State Of The Industry, Fall 2022 (Tree Planting in Western Canada)

“Conflicting Economic Data.”  That seems to be the current theme of Canada’s financial reality.  And the same phrase may perfectly describe the situation that western Canada’s planting industry currently finds itself in.  Bear with me for couple paragraphs of economic commentary, before I go more directly into the outlook for the 2023 planting season.  Economic analysis matters, because I believe that a major recession is coming our way like an oncoming freight train.

Around the globe, inflation is running rampant.  It doesn’t really matter how you define inflation, because all indicators are on the rise:  Food, fuel, other energy, consumer goods, services, etc.  Economists could argue for weeks about the current reasons for inflation, but the basic pressures are heavily rooted in energy supply shocks and a couple years of barely-restrained printing of money by various nations’ central banks (mostly to support global economies during Covid).  The current consumer price index inflation numbers are running at slightly over 7% annually in Canada.  As a result, the Bank of Canada has been pushing up the interbank lending rate, which causes banks to increase their prime rates and all other interest rates.

Higher interest rates generally cause people to pay down debt, rather than spending their earnings on fun things.  Therefore, the goal of higher interest rates is to cut down on consumer spending, which reduces demand for goods and services.  In turn, reduced demand normally puts downward pressure on prices for goods and services.  But higher interest rates also hurt a lot of people, because most of Canada’s population has mortgages, credit cards, and/or loans of various types.  We’re getting attacked from both sides, paying more at the pump, more at the grocery store, more for other goods and services, AND dealing with higher interest rates on top of that.  Sure, the higher interest rates will eventually stop prices from rising so quickly, but as I mentioned earlier, I believe that we’re in for a lot of short-term pain over the next 12-24 months.

In terms of wages, the economy is still quite strong, and there are more job opportunities than there are people to fill them.  The current unemployment rate in Canada is pretty low when compared with historical data.  When unemployment is low, employers need to compete harder to attract employees, so wages go up.  Although there are various ways of measuring this, it is likely safe to say that by year-end, wages in Canada will have increased by at least four percent compared to last year.  Unfortunately, a four percent increase in your wages doesn’t seem so great when everything that you buy costs ten percent more than it did a year ago.

The planting industry’s economic health varies from year to year according to many factors, but usually the most significant impact depends on the basic supply/demand of planting contracts, ie. how many trees the industry needs to plant each year.  When overall industry numbers go up (as they did a few years ago, after the 2017 and 2018 wildfire seasons in BC), tree prices go up at a company level.  And sometimes this trickles down to a corresponding increase in planter prices.  When industry volumes go down, companies bid aggressively to chase a diminishing amount of work, and prices go down.  We saw that happen these past twelve months.  The “boom & bust” periods are especially visible in public government work, which accounts for roughly 20% of the trees planted in BC each year.  However, work for private clients makes up the other 80% of industry volume.  Private client pricing (mills, logging operations) is more stable than public tenders, because a lot of that work is based upon multi-year agreements between mills and planting contractors who work together year after year.

Going into 2023, industry volumes are decreasing.  In 2022, we think that BC planted about 286 million trees.  The estimate for 2023 is roughly 262 million trees.  Planting contractors are therefore competing for a piece of a smaller pie.  Supply/demand economics dictate that public bid prices would normally decrease during the Viewing Season (for 2023 projects), which is just starting to ramp up.  But a drop in prices is the last thing that we need right now.

Company owners have numerous expense items to worry about.  Fuel has obviously jumped significantly in the past 12 months.  Buying a truck is more expensive.  Truck rental costs are rising significantly right now for 2023.  Prices for parts are higher, and maintenance/repair costs are way up.  For companies that have a Business Line of Credit or Payroll Credit Facility, interest rates are now double what they were six months ago.  Employer contributions on CPP and EI are also increasing, by 4.38% and 5.56% respectively (which of course is compounded if labour costs are increasing).

