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On April 17th, approximately 50 hectares of Sunflower Hill was burned to reduce wildfire fuels, eliminate forest ingrowth and rejuvenate shrubs and grasses across the hillside.

Crews from the Ministry of Forests, the Kimberley Fire Department and private contractors, carried out the burn and the necessary protective measures. Members of the KNPS were invited to attend as observers and we learned a lot about how fire behaves under spring conditions.

In the coming weeks we will be assessing the effects of the fire on the soils and vegetation and will determine if more hand treatment of ingrowth is required. You can download a copy of the burn plan in Word format here.

The Ministry of Environment has formally established a 72.8 hectare Wildlife Habitat Area (WHA) inside the Nature Park for the Williamson's Sapsucker ( WISA). (See map below.) They have asked Heather Pinnell, a registered professional Forester who works for the Ministry to develop a treatment plan for the area which will address interface fire concerns, pine beetle issues and the need to maintain appropriate habitat for the woodpecker. Biologist Chris Steeger spent a number of days in the area earlier this winter looking at snags, nest trees, coarse woody debris and other elements that make for good WISA habitat. Chris's report which you can download here, will be used by Heather to develop the treatment plan.

The Ministry has a small amount of funding for treatment that needs to be spent by the end of March 2008. They are considering using the money to fund the logging of a small (.85 hectare) patch of lodgepole pine near the junction of Duck Pond Trail and Apache Trail. Heather is concerned that the pine may be attracting pine beetle which is then attacking big old ponderosa pine. Only lodgepole pine would be cut and the trees would be dragged to Forest Crowne for processing. No roads or skid trails would be constructed and the operation would take 2 days. We will have more information about his proposal in the near future.

The City's fire consultant, Bob Gray and Professional Forester Geoff Byford have developed a plan for fuel treatment on the hillside above Lower Blarchmont. They have defined a 15.7 hectare treatment unit that includes the ridge above Eimer's Lake and the slope above Overwaitea. (see map below) The area will be treated by hand, using the Provincial fire crews when they are not busy fighting forest fires. The crews will first work through the area and dice up and pile all the coarse woody debris for burning next fall or winter. The following year they will do a second pass and cut down the small trees and any beetle infected pine and pile it for burning. Most of the large trees will be left on the slope.

On September 10th the City of Kimberley convened the third and final workshop to discuss the interface fire situation on the west side of town, especially in and around the Kimberley Nature Park. The meeting was attended by the City, the Ministry of the Environment (MOE), Teck Cominco, Wildsight, the Chamber of Commerce, Tembec, and the Ministry of Forests (MOF).

Pam Chenery, Kathi Chorneyko and Kent Goodwin were there for the KNPS along with Greg Utzig, the ecologist that we hired to assist us with planning.

The date started with some brief updates from Teck Cominco about work they are doing in Forest Crowne and a summary from the MOE of planning they are doing for treatments in the Williamson Sapsucker's habitat area.

Following that, Greg Utzig presented the alternative plan that has been developed in consutation with the City's fire ecologist, Bob Gray. (See links to map and report below.) From that point on the meeting became a discussion about the alternative plan and its likelihood of being implemented. Bob Gray felt that the plan Greg put forward would meet the need to reduce fire risk in the Park and the MOE though it would meet the needs of the Sapsucker and other species, (they will be fine-tuning things in the Sapsucker area). The Tembec folks, (Joe Gnucci and Brian Dureski) I think were somewhat appalled by number of trees that would be left standing and made it clear that the plan was not economical and that they could not carry it out under the current forest policies. Everyone agreed with them and Greg (supported by Bob Gray and the Mayor) emphatically made the point that the plan is not about commercial logging but rather ecosystem restoration and interface fire treatment. (There will still be logging but it will not be done in a way that can make a profit given current timber pricing and exchange rates). A statement of support for the plan was crafted by the participants and agreed to by all the groups present (although with some reservations from Tembec and the MOF).

Some estimates of what it would cost to carry out the plan were thrown around and varied from $3 million to $13 million dollars for the initial treatments followed by ongoing maintenance costs. It would likely also require some changes to forest policy including stumpage appraisal. The Mayor and some councilors have meetings scheduled with both the Minister of Forests and the Minister of Environment at the upcoming UBCM gathering and they will try to sell the plan to the Province.

Some of the details of the plan will need to be refined if it appears that funding will become available. Chief among these are access and a determination of where machine logging would be used and where only handwork would be done.

Click on the small map to download a .pdf version which will allow you to zoom in. The coloured areas on the map correspond to different levels of treatment. A one-page description of the treatments in Word format can be downloaded here.

Following the May Fire Workshop, we did some further work with Greg Utzig on an alternative logging plan that would see much less logging in the Park and only in areas where Tembec's economic prescription made sense from and ecological or pine beetle salvage perspective. That plan was submitted to Tembec in early June. Tembec responded that they could not economically harvest the areas we had suggested without also harvesting some adjacent areas to make the operation worthwhile. They also suggested that there were further areas that the Ministry of Forests might ask them to log for pine beetle control/salvage. The proposed a field trip with the MOF District Manager to explain their position.

The KNPS held an emergency executive meeting on June 16th to review Tembec's response and we decided to stand firm on our proposal to only allow the kind of logging that Tembec is proposing in areas where it makes sense. We did agree with Tembec that it was time to involve the MOF District Manager in the issue and asked the City of Kimberley to set up a meeting. The City was already in the process of arranging a meeting with Tony Wideski (MOF D.M.) and that meeting occurred on June 26th. Attending were reps from the City, the KNPS and the MOF.

