Dungate Community Forest got approval for nearly double their annual allowable cut.
The five-year initial licence where they were harvesting 20,000 cubic metres per year expired in February, and under the new licence Dungate can harvest 37,000 cubic metres per year for the next five years, Doug McRae told council at a meeting last week Tuesday.
He says after that it will drop down a bit, and the long-term sustainable allowable cut looks like it will be 30,000 cubic metres per year.
McRae said they applied for 100,000 cubic metre allowable cut because of the dead pine that's on the community forest land base.
"It was targeted at harvesting the stands greater than 50 percent pine," McRae said, adding that in their overview flights they found the pine in the community forest was close to 80 percent dead.
But the Ministry of Forests approved 37,000 cubic metres due to timber supply concerns, said McRae.
"Basically they're trying to protect as much green timber as possible for 20 or 30 years down the line," he said.
He adds that they required that Dungate harvest stands with 70 or greater percent pine and greater than 50 percent dead pine, which will be a bit challenging.
"The pine kill won't be a problem, but the 70 percent pine may be a problem. A lot of the stands in the community forest are mixed stands," he said.
McRae says their management agreement with Canfor has been working well, and expires next spring, so they are negotiating a new agreement with them.
McRae says that with their profits, Dungate allocates funds for community support and business development.
They get requests for funding for a variety of projects and non-profit organizations in the community, and have spent $4,700 to date on various initiatives, McRae said.
He says they also have a fund for business development that is accumulating funds, and at this point has $29,352.20.
"We haven't done anything with that and we don't have any plans in the near future for that.
"It's just a pool of capital at this point," he said.