Food costs are much higher than a year ago.  The kitchen team from my camp did a comparison study of invoice prices from GFS for 2022 vs. 2021, using a basket of approximately thirty commonly purchased items, and the average price increase was 35.5%.  That’s stunning.  The only people that benefit from this are planters who work out of camp-based operations with kitchens, because they are shielded from these food cost increases (except when buying their own food in town on days off).  But these higher food costs are certainly hurting the companies that run camps.

There may be significant other challenges that companies have to navigate.  I’m a bit out-of-the-loop on this right now, but there were rumours of enhanced requirements for on-site dressing stations in 2023, and also for more ETV’s spread throughout the workforce.  Having more first aid gear available is unquestionably a benefit for workers.  But who is going to pay for this?  The workers?  If company owners don’t recognize and budget for these potential costs, and bid accordingly, that’s exactly what might happen.

Commercial regs for flight crew fatigue are changing for small operators in mid-December (large operators had to implement these same changes 24 months earlier).  Although the exact rules are quite complex, a general starting point is that the maximum length of a pilot’s "duty day" is being cut from 14 hours to roughly 12 hours per day (the exact length will vary based on certain criteria).  This means that if a pilot arrives at the hanger to start pre-flight planning at 5am, they have to be home with the machine parked and flight plans closed by 5pm, which of course means that they will have to leave the field worksite earlier than most of us are accustomed to.  The maximum hours of daily "flight hours" is also being cut, to 8 hours per day, although this won’t have significant impact since the machine isn't usually running that many hours in a day (except maybe up in High Level).  However, the minimum length for the "rest period" from night to morning is being raised from 10 hours to 12 hours.  It thus becomes essentially impossible for a pilot to fly trees out to stock up a block in the evening, then to return early the next morning to move crews. 

Going back to the length of duty day, the 12 hour day is a best-case scenario.  The exact regs are very complex, and depend on things such as the number of flights per day (that's the number of start/stop cycles of the machine's engine, not take-offs and landings).  The duty day length will also depend on the start time in the morning.  When a pilot starts especially early in the morning, their duty day becomes shorter.  So for example, a pilot doing seven or fewer flights in a single duty day, whose flight cycles are typically between 30 and 50 minutes duration, can only have 11 hours for duty day if they start at 5:59am or earlier.  Let's say that you need a pilot on site at 7am to start slinging trees before the planters arrive, but the ferry time from the airfield to Staging is 1hr.  The pilot will need to start their duty day with the pre-flight inspection and filing of flight plan no later than 5:30am in order to get in the air by 6am, and even that is optimistic because most rotary wing operators will budget a full hour from start time to being airborne.  Because the official start of the duty day is earlier than 6am, the pilot is now only allowed to have a duty day length of 11 hours.  So that could mean that the duty day runs from 5:30am to 4:30pm.  But since the pilot needs an hour of ferry time after planting to get back to the airport, AND time for post-flight and closing the flight plan, they really need to start flying home at 3pm.  Which means that planters might need to fly out of the block starting at 2:15pm.

One solution would be to run two pilots with each machine, to give planters a longer day, but helicopter companies would be reluctant to do this because it would double their labour costs.  Machine costs would also increase significantly if a helicopter needed to return to the airfield mid-day for a crew swap.  And on top of that, the industry doesn't have enough high-hour qualified pilots to make that scenario to work on a broad basis.

There are slight variations and allowances to these changes for certain situations, and a commercial pilot will have a better understanding.  Some details are available here, but again, the CARS regs are very complex.  The bottom line is that these changes will probably impact almost all planting operations that use helicopters extensively, so Project Managers need to contact their preferred helicopter providers and get a full understanding of these potential changes, before putting together any more heli budgets.  Helicopter use may become increasingly associated with constrained production.

There is also a good chance that minimum wage will jump significantly before next summer.  That’s great for workers in many underpaid industries.  It’s also good for tree planters, because companies that hire first-time workers must pay everyone at least the equivalent of minimum wage (including overtime) if their piece-rate earnings are not sufficient.  Will companies that hire large numbers of first-time planters have the foresight to plan for this possibility, and adjust bid prices upward?  A rising tide floats all boats.