- The MOF would consider a variance in restocking levels in the fire interface zone so that Tembec isn’t forced to replant way more trees than fire safety allows.

- Although this should also allow Tembec to leave mature western larch trees infested with dwarf mistletoe they will likely still want to cut them down. Tony Wideski was not willing to say he would agree to leaving them.

- There is no funding available to help Tembec log in a more sensitive manner.

- If Tembec does not want to log the Park for economic reasons one alternative is to grant the City some form of Tenure. This could be a Community Forest License or a number of small Licenses to Cut. If the economics were better this might be a good option, but right now it would leave the City in a difficult financial situation.

- Tony Wideski said he believes that the Park is a source of pine beetle infection for the watershed and other areas and believes it must be dealt with.

- It became apparent at the meeting that Bob Grey, the city’s advisor and the Nature Park Society, also a City advisor are not on the same page as far as a plan for the Park. This will be a real impediment to any solution.

- Tony Wideski would like Tembec and the Nature Park Society/City to reach some agreement so he doesn’t have to impose a solution. Tembec has asked Tony to tour the Park with them on Thursday July 5^th to discuss the issues. We asked Tony to include the KNPS in that field trip and he thought that was a good idea and said he would contact Tembec to make that suggestion.

On June 28th, we had a technical committee meeting to discuss Bob Gray’s latest round of computer modeling. We had originally thought he was going to model the KNPS alternative plan, but the City directed him to model an overall plan that would reduce the fire risk and meet the needs of the KNPS. Attending the meeting were Bob Gray, the City of Kimberley (Mayor, Albert Hoglund, and Fire Chief) , the Ministry of Environment (Peter Holmes) and Greg Utzig and Kent Goodwin. Tembec was invited to the meeting but declined to attend.

Bob Gray presented his plan which looked a bit like the original plan we had been working on with Tembec. One addition is that the Ministry of Environment now agrees that the Williamson's Sapsucker habitat would benefit from some thinning and so he has included that. He said that overall the computer modeling showed that this new version would meet the goal of fire safety but he was unable to say if it met the needs of the KNPS.

Greg Utzig suggested that he, as Nature Park Society consultant could get the details of Bob’s plan from him and analyze it to see if it met our needs. If it did, that would be great. If not, perhaps we could tweak it to make it meet our needs.

Everyone agreed to that approach including Bob Gray. Everyone also agreed that meeting Tembec’s economic needs was no longer an important consideration and that if we could develop a plan that met the fire goals and the needs of the Community and Nature Park, we would present it to the Province and demand that they fund it.

On July 5th, Tembec toured the Park with Tony Wideski but did not invite the City or KNPS to come along. Tony emailed the KNPS and said that he had asked Tembec to arrange a second tour which would include us, as soon as possible. As of this update we have not heard from them.

Meanwhile Greg Utzig is working with Bob Gray to determine how we might meet his fire risk reduction goals and still maintain the ecological, aesthetic and recreational values in the Park. They will be doing a couple of field trips in the Park during the week of July 23rd.

The next and hopefully final fire workshop is now scheduled for September 17th.

On May 28th and 29th, four members of the KNPS attended a workshop sponsored by the City to discuss a fire risk reduction plan for the Nature Park. With us at the meeting was ecologist Greg Utzig, who we have hired to advise us on the technical issues.   Also attending were representatives from City Council, the Fire Department, Tembec, the MOF Protection Branch, the Ministry of Environment, the Kimberley Nordic Club, the Chamber of Commerce and Wildsight. Conspicuous by their absence were any representatives of the Ministry of Forests District Manager.
    Significant events on the first day of the workshop were:
               - the presentation by Fire Ecologist Bob Gray, of new computer simulations showing how a variety of treatments including logging and hand work affected the initiation and spread of Crown fire. The simulations showed that leaving considerably more trees after logging (up to 400 large stems/hectare) was possible without an increased risk of Crown Fire. Tembec was proposing to leave 75 large trees per hectare, with up to 100 small non-merchantable trees. The simulations also showed that Crown fire could be eliminated in some areas without any logging at all, just by removing ground and ladder fuels and hand cutting advanced regeneration.
               - the presentation by the KNPS representatives of an alternative to the Tembec plan which would drastically reduce logging and road building in the Park. You can read the proposal in Word format here. Below is a map of the Tembec logging plan with areas that we propose might be logged either circled in blue or vertically hatched. The Park boundary is shown in green.

The coloured areas on the map outlined in blue and the vertically hatched
areas could be logged by Tembec with the current cutting specifications.
All the other coloured areas, which Tembec has proposed to log would
be treated by hand or not at all. You can click on this map for a larger version.

On the second day of the workshop Tembec responded to our proposal in a tentatively positive fashion and a timetable was quickly worked out which would see Tembec provide our ecologist with the digital information he required to refine the proposal, a review of the proposal by Tembec, a further review by Bob Gray and a meeting of the technical folks from all parties. We are hoping to have a full meeting of the workshop participants in early July to attempt to come to a final agreement on what will happen in the Park. It is still unclear what role the Ministry of Forests will play in this process and some intensive lobbying of the Provincial Government may be necessary to obtain their support.

Members of the KNPS executive attended the City Council meeting on April 23rd to express our opposition to some of the changes proposed by Tembec to the Nature Park logging plan. Below is the text of the presentation made by KNPS president Kent Goodwin, to City Council.

On March 28, four representatives of Tembec met with City Council to reveal some major changes to the Nature Park logging plan. At Tembec’s insistence, members of the KNPS were not invited to that meeting.

