State Of The Industry - Fall 2024 / Winter 2025

Another planting season is essentially over.  For me, the 2024 season reinforced three universal truths:

1.      Nothing is certain in life except death and taxes.

2.      Never get involved in a land war in Asia.

3.      The tree price can never be high enough in Fort St John.

Looking ahead to 2025, here are some thoughts that I have on topics that may be of interest to planters.

 

Planting Volumes & Pricing

Across Canada, it seems that tree planting totals will continue to rise in 2025.  The 2 Billion Tree program continues to grow, as expected, although the vast majority of national planting volume is still very much tied to harvesting activity.

British Columbia is a provincial exception to the growth curve.  Volumes in BC are expected to drop next year, allegedly from 291 million to 233 million trees (a drop of 58 million trees or twenty percent).  In theory, you’d think that this would lead to a supply and demand imbalance, which would then result in lower bid prices for next year’s contracts.  In practice, we’re not seeing any consistent trend of that sort, at least not so far.  Planting company owners and bidding personnel are dealing with significant cost pressures, and don’t have much flexibility to bid aggressively.

The big question that’s always on planters’ minds is what direction tree prices are moving in.  My guess is that in 2025, they’ll remain almost exactly the same as in 2024.  There are two opposing forces at play here ... supply reductions versus labour force reliability.  It’s very unlikely that planters will see any broad price increases in BC, due to the expected drop in volume.  At the same time, companies will be reluctant to drop planter prices, because planters might try to jump to other companies.

Companies are in a difficult position.  They need to maintain planter prices, despite other rising costs and despite a potential slight drop in bid prices at the company level.  Experienced planters are more valuable than new workers, and companies don't want planters to retire and move out of the industry to other careers.  To be honest, if our industry can maintain planter prices at status quo going into 2025, we’ll be luckier than other forestry sectors that are dealing with massive job cuts.  The planting workforce in BC will certainly be smaller in 2025, but it’s easy for our industry to downsize quickly since we have so much turnover every year.  Several of the larger companies will probably consider downsizing by a full camp, which is usually pretty easy to do, and which strengthens the remaining camps.

 

Retiring Owners

In past years, I sometimes referred to the Big 14 planting companies in BC:  Apex, Blue Collar, Brinkman, Celtic, Coast Range, Dynamic, Folklore, NATA, NGR, Rhino, Seneca, Spectrum, Summit, and Windfirm.  While this group doesn’t include all of the largest companies (it omits companies such as Zanzibar), I tended to cluster this group together because they probably account for nearly 90% of the hiring of first-time inexperienced planters.

Until recently, it had been a long while since any of the biggest planting companies ceased operations, with the two most notable examples in the past 25 years probably being SilvaRam (2005) and Nechako (2010).  However, Celtic shuttered their planting operations last year (although that company still does other forestry work at a smaller scale).  At least two other mid-sized companies also ceased operations going into the 2024 season (Little Smokey & Nature's Treasures).

For 2025, I’m aware of two more companies from that big group which will not be planting anymore (although one of the two may rebuild as a smaller operation with a different name).  In addition, another well-known smaller company is apparently done.

What does all of this recent turnover mean?  Is it significant that six companies have shut down in the past 18 months?  It feels to me that this is the market sending a signal that running a planting company just may not be worth it.  On a positive note, the timing of this contraction matches well with the current decrease in volumes.  Convenient.  Keep in mind however, some other small companies have sprung up in the past two years, which will partially offset the reduction in the size of the industry.

 

Forestry Outlook in BC

It’s not just the planting industry that is contracting.  There have been major upsets in mills throughout BC.  Twenty years ago, there were slightly over a hundred operational mills throughout the province.  The count is now down to just barely over half that number.

Canfor has been hit especially hard.  After closing four mills in 2023, they recently announced the closures of their sawmills in Vanderhoof and Fort St. John.  Canfor has now closed ten of their thirteen BC mills over the past several years.

Province-wide, mills are cutting a lot less.  This is due to a slew of reasons, including fallout from a few decades of mountain pine beetle and other insect damage, several recent bad wildfire seasons, and also due to the remaining “good wood” being further and further from mills (which of course increases hauling and other costs).  Lack of access to economic fibre is a big problem.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise, in light of all these recent mill curtailments and the accompanying downtrend in harvesting, that planting volumes will also drop.

What will this do to the composition of the planting workforce?  As long as tree prices don’t decrease, the industry should see a "normal" return rate of experienced planters in 2025.  If this is the case, but we also consider the likelihood that the number of trees being planted will drop, we can deduce that there should be fewer seats available.  This reduction will affect inexperienced applicants, not planters with previous planting experience.