Let’s go back to the lower industry volumes.  Can anything be done about this?  A few years ago, we thought that volumes would be historically strong for the next several years.  Part of that was based on the assumption of strong growth of federal tree planting projects, from programs such as the federal “2 Billion Trees” initiative.  But the 2BT program is struggling to scale up quickly, which isn’t a real surprise.  I’m quite familiar with the program, having acted as a project lead proponent for small projects both this year and last year, but my work (on the east coast) has been with very small numbers of seedlings.  For 2BT to work, big players need to design projects that will result in tens of millions of trees being planted, and there are a lot of challenges associated with designing such a project (especially in figuring out where to plant the trees).

In a perfect world, several of the dozen largest planting contractors would each purposefully plan to scale back operations in 2023 by retiring a camp.  I know of at least one major contractor that has already made a conscious decision to do exactly that.  If several companies planned to downsize this way, there would be less concern about the limited number of trees that are available for 2023.  But wait, why should we expect just the biggest companies to save the day?  If every company (regardless of size) downsized by just 8.3%, then the overall 2023 volume would be appropriate for the slightly smaller planting industry.  In such a scenario, supply-based downward pricing pressure would disappear, and bid prices would undoubtedly jump significantly.  Company owners AND their workforces would benefit.  Our industry is nimble enough to do this, but do company owners have the resolve?  Again, it’s the company owners that are hurting themselves if they don’t understand the need for every company to scale back slightly.

Planters expect wages to increase in 2023.  They know that wages are increasing in just about every other sector, and they know that workers are scarce.  What will happen if bid prices decline this fall, and owners have to tell planters after Christmas that planter prices are staying the same?  How many planters will seek employment elsewhere?  Will planting companies be able to hire enough people to get through 2023?  A lot of companies struggled to get their trees planted last year due to hiring challenges, and million of “spring” trees didn’t get planted until July.  Hiring will likely be even harder this year, considering the general labour market situation, so why risk chasing too many trees?  It’s better for companies to aim to scale back.

What else can planters (and companies) expect from 2023?  Well, from what I’ve seen so far, there are a few challenges to look forward to:

-        Head Protection:  WorkSafe has mandated the use of head protection on ALL understory planting in BC from now on.  While a hardhat may not protect you if an entire tree falls onto you, it could make a difference if you get hit by a dead branch.  Of course, hard hats bring their own separate problems, and planters hate wearing them.  Incidentally, we’re also seeing an increase in expectations for due diligence with more detailed DTA assessments.

-        Wildfire Planting:  There has been a LOT of wildfire restoration work in BC in the past four years.  Probably more than twenty companies have worked in the Elephant Hill fire alone since 2018.  Planting continues there, but so does grass encroachment.  As the grass spreads each year, the difficulty increases.

-        Plastic Ribbon:  The Cariboo-Chilcotin region (ranchland) banned the dropping of plastic flagger this past year, to protect cattle from eating plastic.  The full impact of this change was not felt in 2022, as a lot of multi-year contracts were still in progress.  But several multi-year contracts just ended, and the flagger ban throughout this region will be more ubiquitous in 2023.  Couple this with thicker grass in the burns, and we’re going to see a lot of double plants in 2023.  The industry MUST find a cost-effective supply of biodegradable ribbon soon, or loosen up spacing rules.  There are now a limited number of 500' rolls of corn starch ribbon available from Motion for $2.87 per roll, which is approximately three times the cost of polyethylene plastic flagger.  But if everyone bidding on no-flagger contracts were to add another 1.0 cents per tree to their bid price, that would be enough to purchase one roll of biodegradable flagger for roughly every one box of trees planted.  Bidders can pass the cost of this product on to clients!  We just need to make sure that every bidder factors that cost into their bid prices.  Easier said than done, of course.  Also, that price might eventually come down some, if the industry starts buying the corn starch product in large quantities.

