible before they rot. The icy roads are choked with giant trucks loaded with logs marked with the telltale blue stain fungus.

In town, two sawmills and the plywood and pulp plants of the largest company, West Fraser Mills, are "running flat-out," with shifts round-the-clock, said Tom Turner, a manager there. Computers sized up each log, instantly figured the best cut, and shoved it at furious speed through giant disk saws and planers to produce lumber that rail cars would carry to home builders in the United States.

West Fraser is spending $100 million to upgrade the mill. Other companies have added shifts and proposed new plants to make chipboard or wood-fuel pellets. Property values in Quesnel are rising, rents are up, the local shopping center is flourishing again and unemployment has dropped, said Mayor Nate Bello.

But the boom will end. When what people here call "beetlewood" is removed or rots out -- and no one is sure how long that will take -- the forestry industry "will be running at about half speed," Bello acknowledged.

He sees his chief challenge as figuring out how to convert Quesnel from a one-industry town to something with a more diverse economic base. Some people in town say those are quixotic plans. "This town is going to die," scoffed Pat Karey, 62, who spent 40 years at the sawmill. Other men in the Quesnel cafe -- "Smokers Welcome" said the sign in the window -- nodded in assent.

"A mill job is $20 an hour, or $30 with benefits. The jobs they are talking about bringing in are $8-an-hour jobs," said Del Boesem, whose runs a business dismantling heavy logging machinery.(+)