By Bob Austman, WAM Director
It may be time for Manitoba’s woodlot owners to join forces to manage their own wood market.
Woodlot owners in the province are facing a number of challenges, and particularly the limited market for our wood. Tembec closed the largest paper mill in the province in 2008. Tolko, in The Pas, has idled its sawmill and is currently producing only kraft paper. Louisiana-Pacific is operating in Swan River but produces only OSB from poplar.
We have a lot of standing timber in Manitoba, and in the southeast corner most of it is leaving for mills in Ontario and Minnesota. If we could somehow pull together and create a local community forest in the southeast, and if we could leverage funds for a small-to-medium sized sawmill, I’m quite certain that we could find a market for the lumber.
A regional sorting yard could easily be found on the abundant crown land in the area, with the support of the province. From there, local logs, purchased from woodlot owners could be sorted.
Adjacent to the sorting yard, on this same piece of crown land, some sawlogs could be processed for dimensional lumber, and the poplar pulp could be trucked to either Barwick, Ontario or Bemidji, Minnesota. Shipping poplar pulp to Swan River’s mill is cost prohibitive.
Other sawlogs could be sold for a profit to firms such as South East Forest Products. Firewood bundles could be produced from some of the wood, and perhaps mill waste could be turned into wood pellets.
We have the wood supply to make this work. We have the ability to create a volunteer board, seek funding opportunities, and find markets. It just takes the political will to do it, and some good old-fashioned “knocking on doors” and “riding the phone” to get support from industry and government. If anything, I hope this article can start the discussion to get things moving.
Landowners probably know they won’t get rich from selling wood to a community forest. But it would create local jobs, and lead to better forest management, since all wood would be harvested from managed woodlots. And if we all accept the wisdom behind a “hundred mile diet”, why can’t we buy wood from within that same hundred mile area?
You can reach Bob Austman by email at wood-wise@woodlotmanitoba.com.