On April 12^th a delegation from the KNPS met with Brian Dureski and Joe Gnucci of Tembec to learn first hand about the changes that Tembec was proposing. On April 16^th the executive of the Nature Park Society met to discuss the new plan and our response to it.

We are here tonight to let Council and the community know that we are extremely disappointed with the Tembec plan and will not accept some of the proposed changes.

For well over 2 years we worked with Tembec to develop a draft plan for thinning the Park that would address the issues of ecological restoration, pine beetle infestation and community fire protection. While the draft plan we developed was not perfect it did protect many of the Park’s aesthetic and recreational values while dealing with those important issues.

The recent changes that Tembec has unilaterally made to the Plan reduce the number of mature leave trees in the logged area from 200 per hectare to 75 or less. By comparison, the logging in the Nordic ski Trails left up to 400 mature leave trees in many areas.

Where the original plan proposed to process all the trees outside the Park boundaries and therefore required no landings in the Park, the new plan proposes 14 landings inside the Park boundaries which will mean significant soil disturbance and long lasting scars. At the moment three of these proposed landings are straddling the Trans-Canada Trail.

It was made clear to us in our meeting with Tembec on April 12^th that these changes to the plan have nothing to do with fire risk reduction, pest control or ecological restoration. They are the result of decisions at the corporate level to maximize the economic return to Tembec in the face of falling lumber prices and a rising dollar.

We are here tonight to ask the City of Kimberley and the community as a whole to help us convince senior executives in Tembec that the Nature Park is so important to the future of our town as a lifestyle amenity, a tourism attractor and wildlife habitat that it needs to thinned in the most sensitive manner possible. We need to stick to the original plan.

The City of Kimberley has a multi-stakeholder process in place which includes a technical committee mandated to examine the leave tree issue and make recommendations. We fully support that process and will continue to participate in it. We are also willing to work with Tembec to review a variety of on-the-ground issues, including the issue of landings, and we have a full day field trip scheduled with Joe Gnucci on May 1. We would invite any members of Council who are available to participate in that field trip.

We have been willing to accept a significant amount of disruption in the Park to meet the broader needs of the community and the Province. We have angered some of our own members and other park users by compromising as far as we have.

There is a limit to how much we can compromise and still have something we can call a Nature Park . These proposed changes to the logging plan have brought us to that limit. We hope that the City and the community will continue to support us as we work to convince Tembec to do the kind of job we think they can do and ensure that Kimberley doesn’t lose this wonderful asset.

Representatives of Tembec recently visited City Council to notify them of changes in the Nature Park logging plan. They asked Council not to invite KNPS reps to the meeting.

Two weeks later, a delegation from the KNPS met with Tembec and learned first-hand about the proposed changes. They include the deletion of some areas from logging (not a bad thing), the addition of 14 landings in the Park and a reduction in the number of mature leave trees from 200 to 75. The Nature Park Society Executive has considered the changes and will be opposing the plan. Below is a map that Tembec gave us, with the legend below it. We are also posting several pages of the notes we took at the Tembec meeting. You can read them in Word format, here.

Following are some initial thoughts on the January fire workshop. We have just received the facilitator's workshop report which goes into more detail about the two days. You can download it in Microsoft Word format here.

Participants in the 2 day fire workshop discuss fuel treatments in the Park and adjacent areas.

The workshop was attended by reps from the Ministry of Forests (including 3 folks from the Protection Branch (fire fighters)), Ministry of Environment, City of Kimberley, Wildsight, Kimberley Nordic Club, Tembec, and the KNPS. (Pam Chenery, Chris Ferguson, Kathi Chorneyko and Kent Goodwin). Teck/Cominco was notably absent.

Statements from all the groups in the early part of the workshop, regarding values and objectives generally agreed that fire protection was an important issue but we needed to find solutions that respected other values as much as possible.

Efforts to generate scenarios for fuel treatment and then analyze them through a structured process bogged down due to lack of time and lack of adequate advance work by the facilitators and Bob Gray. By the end of the second morning we were basically left with a scenario based on the Tembec logging plan and some further hand work in the Nature Park and Forest Crowne. The hand work in this plan was expected to cost more than $3 million dollars and the annual long term maintenance costs were expected to be about $1 million. Needless to say, the money to do this is not available.

We were disappointed to hear that the funding that Bob Gray said would be available if the community reached a consensus plan was not a specific commitment to Kimberley but rather some part of the $5 million pot that the Province gave to the UBCM some time ago for the whole province. The idea that forest fire fighters could help do the hand work while not fighting fires was confirmed but expectations were lowered by a Ministry rep who pointed out that in a busy fire year they might not be able to help very much.

As expected the workshop was not designed to deal with many of our site specific issues such as small boundary changes, landings, skid trails, etc. These items will still have to be negotiated with Tembec.

The key issue of how many trees would be left in the areas that are logged was not resolved because the fuel models that the process used did not consider the specifics of forest type and canopy closure. However a technical committee has been formed, composed of Bob Gray, Brian Dureski from Tembec, Peter Holmes from the Ministry of Environment and Greg Utzig a scientist working for Wildsight (which the KNPS will now hire). This group will take the Tembec logging plan and ecological maps of the Park and determine what the options are for leaving more trees from an ecological, fire safety and economic perspective. Our hope is that from the first two perspectives more leave trees than the current 200 stems/hectare can be retained in many areas. We will then be faced with the economic argument. The City will be pursuing, with the Province, the idea of stumpage reductions in parts of the Park which were formerly Cominco land and are not a part of the Provincial Forest.

