Stumped: B.C. reforestation

On an overcast morning in early May, a chill bites the air with just the slightest of ocean breezes. It’s as if winter never left. Days earlier, snow, hail and wind arrived to knock the pink blossoms off of boulevard cherry trees and make a mockery of southern Vancouver Island’s so-called “Mediterranean” climate.

But for Nathaniel Stofelsma, it may as well be summer. The manager of Arbutus Grove Nursery in West Saanich strolls about comfortably in light khaki pants, weathered running shoes and a forest green cotton T-shirt, inside a massive greenhouse insulated from the cold by clear plastic sheets stretched over aluminum frames. Outside on the farm belt near Victoria’s airport, it’s fleece-jacket weather, but inside it’s warm and humid, with a strong scent of fertilizer permeating the Amazon-like air.

Stofelsma, 33, is the second generation of his family to be in the business, which began nearly 30 years ago when his father Hans grew the operation’s first tree order of 100,000 western hemlock seedlings.

Video: How to kill a pine tree

The year was 1979, and the provincial government was in the midst of selling its
nurseries across the province. Hans won an early tender put out by the province to grow the hemlock trees, and the family hasn’t looked back since.

As Stofelsma steps over the first of several hot-water heating pipes, he stops to survey a tiny lodgepole pine seedling that rises out of a peat-moss-filled hole in a white Styrofoam tray. The tray is about the size of a large beer case and sports 77 other similarly sized holes, each sprouting similarly sized seedlings. There are 416 trays in all, housing 32,000 pine in this one small section of the greenhouse – one of seven at Arbutus Grove, where nearly nine million seedlings were successfully grown last year. Eventually, those 32,000 pines will be replanted at one of the innumerable logging sites that have turned B.C.’s sprawling central Interior into a checkerboard of dusty brown clearcuts and forest patches.

As droves of dead and now red-needled pine trees littering B.C.’s Interior attest, a sea change is underway in Canada’s most heavily forested province. Fully one-quarter of all the trees in B.C.’s vast forests are lodgepole pine, and, as the waves of mountain

But if reforestation is to lay the foundation for recovery, we appear headed for trouble. As the beetle attack grows, spending on reforestation is shrinking to levels not seen in two decades. Stofelsma and his counterparts at commercial tree nurseries across B.C. report deep cuts in tree orders, a fall-off that has tracked just slightly behind the slumping fortunes of the province’s forest industry. Only a few years ago, sawmilling companies in regions where the pine beetle is active were awash in profits as they processed record numbers of beetle-killed pine trees. The largest of them, Canfor Corp., reported a net profit of $420.9 million in 2004. But Canfor’s latest annual earnings, announced in March, reflect a dismal industry-wide reversal of fortune: a loss of $360.6 million. Cost-cutting is now the order of the day, and that includes company spending on reforestation. Between 2007 and 2009, the number of trees paid for and planted on behalf of forest companies is expected to drop by 30 per cent. Meanwhile, the provincial government is only slowly getting back into the reforestation game after years of cutbacks.

As a result, fewer hardy young men and women are trekking up and over stumps and logging slash to replant scarred hillsides while offsetting their escalating university tuition costs. And tree nurseries are stepping down production at a time when the province’s forests arguably need them – and all that the best forest science has to offer – more than ever.

One thing B.C.’s nurseries do well is grow trees. Last year Arbutus Grove produced a record 8.8 million seedlings. Not surprisingly, the Vancouver Island nursery – which is a relatively small operation in an industry where some nurseries grow 30 million or more seedlings a year –
specializes in producing coastal tree species such as Douglas fir. But reflecting the tough economic conditions prevailing in the industry, Arbutus Grove recently bid successfully on contracts to grow Interior tree species such as lodgepole pine. About half of the 276 million trees planted in B.C. last year were pine, and while the overall number of trees planted in the province may be headed down in future years, pine is expected to retain its position as the most frequently planted tree species in B.C. Hence Arbutus Grove’s desire to get in on a piece of the action.

Each seedling grown in a nursery begins with a pre-selected seed, which often originates in a seed orchard where forest scientists know exactly what the progeny and genetic traits of the selected seed are. The seeds are then placed in individual peat-moss-filled holes in the Styrofoam and capped with a thin layer of fine grit that retains moisture and prevents the buildup of competing moss. Natural-gas boilers, fired at a hefty cost of up to $450 a day, then heat the water pipes, allowing the seeds to germinate. From there, the marvels of photosynthesis take over as the new plants convert light into energy and grow rapidly.

“These trees here,” Stofelsma says, pointing to some delicate green spruce seedlings that are a mere five centimetres tall, “will be seven to eight times higher in about five months.” To toughen them up for the harsh conditions of their new home in a distant clearcut, the seedlings will later be moved from the cocoon-like confines of the greenhouse to the open air on adjacent acreage owned or leased by the nursery. Then, just before planting, they will be pulled from their containers, their roots bound in their peat moss plugs, and loaded onto trucks for transport to the planting site. The objective is for no more than 48 hours to elapse between “the pull” and “the plant.”

A host of industry innovations has allowed for big advances in seedling survival over the years. In an adjacent greenhouse, Stofelsma points out suspended rolls of black fabric. The rolls will later be unfurled to form a temporary ceiling between the Douglas fir seedlings below and the arched, clear roof of the greenhouse. “The black cloth blots out enough light that the seedlings believe fall is on the way,” Stofelsma says. “The seedlings then start to build up wax on their needles to protect themselves against the cold, and they set their buds. What we do with the curtains is induce dormancy – prepare them for winter.”

Tricks of the trade have resulted in spectacular increases in seedling survival. In the 1970s, sometimes only half of transplanted seedlings survived; today it’s routinely 95 per cent. Without doubt, nursery operators such as Stofelsma’s have proven they are up to the task of growing tree crops. But as the beetle outbreak unfolds, along with a host of other warming-related insect infestations and blights, new hurdles must be cleared. How do we respond to the ongoing attack – one that could morph into a cross-continent pandemic as the beetles run out of lodgepole pine trees and “transition” into jack pine, one of the most prevalent tree species in the cross-Canada boreal forest?