VICTORIA - Private investors are being offered a chance to create forestry jobs, fight global warming and reduce their carbon footprint under an innovative silviculture partnership sponsored by the B.C. government, Forests Lands and Natural Resource Operations Minister Steve Thomson announced recently.
The ministry has issued a request for proposals from parties interested in replanting Crown land damaged by wildfires, pine beetle and other factors not related to commercial timber harvesting. The request for proposals is available at: www.bcbid.gov.bc.ca. Interested parties have until Thursday, March 8, 2012 to submit their proposals.
Program partners - for example, banks, carbon finance companies, silviculture firms and First Nations - can generate significant carbon credits, which they will be able to sell on the open market as the carbon storage value of these replanted areas increases over time.
For the 2012 planting season, the ministry is targeting between 500 and 2,000 hectares of Crown land, with plans to increases that to as much as 10,000 hectares annually by 2015. Investors will be responsible for the long-term maintenance and monitoring of their projects.
It's estimated that a 1,000-hectare forest carbon restoration project would cost $1 million to $1.5 million and store an additional 160,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide from enhanced tree growth over its 70-year life-span, creating 12 silviculture jobs in the near term and up to 100 forestry jobs in the long term.
As an incentive to investors, the Pacific Carbon Trust, a Crown corporation, has allocated space in its offset portfolio to purchase up to 100,000 tonnes of carbon credits generated from this request for proposals.
Forest companies are required by law to replant areas where logging has occurred, including beetle-damaged areas where trees have been commercially harvested. However, B.C. has approximately 600,000 to 800,000 hectares of wildfire burns and pine beetle-damaged timberlands that cannot be commercially harvested and have been deemed eligible for forest carbon restoration projects