The Mayor made a statement at the end of the second day saying that he needed some time to consult with Council and others before deciding on the next step in the process. It is likely that the workshop participants will be reconvened at some point in the future perhaps 2-3 months from now, when the technical committee has finished its analysis.

On December 11th, 2006 a delegation from the KNPS met with City Council to discuss our concerns about the Park logging plan and to get their support to push Tembec for improvements to the Plan. On December 12th, Council and our delegation met with Brian Dureski of Tembec to discuss these concerns. The Mayor and Councilors were very supportive of the Nature Park and asked Tembec to agree that no logging would occur until a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by all three parties. Notes from the two meetings can be downloaded here and here.

It was suggested by Bob Gray, that the City host a facilitated two-day workshop to use a computer simulation to model various fuel reduction treatments in the Park and adjacent areas and see how the risks could be reduced while maintaining as many Park values as possible. Council agreed to that suggestion and the workshop is being held on Jan 25th and 26th. Representatives from Tembec, the KNPS, the City, the Kimberley Nordic Club, the Ministry of Forests, the Ministry of Environment and Wildsight will all attend.

This is an example of the kind of map that Farsite produces. The red and white lines
show the perimeter of a fire as it moves across the landscape.
Each line represents 1/2 hour of fire progress.

The facilitator that has been hired by the City to run the workshop, Robin Gregory, has assured us that fire will only be one of the considerations to be discussed. All the values in the Park will be considered and a plan that balances fire risk reduction with biodiversity, recreation and aesthetic values is the goal. If you would like to learn more about how the fire analysis will occur you can download Bob Gray's summary of the process as an Acrobat .pdf file here. (Please note that this is a fairly big file (1 mb) and the pages are in reverse order.)

The following list contains a number of items that the Kimberley Nature Park Society needs to see in the logging plan for the Park. However, more important than all of the mapping and prescriptive details that make up a logging plan, is an understanding and a commitment by all parties involved in the logging that this is a Nature Park . The intent of the logging is to reduce the fire risk to the town while preserving the aesthetic, recreational and ecological values of the area. Without this understanding and commitment the area will not be logged successfully and the incredible values of the Park to the community will be seriously damaged.

We have recently learned that Tembec, as part of its certification by the Forest Stewardship Council, has designated much of the Park and Horsebarn Valley as a High Conservation Value Forest . This designation will require Tembec to develop a management plan for the area in consultation with the City and Nature Park Society. We look forward to working with Tembec to develop long term strategies for the area which address the wide range of values and issues in the Park.

1. MOU - Some of the following items can be written into the logging prescription and drawn on the logging map. Others may need to be dealt with in a written Memorandum of Understanding, similar to the one proposed for the Kimberley Nordic Trails. We would like a commitment from Tembec that no road building or logging will occur until the KNPS and City of Kimberley sign an MOU.

2. Leave tree density - We would like to see more trees left in the “managed forest” unit. The current plan calls for a long term goal of up to 1000 stems per hectare, but proposes that the logging remove all but 200 stems per hectare and we wait 80 years for the rest to grow back. We would like to explore some options for leaving more trees in the Park. These options might include lodgepole pine only removal or leaving 600 stems per hectare.

3. Diameter Limits - In order to meet the leave tree density goals, the current plan calls for the larger trees to be left and the smaller trees to be logged. The general diameter limits for trees to be logged are 30 cm. at the stump for Douglas fir and 25 cm. for western larch. We support these limits as a general rule but believe that trees somewhat smaller than these limits must be left if necessary to meet leave tree density goals and to provide buffers to trails. The current plan calls for the preservation of any tree over 50 cm. in diameter and we would like this lowered to 40 cm. We assume that skid trails must therefore avoid such trees.

4. Trail Buffers - In order to protect the trail network we need a 60 metre wide shade and aesthetic buffer along all trails. (30 metres each side) Before logging begins this buffer, which will be a new Standards Unit (SU 6) must be flagged in the field. Nature Park volunteers would be available to help do the layout and flagging.

5. Winter Logging - To reduce soil disturbance, ground cover damage, trail damage, noxious weed spread and conifer regeneration, we want all the logging done in the winter on snow and frozen ground.

6. Machine Free Zones - Most of the trails that are not going to be used for skidding have been flagged as no machine zones. There are one or two smaller paths that have not been flagged and must be. On the Nordic Trails these zones were fairly ineffective in preventing damage to trails, as machines crossed them everywhere. Logging in the winter on frozen ground will help protect the trails, but in sensitive areas we should also designate and flag trail crossing sites.

7. Landings- The original plan avoided the construction of landings in the Park but we have been told by Tembec that, for economic reasons, landings are now necessary. The number and location of landings has not been specified pending the outcome of discussions on Williamson Sapsucker habitat. The Nature Park Society membership is not prepared to accept landings in the Park.

8. Dwarf Mistletoe - We understand that Tembec may be required by provincial regulation to remove trees infested with dwarf mistletoe. Since the Nature Park is not primarily about timber production and dwarf mistletoe is an interesting and important part of the forest ecology we may need to retain these trees in areas where they are needed to buffer trails or achieve our target leave tree densities. If this requires a special dispensation from the Ministry of Forests it should be applied for in advance.

9. Haul and Skid Roads - The number and placement of roads can have a huge impact on trails, soils, drainage and Park aesthetics. We need to discuss the placement of haul roads and ensure that the upgrading of existing roads does not disrupt the Park any more than necessary. In general we would like to see the length and number of skid trails minimized. Skid trails should be built on old mining and logging roads wherever possible. We would like an opportunity to review skid trail locations in the field, prior to their construction.

