ONTARIO REPORT:
by William F. Murphy, RPF General Manager

I have had the privilege of knowing and working with Bill Klages, RPF for 37 years. Bill worked for Bowater Inc., based in Thunder Bay, for his entire professional career. 

After his recent retirement, Bill and I discussed some of the changes in the silviculture field over the past few decades. My interest was his view on work he’d done with the Forest Renewal Co-op (previously known as LUSTR Coop). His company (Bowater and its predecessor companies such as Avenor and Canadian Pacific Forest Products) has been an active member of the Forest Renewal Co-op for 15 years. The introduction of cold storage to prevent over-winter losses when storing seedlings outside under snow cover meant that tree growers had to convert from using paper pot trays to tubs for shipping live seedlings to the field. Bill talked about working with Hill’s Greenhouses, FERIC, Bowater and the Co-op to develop a type of boxing arrangement that would fit into the new cold storage but would also permit proper thawing while facilitating the work of planting contractors and planters. Similarly, he worked with the Co-op to develop a thawing regime for the frozen seedlings. While working with the silviculture contractors, Bill devised a more efficient system of scheduling and transporting tree seedlings to and from the field. He believed that the Co-op was the most efficient vehicle to deliver operational research, which is research that yields immediate improvements and cost savings in daily field operations.

Bill has also been involved with Forest Genetics Ontario through the Superior Woods Tree Improvement Association, and has been able to take these established First Generation Seed Orchards through roging etc. to the point of producing all the jack pine seed needed for Bowater’s annual stock production. Bill has also worked towards the establishment of second generation orchards. These will be ready for full production in a few years.

Bill’s biggest fear is that the number of mill closures and the slow down in lumber and pulp production will affect further work in tree seedling research, and that as a result of the reduced requirement for tree seedlings on SFLs, some sort of rationalization might eventually lead to fewer tree seedling growers being needed. Bill thinks that this trend will continue until things change in the housing market in the US and the mountain pine beetle salvage is completed in the western provinces, hopefully within the next five years. He feels that for the growers to continue to survive and be productive, they will have to diversify their markets in other areas rather than relying solely on Crown land. Since there is no requirement to replant the areas cut over on private land or to renew vacant farmland to conifer, very little tree planting has occurred. When the OMNR operated the bare root nurseries, they offered seedlings to private landowners for a minimal charge. This encouraged private landowners to replant any areas that they had harvested. 
When people are buying private land and then harvesting the timber within miles of a mill, the idea of the provincial government holding the fifty million tree planting program on private land in Southern Ontario’s vacant and marginal farmland sites is not right. Since there is no tree planting program for private land harvesting, areas surrounding municipalities and townships are being denuded of their trees. Municipalities are putting in tree cutting bylaws, and they see the Managed Forest Tax Incentive program as a liability to them.

We need to get back to the old Woodlands Improvement Act scenario where people could get tree seedlings funded by the government to put onto their property.