I suspect that the number of “rookies” hired will drop significantly in 2025 compared to 2024.  Companies will have the luxury of being more selective about whom they hire.  International applicants will have a much harder time finding planting jobs, because it will be easier for companies to fill positions with promising Canadian applicants.  Most companies prefer to hire Canadians, because they want employees who might still around for 3-5 seasons, and that’s not possible for a lot of the international applicants due to visa restrictions.  If you're a rookie who is interested in becoming a planter in BC this year, the application process is going to be a lot more competitive than during the past few years.

Recent Elections

The BC election was not resolved quickly.  Ultimately, a number of seats were decided by only a few hundred votes each.  The NDP government won 47 seats, the bare minimum needed for a majority, although this wasn’t certain until several days after the election.  The Green Party wound up with two seats.  It initially appeared that the Greens would be able to decide who would form a coalition government, until the NDP got the last seat they needed during the recounts a week after election night.  But that doesn’t mean that the NDP party can govern unchecked.  If they lose a single MLA, either in a by-election or due to a defection, they will need to turn to the Green Party to maintain power.  Any NDP MLA could switch parties to the Greens right now, and force a coalition government.  That would give that particular MLA and the other two Green MLA's outsized influence.  It will be a precarious political situation for the next few years.  On a positive note for tree planters, the NDP alluded to supporting the planting of 300 million trees per year if elected.  If any readers happen to know any of the NDP (or Green) MLA’s, reach out to them and remind them that you want their support for more planting in BC.

Looking south, the US elections were a bit of a surprise/shock to some.  With Trump coming back into power soon, the most obvious likely result will be inflation due to the fiscal policies Republicans are expected to follow.  Trump also mentioned "protecting Americans" with tariffs.  If he moves ahead with that plan, there is a good chance that tariffs would increase on Canadian lumber.  That would have a disproportionate negative impact on forestry in BC in particular.  When BC’s forestry sector is unhealthy, the reforestation sector is obviously also affected.  Between tariffs and inflation, we could eventually see less harvesting (which results in lower planting volumes), and higher prices on things like trucks and vehicle parts.  Thankfully, it will probably be at least 18 months before any inflationary increases or spin-offs from lumber tariffs impact the planting industry, so that’s more of a worry for 2026 than for 2025.

 

Safety & First Aid

WorkSafe has introduced sweeping new first aid requirements for remote forestry workers in BC.  These requirements came into effect on November 1^st.  I’ll provide a link where you can learn about this in more detail, but the basic situation is that the industry will need more first aiders.  Course names and content have also been modified.  Existing first aid certificates will remain valid until their intended expiry dates, but planters renewing tickets will see some changes in their courses.

In addition to probably needing significantly more ticketed first aid attendants, there have been updates to required contents for first aid kits and dressing stations, and to hazard ratings for various worksites.  You can find more info here:

https://www.replant.ca/docs/Nov_2024_First_Aid_Backgrounder.pdf

ETV’s are also under fire right now.  There are approximately six different types of ETV’s in use at planting companies throughout the province.  You can find everything from MTC’s to crummies to suburbans with fold-down seats, and the silver aluminum worker transport units that fit into the back of open-back pickups.  Unfortunately, WorkSafe has basically identified potential problems with every single type of unit that is currently in use at planting companies.  This is a situation which is evolving right now, but it could result in significant additional costs this winter/spring for many companies, large or small.

 

Total Physio

This company, based out of Houston BC, is well known to many planters.  A large number of planting companies hire Total Physio to provide various services and resources to their planters.  Total Physio’s library of taping resources is now up to 44 subjects, and growing.  Great stuff.

 

Alternatives to ATV’s

There’s been a lot of talk about situations where road access has been reclaimed, making the use of ATV's very dangerous.  What about using dirt bikes or electric fat bikes?  A drawback is stability safety, and another drawback is that they can basically only permit a tree runner to move one box at a time.  However, bikes can travel into some areas that a quad can’t access.  I once had an entire crew that used mountain bikes to get to their blocks on one of my contracts.  Think outside the box.  I’m going to be using e-bikes to plant a reclaimed road project in Nova Scotia this week.  Check out my Instagram account in a few days to see the fun:  www.instagram.com/replant.ca

 

Bid Results

I normally track all public bid results for BC planting contracts on the Replant.ca forums.  Some of you have noticed that I’m running late this year.  There have been more than half a dozen jobs that have opened already, so mea culpa.  However, I now measure my to-do list in years rather than pages, and I’ve been busy non-stop since the spring.  I promise that I'll get around to summarizing and posting everything shortly.

To be fair, this year’s viewing and bidding season is running very late, perhaps close to a month later than normal.  There will be a slew of contracts opening in the next three weeks (mid- to late November).  As I said, I'll get around to analyzing and sharing everything soon.

Thanks for reading ...

- Scooter

 

 

Links to Previous "State Of The Industry" Posts:

Early 2024:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2024/01/state-of-industry-winter-2024.html

Fall 2022:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2022/10/state-of-industry-fall-2022-tree.html

Fall 2021:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2021/10/state-of-industry-fall-2021-bc-tree.html

Spring 2021:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2021/04/state-of-industry-2021.html

Fall 2019:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2019/09/state-of-industry-2019-bc-tree-planting.html

Fall 2018:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2018/09/state-of-industry-british-columbia-tree.html

From Our Footsteps, Giant Forests Grow (coastal planting photo book)

I've just recently released another coffee-table style photo book, featuring around 230 pages of full-colour photos of tree planting.  The photos are intended to convey, in mostly visual terms, what may be experienced while planting in British Columbia's rugged coastal region.  The book is priced at $39.95 for the print edition, and only $3.99 for the digital editions.

The photos were taken on various coastal projects, predominantly on the north end of Vancouver Island.  The best thing is that if you follow the Replant.ca website or Instagram account regularly, these photos will still be new to you.  Almost every one of the photos in the book is being shown to the public for the first time.  If you've planted elsewhere in Canada, this book should be an eye-opener about the specific challenges involved with coastal planting.

There are two print editions of this book available (hardcover and softcover).  There are also various digital editions available at very attractive pricing.  Here's a link to the print editions on Amazon's Canadian website:

  Full-Colour Softcover ($39.95 Cdn): www.amazon.ca/dp/1793876657 

  Full-Colour Hardcover (about $70 Cdn): www.amazon.ca/dp/1999016815

And here are links to digital eBook versions:

  Kindle Store ($3.99 Cdn): www.amazon.ca/dp/B084MLDVJH

  Apple Books ($3.99 Cdn):  books.apple.com/us/book/id1507327207

  Google Play ($3.99 Cdn):  play.google.com/store/books/details?id=6EvcDwAAQBAJ

    (In Google Books, you may have to change the setting from "Flowing Text" to "Original Pages" on some devices in order for the content to display correctly). 

For those who are on a tight budget, and for those who prefer looking at black & white photos, there's a greyscale version of this book available.  It is priced very affordably at $14.95 Cdn, and it has all the same photos as the other versions (but in black & white).

Incidentally, I have a second completely separate photo book specifically devoted to Interior tree planting.  The title of that book is Rite Of Passage and it focuses on traditional seasonal planting jobs based out of remote tent camps.  Also, don't confuse either of my photo books with Step By Step: A Tree Planter's Handbook, which is used throughout Canada as a training and reference manual for new tree planters.  There are videos at the bottom of this post to showcase these other two books.

Thanks for your interest!  For more information about books related to tree planting, visit:

www.replant.ca/books

Front cover, Softcover paperback edition:

Back cover, Softcover paperback edition:

Front cover, Hardcover edition:

Back cover, Hardcover edition:

Front cover, Greyscale Paperback edition:

To visit the author's website, go to:

www.jonathanclark.ca

Other Tree Planting Books by Jonathan Clark

Rite Of Passage

(photo book based upon summer work in a remote tent camp)

Step By Step: A Tree Planter's Handbook

(comprehensive training guide and reference manual)

Getting a Stuck Truck out of the Mud

Today, I'm going to share some pro tips about getting a truck out of the mud, if you get stuck.  A few weeks ago, I got my F350 stuck while viewing forestry blocks in northern BC.  It was a Saturday, late afternoon, and I was south of Francois Lake.  I was several hours away from my home office, and away from anyone who could come pull me out.  I wanted to try to get my truck out without assistance, so I didn't have to inconvenience anyone else.  I knew that it would take a while, but I could probably do it by myself.  Since it was almost dark when I got stuck, I slept in the truck overnight, and got started as soon as it started to get light out.

The basic approach that I wanted to use was to jack the truck up, build a corduroy road underneath, and drive to safe ground across a bridge of logs.

To be clear, I didn't expect that I'd get stuck.  This is what the road looked like:

After a quick walk for about twenty feet, to make sure it was safe, I started to drive down it.  It was quite solid.  The temperature was slightly below freezing, so the road was actually frozen.  Or so I thought.  There was a slight downhill grade as I was driving down this spur.  After about 200 feet, I got a bad feeling, and decided to back up.  This is where things went badly.  As soon as I tried to reverse, the truck suddenly broke through the frozen upper layer, and into soft sandy muck underneath.  I immediately stopped moving, to assess the situation.  The very worst thing that you can do when you first get stuck is to spin your wheels, and dig your truck in a lot more deeply.

After a visual assessment, I decided that I'd only dig myself in if I kept trying to back out, up the shallow grade.  But I thought it looked like I could probably go forward, and get the truck wheels back "up" onto solid ground.  I gave it a shot, and was successful.  The truck was no longer "stuck" per se.  I just couldn't back out of that road.  I walked ahead to see if there was a turnaround point.  Unfortunately, when I went a few hundred meters further down the road, around a corner, it turned into soup.  There was no way that I'd be able to turn around anywhere on the road, because it was all too narrow.  And if I went further down to the soupy section, the truck would probably be stuck there until next spring.  I knew that my only option was to somehow back out of there, but that wasn't possible with the large ruts in the road.

Here's where I got stuck when I first started to back up:

 

Luckily, that's where I was able to move forward so my truck was at least sitting on the road.  The ruts that you see up ahead (at the top of the photo) came later, the following morning, after I did some strategic manoeuvring.

So let's take a look at what the truck looked like the next morning, before I started to lay down very much of my corduroy road:

I guess that I didn't take a good photo of the front left wheel, but after I had done some manoeuvring in the morning, it was in a bit of a dip, while the other three wheels were pretty good.

My first task was to get all four wheels up onto something solid, above the road surface.  Corduroy refers to a series of logs or sticks or planks which are more solid than the road surface below.  The pressure of the wheels puts pressure downward on the corduroy, but that pressure is then distributed and spread out throughout all of the piece of wood, instead of solely on the ground directly under the tire.  A corduroy road is a great solution for getting through some really muddy areas.  Heavy equipment often builds corduroy bridges in really swampy areas or ephemeral stream areas.

Most of the wood that I was going to use was about six inches in diameter, so I knew that it would be hard for the truck to climb up onto these slippery logs without tire chains.  I knew that I had to use very small pieces (about two inch diameter) at the start, to allow the wheels to "ramp up" to climbing onto the bigger wood.

 

 

As you can see, my goal was to move forward up onto the small pieces, and then climb onto larger logs, as the first step of getting the truck up high enough off the muddy road surface, before building the proper log corduroy road.  Oh wait, here's a photo of that front left wheel, the one that was the biggest problem.  As long as I could drive up onto the wood here, the wheel (and the rest of the truck) will climb up higher, and there will be a lot more clearance under the rest of the truck.

Let's give it a shot, and see if I can get onto the good logs:

Ok, that's a relief.  Things are looking a lot better now, and all four wheels are on solid wood.  At this point, I need to build a complete corduroy road under the truck, and extending behind the truck.

Great, I'm feeling optimistic.  Now at this point, I know that I need to go backwards about 80 feet to get onto solid ground.  With the logs being about six inch diameter on average, that's 160 logs required to make it to safe ground.  And actually, since I was cutting five foot logs to make it easier to bring them to the truck (I was pulling them off a block a few hundred meters away), I'd need twice as many, so 320 more logs.  It looked like this was going to take all day.

But wait!  I don't need 320 logs.  As long as I have about six feet of logs behind the truck, I can back up five feet, get out, and move the five feet of logs from the front of the truck, and carry them around to the back, and just keep doing this repeatedly, getting five feet closer to safety every ten minutes.  Eventually, I'd have the truck on solid ground again.

Sometimes, when you're working alone in the bush, you have to be especially resourceful.  But with a lot of patience and thinking, there's almost always a chance to solve the problem and drive away.

Tree Planter Training, Learning How To Plant

This post is a follow-up to my pre-season overview post, which talked about the first half of my online tree planter training program.

In 2005, I put an initial series of tree planter training videos online.  Those video were getting thousands of views every year, but they were very low quality.  YouTube was still in its infancy, and digital video resolutions & frame-rates were very limited.  In 2012, I started the project over again from scratch, and by 2017 I was happy with the quality of the content.  From 2019 onward, I'll be updating those videos every year at a quality level that is suitable for sharing with our entire industry.

My training series consists of a total of twenty modules.  The first six videos are meant to be watched a couple months before the season starts, by people who are potentially interested in applying for a job as a planter.  Those videos are designed to let you know what you're getting yourself into if you decide to spend a summer in the bush.  You can find them in the link at the top of this post.

The focus of the last fourteen videos (the ones covered in this post) is more specifically related to the process of understanding the characteristics of trees, learning how to actually plant them, meeting quality & density expectations, what to expect from the natural environment, and all the other "hands-on" stuff that you'll be expected to know as soon as you strap your bags on.  Although this series was produced in British Columbia & Alberta, most of the information is also highly relevant to planting in other Canadian provinces (except maybe for the procedures for assessing quality & density).
 

The content in these videos is not targeted solely at inexperienced job applicants.  I'm 100% confident that all current experienced planters will find things in these videos that they didn't know.  You may wonder why I feel bold enough to make this claim?  Simple: because I learned hundreds of new things myself while putting all of this training material together.

These fourteen videos are about five hours in total length, so you'll need to set aside an entire afternoon or evening to watch them.  I'd suggest that you watch them with a pen and paper, so you can make notes about questions that you can ask recruiters or crew bosses at the companies that you apply to.  You should also bookmark this post, because you may want to come back and watch some of these videos more than once.  If you watch them well in advance of the season and this is your first year, you'll probably want to watch them as a refresher just a day or two before you hit the field.  Several companies are screening these as start-up training material when you first arrive to your new job.

There is a print version of this information, available on Amazon.  The book is called Step By Step, A Tree Planter's Handbook.  The book actually contains FAR more information than these videos do.  Ultimately, if you get a job as a tree planter, I'd highly recommend that you buy a copy of Step By Step.  More than a dozen major tree planting companies are using it as the basis for their training framework, and they'll probably tell you that you have to buy a copy anyway.  Get ahead of the curve, because there is an incredible amount of information in the book.  Here's more information:

replant.ca/stepbystep

Without further ado, here are the last fourteen videos in the training series.  I hope you find them to be useful.




Map Reading and GPS Systems
Contents:  GPS systems, other map features, understanding scales, geo-referenced digital maps, always know where you are.







Nature & the Environment
Contents:  Weather, determining direction from the sun, plants, animals, birds.








Basic Silviculture Knowledge
Contents:  Stocking standards, basic seedling physiology, tree structure, shade tolerance, environmental factors affecting growth, basic soils & planting media, seasons.







Stock Handling
Contents:  On-site seedling storage, handling seedling boxes, correct handling of seedlings and bundles.







Common BC Conifers
Contents:  Pine, spruce, fir, and other important species.







Planning Reforestation Activities
Contents:  The Pre-Work conference, the planting prescription, potential non-planting components, block boundaries, mixing species.







Planting Equipment
Contents:  Planting bags, your shovel, miscellaneous planting equipment, demonstration, non-planting gear.







Planting A Seedling
Contents:  Selecting the best microsite, microsite preparation, opening the hole & grabbing the seedling, planting the tree & closing the hole, planting demonstration.







Meeting Quality Requirements
Contents:  FS 704 system overview, throwing plots, specific faults, damage to seedlings, microsite selection, planting quality.







Spacing, Density, & Excess
Contents:  What's in a plot, plotted versus planted density, target spacing and minimum spacing, excess, missed spots (a quality fault), penalties.








Site Preparation
Contents:  Untreated (raw) ground, trenching, mounding, scrapes, windrows, drag scarification, chemical scarification, prescribed burning, selective harvesting, assessing a block.








Maximizing Productivity
Contents:  Staying organized, efficient planting techniques, efficient work strategies, staying focused.








Behaviours & Attitudes
Contents:  Maintaining the health of the ecosystem, responsible behaviour, safe behaviour, respectful behaviour, treatment of co-workers, stashing.








Wrap-Up
Contents:  Field practice, career options, final advice.





Here are some additional links and resources that might be of interest to potential planters:

Tendonitis Resources from Total Physio:  replant.ca/tendonitis
"Fit To Plant" from Selkirk College:  replant.ca/fittoplant

Getting a Job:  replant.ca/jobs
Photo Galleries:  replant.ca/photos
Planting Books:  replant.ca/books
Message Board:  replant.ca/phpBB3
Instagram:  instagram.com/replant.ca


Regardless of whether you're a first-time or experienced planter, if you're applying for work at a new company, use the following list of questions to help determine if that employer would be a good fit:
 www.replant.ca/docs/Questions_To_Ask_A_Potential_Employer.pdf

You may wonder why I'm offering all of these videos for free?  You may think, "what does he want in return?"  Well, that's a good question, because I actually DO want something in return:  I want you all to share this with as many other potential planters as you can.  Make sure they have the opportunity to get a full understanding of what they're getting themselves into, BEFORE they put their first tree in the ground.  If someone isn't suited for tree planting, it's much better that they "quit" before they start, instead of three or four days into the season.

Please share!

- Jonathan "Scooter" Clark 
www.Replant.ca
www.jonathanclark.ca
www.replant-environmental.ca