10. Selection of Logging Contractor - Tembec has told us that we can have input into which company does the logging in the Park but that it must be one of the contractors they normally use. We currently doing some research on this issue and will have a recommendation for Tembec before the logging begins.

11. Reclamation of Disturbed Areas – We would like to see any disturbed areas, such as skid trails, recontoured and planted with a seed mix appropriate for the site.

12. Access Control – The plan does not deal with access control. The upgraded main haul road in from Matthew Creek will need to be gated and side of gate trenched to prevent motorized access into the Park. All upgraded access points, if not required after the logging, should be deactivated to prevent motorized access into the Park.

13. Snags – We will work with Tembec to identify important standing dead trees in the areas to be logged and try to preserve them. This may require Tembec to apply for a variance from Worksafe B.C.

14. Replanting and Stocking Standards – There is general agreement by all parties that the legally mandated stocking standards will result in too dense a forest for an interface area on the edge of town. We would support an application by Tembec for a variance in the stocking standards to avoid this problem.

15.Timing of Logging – While the Nature Park Society has no interest in delaying the thinning of the Park we do not want to proceed with roadbuilding and logging until an acceptable plan is in place and the Memorandum of Understanding signed by all parties. The optimum scenario would be to build and upgrade roads in the summer and log on frozen ground in the winter. It is now too late to start this work, this year. We will work with Tembec to resolve all outstanding issues so that road building can begin in the summer or fall of 2007.

Over the summer Tembec had the large grinding machine chop up the big slash pile on the Sunflower Hill landing. The chips were trucked offsite to the pulp for hog fuel. In October a backhoe was sent to the landing to recontour both it and the short piece of road that ran into it from Jimmy Russell Road. As an added bonus the backhoe redug the drainage ditches along Jimmy Russell Road that had been obliterated by the machinery moving up and down it.

The logging of Sunflower Hill began on Monday, Jan. 23 with the construction of a short spur road off Jimmy Russell Road and the clearing of one large landing. Falling began on Jan. 30 and in two weeks, by Jan 10th was complete. Reclamation of skid trails took several days after that and all that now remains is the chipping of the large slash pile on the landing, the reclamation and seeding of the landing and the seeding of the skid trails. Members of the KNPS visited the logging site a number of times in February and reviewed the final product with Tembec staff on Feb. 23rd. The KNPS will now work with the Ministry of Environment, the City Fire Department and the Ministry of Forests to prepare the site for a prescribed burn in 2007.

This is the feller buncher that cut down most of the trees in the Sunflower Hill
thinning project. Tembec was asked to remove both merchantable stems and
smaller ones that would contribute to the fire risk on the hillside. As a result
of their efforts, very little hand slashing will need to be done before the
prescribed burn.

This is a composite before and after picture of the skid trail that was built across the middle of Sunflower Hill.
The picture on the left shows the road after it was built and before logging took place. On the right, the road
has been recontoured and will now be seeded.

A temporary bridge was placed across the stream that runs down beside Jimmy Russell
Road to allow equipment access to the logging unit to the west. The bridge has since
been removed and the skid trail reclaimed.

As the skidders pulled bundles of trees across the hillside, thousands of
branches broke off against the ground and the standing trees. We will be
working throughout the summer to pull the piles of branches away from the
leave trees and scatter them on the hillside. This will provide fuel to carry the
prescribed fire along the ground but will prevent it from killing too many trees.

It now looks like the Sunflower Hill restoration logging will occur this winter but the rest of the Park will be deferred until next year. Concerns about the funding needed to do the cleanup and handwork after the logging are at least partly responsible for the delay. We will update this page as soon as we get firm start times from Tembec. We hope to schedule a field trip into the Sunflower Hill cutting unit with the Tembec logging supervisor Warn Franklin, sometime in the next few weeks.

Just before Christmas, Pam Chenery and Kent Goodwin attended a City Forest Management subcommittee meeting to discuss Tembec's plan to log an area on Musser's Plateau. Apparently the numbers of pine beetle are skyrocketing and the company wants to begin salvage logging this summer. The results will be a rather large clearcut area which will have impacts on the visual quality of North Star Mountain from a variety of viewpoints around town. Below is a draft layout of the cutting area and Tembec is currently working on ways to change its shape to reduce the visual impact. A large .pdf image can be downloaded here.

This is the current layout of the cutblock on Musser's Plateau.
It is currently being revised to try and reduce the impact on
visual quality from various parts of town. The Musser's Plateau
trail is crossed by the access road on the left side of the picture
but is otherwise not touched by the logging.

On November 16th, Bob Gray presented his report on fire risk and fuel reduction in the Nature Park and Nordic Trails. The full report is available from the City of Kimberley in .pdf format on a cd. We have excerpted the report's recommendations for the Nature Park to make a file small enough to download and you can get it in Microsoft Word format here.

Plans for logging in the Nature Park have changed somewhat over the last month. The major change has been that the Nordic Trail logging has been deferred till next summer as there is not time to complete it before ski season. As a result, the wood from the Nordic Trails will not be coming down through the Park and out to Matthew Creek.

The Nature Park logging is still expected to happen this winter, starting in January. Tembec is talking to the Provincial Government about getting financial support for cleanup and other costs and there is a chance that if they don't get that assistance they may wait another year.

The road permit to upgrade access from Matthew Creek and along the Army Road was delayed and construction has not yet started. It will, however, be starting soon and we will keep you posted.

