Industry will absorb with great interest the B.C. Government’s response, made public today, to the Special Committee on Timber Supply’s August report.

Beyond the Beetle: A MidTerm Timber Supply Action Plan, highlights the government’s next steps that include “a 10-year forest inventory strategy, innovative silviculture practices to grow more trees faster, and landscape fire management planning to reduce risks to the midterm timber supply.”  A commitment “at the next sitting of the legislature” to introduce legislation to enable the conversion of volume-based to area-based forest licences may draw scrutiny. Eleven recommendations offered in the report aimed at increasing midterm timber supply are available here.

Update: I listened to quite the interview on CKNW last evening with Bob Simpson, Independent MLA, “whose Cariboo North constituency is ground zero in the beetle-damaged forest epidemic” (see Plan to maintain timber supply widens land base – Vancouver Sun 10/10).  Simpson’s own submission to the Special Committee on Timber Supply, where his six recommendations included not to rebuild the Hampton Mill in Burns Lake, is available here.  While his complete radio interview from last evening is available as a podcast here (“The World Today” – Tuesday Oct 9 – Hour 3), the following tweet certainly capsulizes his thoughts: