The mountain pine beetle is a naturally occurring insect in forests. Like any insect, it has a role in the forest renewal cycle. Unfortunately, a combination of environmental conditions has resulted in the beetle populations, and the subsequent mortality of pine trees in BC, reaching unprecedented levels.

Nearly one third of BC’s forested land has been impacted!

This has created significant challenges: recovering economic value, maintaining public safety, conserving biodiversity and other forest values, and providing for long term sustainability. Not an easy task.

As a company with investments, operations, and employees in several of the impacted BC communities, Tolko takes these challenges very seriously. Per the Chief Forester of BC’s direction, we have increased harvesting in the lower quality dead and dying pine stands. Focusing on recovering as much economic fibre as possible and rapidly reforesting those impacted areas has meant less harvesting of the healthy, non-pine species. This protects other forest values such as biodiversity, water and wildlife while maintaining a future fibre supply.

Tolko forest professionals have adapted plans and procedures to do their very best to balance all of these values. We reach out to other resource users—such as ranchers, tourism operators, recreational groups, and outfitters—to solicit input into our plans and objectives.  In addition, through our CSA Sustainable Forest Management Certification, Public Advisory Groups at every Division help us develop the targets, commitments and actions to deliver on these values. These commitments are then 3rd party audited annually.

The mountain pine beetle epidemic is one of the largest natural disasters in North American history. Impacts on a wide range of values are unavoidable but by balancing these values through professional judgment, stakeholder communication, and adaptive learning we will come out of this with healthy forests, healthy communities, and a vibrant forest industry.

Please feel free to contact any of the Tolko woodlands department staff for further information or to share your thoughts and opinions.