The plan is also being modified to include input from Bob Gray, the City of Kimberley's fire ecologist. One of the changes to the plan is to remove the lodgepole pine from the riparian buffers around Duck Pond and Third Eimer's. Treed buffers will be maintained but it is felt that the pine will soon be lost to the beetle epidemic and it is better to remove it now.

Another significant change to the plan results from a failure to find provincial funding for hand treatment in the area around Eimer's Lake. The plan now proposes that machine logging will occur on the hillsides above Eimer's and the south side of Second Eimer's. A new version of the logging map is below and a link to download a larger version that you can zoom in on is here.

Below is a map showing the areas of the Nature Park and Nordic Trails that will be logged this winter. Our description of the logging plan is below the map. Please note that the Sunflower Hill logging plan map that was created last year can be found farther down this page and is not shown as part of this map.

Areas shaded pink will be thinned to open forest and areas shaded blue will be thinned and replanted if necessary to achieve managed forest densities. White areas will not be logged. (Red, orange and green areas are in the Nordic Ski Trails.) To download a pdf version of this map that will allow you to zoom in for a better look, click here. Please note that not all aspects of the plan have been finalized and some minor changes may occur.

Nature Park Society representatives have worked with Tembec to map important values in the area. This has resulted in the designation of no-logging zones in riparian reserve areas and wildlife tree patches through Whitetail Valley, around Second Eimer’s, Romantic Ridge, Duck Pond, Jimmy Russell Road, Creek and Flume Trails and other areas. There is one no-logging zone specifically to protect the mountain ladyslipper patch on Duck Pond Trail.

The presence of the endangered Williamson Sapsucker near the junction of Skid Road and Duck Pond Trail has prompted the creation of a 60 hectare Wildlife Management Area where minimal logging will occur. (This area may require some hand treatment in the future to reduce fire risk.) There are also significant areas of the Park (on Myrtle Mountain, Bear Mountain and the hillside above lower Blarchmont) where low timber values and/or steep terrain make logging unfeasible.

In the southern end of the Park, on Sunflower Hill and up to the bench at the far end of Whitetail Valley, we are planning to restore the open grassland habitat that low intensity wildfires maintained before European settlers began controlling them. Large areas in this part of the Park (shown in pink on the map) will be thinned significantly, leaving scattered large ponderosa pine and western larch. In areas designated as open range there will be as few as 50 trees per hectare remaining. In those designated as open forest the spacing will be around 250 - 300 trees per hectare. (If 300 trees are evenly spaced in one hectare, there would be just over 6 metres or 20 feet between trees. The actual spacing in the Park will be somewhat more random allowing for clumps of trees and open meadows.) Once logging is completed and fuel levels reduced, prescribed burns will be carried out in these areas under the guidance of Fire Ecologist, Bob Gray, to stimulate regrowth of important browse species and maintain the open spacing of trees.

In the rest of the Park, (shown in blue on the map) the desired tree density is called "managed forest" or 700-1200 stems / hectare. Lodgepole pine will be the main target species of the logging but dense stands of western larch and Douglas fir (less than 10 and 12 inches in diameter respectively) will also be thinned. All the larger Douglas fir, larch, spruce and alpine fir will be retained. In areas where there is nothing but lodgepole pine, large openings with few residual trees will be created and some tree planting may have to be done.

Most of the tree cutting in the Park will be done with feller-bunchers which can punch down through the snow and snip the trees off without leaving much stump. The felled trees will be dragged to the roads or landings by conventional rubber tired and tracked skidders. The possibility of using horse logging to thin the Park has been discussed. Concerns about the need to build more haul roads to compensate for the horses inability to skid logs long distances, to complete the work in a timely fashion and to avoid the spread of non-native plant seeds all led to the decision to use machines.

Bob Gray, fire ecologist and Ted Antifeau, Endangered Species Biologist
examine the Williamson's Sapsucker Wildlife Management Area.

Logging generally requires two different kinds of roads. Haul roads are wide, well built roads used by large trucks to carry logs out of the area. Skid trails are narrow roads built to a lower standard (in the winter sometimes built with both snow and dirt) and are meant for brief use by skidders dragging logs to landings.

Landings are cleared areas along roads where trees are de-limbed and topped and the debris heaped in slash piles. The logs are temporarily stacked and then loaded on logging trucks to be taking out of the area. Slash piles are usually allowed to dry out for a season and are then burned.

Roads, skid trails and landings are a major source of ground disturbance and the goal of the Nature Park logging plan is to minimize their construction and reclaim them as soon as possible after logging is finished. Some of the existing old roads in the Park will be upgraded to haul roads, others will be used as skid trails to avoid building new ones. All of the footpaths in the Park will be flagged with “no machine zone” ribbons to prevent skidders from using them as skid trails. (However, skidders will have to cross these trails in some areas to get the logs to the haul roads.)

1. In the Sunflower Hill area which was planned last year, Jimmy Russell Road will be used for a haul road from the St. Mary Road to a point just west of the Campground trail intersection. From there, a short new piece of road will be built to a large landing between Jimmy Russell Road and the power line. That will be the only landing in the Sunflower Hill area.

Skid trails will lead out from the landing to the north, south and west and a further skid trail will be built across the slope of Sunflower Hill at the bottom of the steepest pitch which will connect with Duck Pond Trail. A section of Duck Pond Trail up to the top of Sunflower Hill will be used by the skidder to avoid building another trail. Trees will be skidded to the landing and processed there, which will result in a large slash pile which will likely be burned later in the year. We would prefer to see this pile chipped and taken away for hog fuel to avoid the impacts on soils and air, but that would require doubling or tripling the size of the landing to accommodate chip trucks.

The landing, skid roads and new section of haul road will be recontoured and seeded as soon as the logging is finished.

2. In the west , central and northern portions of the Park (and the Nordic Trail area) Tembec will be trucking whole trees out of the area to a large landing near Matthew Creek. The limbing and topping will be done at that location and will generate enough debris to make a chipping operation economically possible. All the trees from the lower slopes of Bear Mountain including the flat at the top of Jimmy Russell Road, the hillsides above Whitetail Valley and the area close to Trickle Creek Golf course will all be trucked whole to that landing. This will avoid the creation of many small landings and numerous slash piles. The roads that will be used are:

To the west of Sunflower Hill, a haul road will be built across the slope above the private land and power line. That road will fork to allow access a wider area and when logging is done it will be recontoured and seeded.

Above this area, at the west end of Whitetail Valley and the top of Jimmy Russell Road, a new section of haul road will be built from the Boulevard across the flats to Jimmy Russell. This piece of road will not be reclaimed and will become the new emergency vehicle route in that part of the Park. The old section of Jimmy Russell that goes through the wet area by the creek will remain as a footpath.

The main haul road for the trees from the Nordic Trails and the north end of the Park will be the Army Road. This road will be upgraded from the bottom of Bear Trail to north of Myrtle Junction. The meadow area just west of Myrtle Junction will be avoided by routing the road on an old logging road against the north slope of Whitetail Valley which comes out at the bottom of Richardson’s Sidehill. Mary’s Lunchroom will also be avoided by the haul road by using the very bottom section of Bear trail and building a new connector out to the Boulevard. Both these new sections of road will be maintained as part of the emergency vehicle access. A temporary haul road will be built from the Upper Army Road to the Nordic Trails near the Lower Cardiac Arrest to bring all the trees from the Nordic area down through the Park and out to Matthew Creek for processing. This road will be recontoured and seeded when the logging is done.

A number of skid roads will also be built and then reclaimed in this area, but their locations have not yet been mapped. We will update this information as soon as possible.

3. Trees in the Duck Pond Trail area, adjacent to Forest Crowne will be skidded into Forest Crowne and no haul roads or landings will be built in that part of the Park.

4. Trees along the lower Army Road below Pat Morrow Trail and out to the Gravel Pit will be skidded on the lower Army Road to the first gravel pit where they will be processed. We have some grave concerns about the potential spread of noxious weed seeds back into the Park by using this route and will need to closely monitor these areas after the logging.

A special meeting of the KNPS was held on May 19th to review the work of Tembec's foresters and discuss ways to mitigate the impacts of logging for fuel reduction and pine beetle salvage in the Park. The discussion was led by Russ Hawkins who presented a draft map of the plan. A number of questions were asked and concerns were raised. A field trip into the Duck Pond area was organized and buffer zones around Duck Pond and Third Eimers were expanded.

The current plan is to thin a number of areas in the Park concentrating on lodgepole pine and smaller diameter fir and larch. The forest canopy will be opened in many areas and the spacing of trees will be closer to the natural spacing that low intensity ground fires maintained before humans began putting them out. In the southern part of the Park (Sunflower Hill) there will be a few large trees left with lots of open grassy areas in between. In higher and more moist areas of the Park the tree density will be greater but in areas with lots of lodgepole pine there will be some larger openings. Many parts of the Park will not be logged, either because of wildlife tree patches, riparian reserves or the lack of any economical way to remove trees. (The draft boundaries of the cut blocks and leave areas are currently being mapped by GPS and we will post the map on the website as soon as it is available.)

Logging will be carried out by feller bunchers and conventional skidders and will take place in the winter on frozen ground and snow. The harvested trees will be loaded onto logging trucks, complete with branches and tops and driven out of the Park to two locations, one in Forest Crowne and one towards Matthew Creek. There, the trees will be limbed and cut to length and the debris will be ground up for chips and hog fuel and trucked to the Skookumchuk mill. Taking the trees out of the Park to process them will reduce the need for landings and slash piles and the pollution from the burning of the piles. The only slash pile in the plan is the one at the bottom of Sunflower Hill from the restoration logging in that area.

We hope that by doing the Nature Park logging in the winter
on frozen ground, soil disturbance like this in the area about
Swan Subdivision will be minimized. (As will the risk of
spread of noxious weeds.)

The Nordic Ski area is being logged in conjunction with the Park and the trees will be taken through the Park to Forest Crowne for processing. A new, temporary road will be built from the Upper Army Road to the Lower Cardiac Arrest and the logging of the Nordic Trails will begin in September and be finished when the snow comes. The trees will travel down the new road, through Myrtle Junction and along an upgraded Duck Pond Road to Forest Crowne. There will be significant changes to upper Duck Pond Trail and the Myrtle Junction area including a new creek crossing and the removal of our wooden bridge.

A new section of road is also proposed to connect the Boulevard to the top of Jimmy Russell Road through the flat bench to the south and west of the existing road. The section of Jimmy Russell Road from the S.W. Passage Junction to the Army Road will not be used as a haul road and will be maintained in the future as a trail only. The Duck Pond foot bridge will likely be relocated to the stream crossing on Jimmy Russell Road.

We will post a more detailed description of the work being proposed in the Park when the map is available. In the meantime, if you have any questions, call Kent at 427-5404.

Bob Gray, the fire ecologist hired by the City to create an interface fire risk reduction plan for Kimberley, will be going over data collected by the pine beetle survey contractors and should be putting a plan for the Park together in May. Bob has suggested that a pilot project to do hand thinning and slashing on the 20 hectares of land adjacent to Lower Blarchmont and Eimers Lake would be a first step in the plan. He is also suggesting that two 1 hectare staging areas be cleared in the Park that would allow the location of temporary water reservoirs and heavy equipment should a fire occur in the Park.

Laura, John and Cliff check out a proposed staging area near the junction of
Romantic Ridge Trail and the Upper Army Road. The area as currently flagged
will not work for us and will need to be moved. Part of Romantic Ridge Trail
may need to be re-routed as well.

Another part of the interface plan will likely be some commercial thinning of some stands. This would likely mean the removal of mature lodgepole pine from a variety of places in the Park. KNPS members are currently discussing with Russ Hawkins, Tembec's forester how access to the stands might be made with the least impact on the Park's trail system. One option is to upgrade part of Duck Pond Trail, between Myrtle Junction and Duck Pond and use it as a haul road. An extension to the road would be built to take the logs into Forest Crowne and on to the mill.

Please note: The restoration project described below has been postponed until next winter (2005-06). The warm weather and lack of snow this winter presented too great a risk for soil degradation if logging occurred in February as planned. Hopefully, next year will see colder temperatures and much more snow.

Following is a map and some text that have been put together by the KNPS based upon a draft plan that Tembec is creating in consultation with Bob Gray and the Nature Park Society. This is a very brief overview of the plan which is still in the process of being fine tuned.

The orange lines on the map above outline three units that will be logged to restore a more open forest and grassland (total area about 50 hectares). The lines of small red dots are the trails in the area, including Campground Trail, Jimmy Russell Road and Duck Pond Trail. The red dots don't exactly line up with the trails on the current map, and are likely more accurate.

Unit 1, which is the higher, steeper slopes of Sunflower Hill will be restored to open range with a tree stocking of about 50 stems per hectare, largely big old ponderosa pine and some Douglas fir. The average spacing of trees in this unit would be about 45 feet apart, but there will be variation in that average with some clumps of trees and others farther apart.

Units 2 and 3 are the lower area between Jimmy Russell Road and the highway and the area to the west of the creek. These areas will be restored to open forest with about 300 stems per hectare. This spacing of trees about 19 feet apart will again be variable and irregular to allow some clumps and randomness. These units have a fair amount of lodgepole pine and active pine beetle. The trees that will be left in these units will be western larch, ponderosa pine, some Douglas fir and spruce. As well all the deciduous trees will be left.

A protected wildlife tree area has been laid out on both sides of the creek and no logging will occur in that area.

The logging will be done starting in February on frozen ground and maximum snowpack to keep soil disturbance to a minimum. A feller-buncher will be used to cut off the trees close to the ground. The trees will be randomly skidded by tracked skidders (on the steeper slopes) and rubber tired skidders (on the flatter ground) to one large landing (shown in red) to the south of Jimmy Russell Road and just west of Campground trail. At the landing the trees will have their tops and branches removed and be loaded on trucks that will drive up a new short spur road (also in red) to Jimmy Russell and then down to the St. Mary's road.

Trees from the west side of the creek will be skidded across a portable bridge that will be put in place and removed after the logging. Three skid trails, one short piece of haul road and one landing will all be re-contoured after the logging. Discussion is ongoing about what kind of seeds to plant on the disturbed areas and other measures that will need to be taken to control noxious weeds.

Bob Gray is already planning to go into the area this spring and slash and pile debris and smaller trees for burning next fall. The whole area including land to the east and west of the orange outlined area, would then be burned every decade or so, to prevent trees from reestablishing and to rejuvenate the rangeland.

Below are some examples of the ribbons being put up around the Park as part of the Fire Interface and Restoration planning. On Sunflower Hill the ribbon locations are finalized. Elsewhere in the Park everything is very tentative at this point.


The blue and red and white striped ribbons indicate a GPS'dstarting point for a survey line.	These green ribbons indicate a boundary between two standard logging units.


*These red ribbons indicate a stream.*	This yellow ribbon marks the edge of the cutblock.


The pink and black ribbons on the slope of Sunflower Hill mark the trees that will be left after logging.	These light green ribbons mark trees that have pine beetle currently inside them.

On Oct. 21, 2004 Tembec began a pine beetle survey in the Nature Park. Technicians visited areas of the Park that have shown red patches of trees on aerial photographs. The map below has red dots indicating such patches. In addition, the areas outlined in blue are believed, to have enough pine beetle infested trees to justify logging. In other areas, falling and burning trees may be prescribed. The survey must be completed by mid-January then and we will then sit down with Tembec and the City to discuss the next steps. Stay tuned.

On this map of the Park area, the red dots are probable beetle infestations. The areas
outlined in blue have enough beetle infested trees to justify logging. The green areas in the
Nordic Ski area have been logged or will be next year.

As a result of the pine beetle surveys described above, a fall and burn program in the Park has been completed. Just over 200 lodgepole pine trees were cut down, bucked up and burned to kill the pine beetle larvae that would have emerged as adults this summer.

The Nature Park Society is concerned about beetle impacts from a forest fire fuel loading perspective only. We considered the fall and burn program the beginning of a larger effort to reduce the amount of fuel in the Park and the risk to Kimberley from a wildfire. Many hundreds of trees in the Park that have pine beetle in them, have not been burned. Future fuel reduction will be part of a holistic, comprehensive plan for the Park.

Susan and friend beside an ash pile. A fair bit of debris, (tops, branches and small trees
knocked down in the process) remain scattered around the site.

Kimberley Nature Park

Interface Fire and Restoration Page