-        Unwrapped Trees:  Again on the theme of saving plastic, more planters may see boxes being shipped this year without bundle wrappers.  It’s a great concept.  Single-use plastic is no good for anyone.  If western Canada plants 400 million trees per year including the prairies, that’s probably 30 million bundle wrappers per year that end up in landfills and occasionally scattered across blocks.  And aside from the plastic, if it takes 5 seconds to unwrap each bundle, that’s costing planters 2.5 million minutes each year.  I’m all for reducing plastic, and I’m quite familiar with planting trays of unwrapped trees on the east coast.  But when planters have to share boxes and each person has to do a count of their share of the box, unwrapped trees become a challenge.  We've also discovered that some nursery packing crews can’t count, resulting in boxes that don't have the correct number of seedlings in them.  When boxes are overfilled, it hurts the nursery, it hurts the planters, and it indirectly hurts the planting companies.  Nobody benefits except the Clients, who get free trees.  Nurseries that are moving in this direction need to implement working quality control systems BEFORE unwrapped trees become more widespread.  Perhaps it would help to tie the bundles with twine?  Or even better, wrap them in a band of light kraft paper or wax paper with a small piece of masking tape to seal the wrapper.  That would continue to protect the plugs better than a box of loose trees, which the forestry clients would prefer.  And it would allow for better monitoring of counts (both on the planter side and the nursery side), while still eliminating plastic wrappers.

-        Vehicle Safety:  I'll cautiously comment that vehicle safety seems to be improving slightly throughout the industry in the past few years.  Yes, I'm aware of some exceptions, and some accidents.  But we're generally seeing more common sense.  I have to give a shout out to ABBA here.  My crews meet a lot of other companies on the road, and this year, ABBA wins my award for the most professional radio use and cautious driving, at least when we worked in the same area back in April/May.  There seems to more of a safety-driven impetus from some Clients recently, a few of whom are asking for GPS trackers and/or dash cams (audio off) in their contractors' vehicles.  These devices probably make some people drive more cautiously, which is good.  A side note:  For anyone working in the Sparks wildfire area in 2023, be careful.  Some of those roads are going to be pretty sketchy when they're wet.

-        Access:  I’ll focus again on the regions where wildfire planting has been happening for the past few years.  It’s safe to say that in those regions, the low-hanging fruit has been plucked.  Each year, the blocks become more difficult to access.  Helicopter work is becoming more common.  And that brings up a good point.  What happens if someone gets hurt on a block where it’s impossible to extract a seriously injured patient without a helicopter?  Do companies have helicopters on standby for emergency situations such as this?  This is a good time to put in a plug for the services of the TEAAM helicopter recovery service for remote workers.

In terms of fire activity, as of October 17th there were still 202 active wildfires burning in BC.  That's crazy.  I've never seen so much active smoke during a Viewing Season.  Many of these fires will impact our industry in 2024 and beyond.

This year’s Viewing Season is really just getting under way in earnest in the past two weeks, and companies are on the edge of their seat about what will happen.  Will we see lower prices, due to decreased industry volumes?  Will we see higher prices, due to a recognition of how inflation is significantly affecting the cost of running a company?  We’re in the middle of an economic tug-of-war.  Now you see why I started off with the phrase, “Conflicting economic data.”  If company owners are smart, most of them will downsize slightly.  If that happens, bid prices will increase this year DESPITE the lower industry volumes, and companies will be able to react appropriately to general wage and inflation trends.

Considering what we had to deal with for the last three years, it seems crazy to say that 2023 may be the most challenging year that the industry has seen in decades.  But this time, the challenge will be economic rather than a global health pandemic.  Let’s hope, in the coming weeks, that company owners will bid appropriately …

 

Jonathan “Scooter” Clark 

www.replant.ca

 

Comment, December 15th - Many companies chased volume, and bid prices are down overall (sometimes significantly) from the levels of two years ago.  I'll put together a full report by the time the WFCA Conference happens at the end of January, and I'll link that here.

 

 

 

Links to Previous "State Of The Industry" Posts:

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

 

The Flagging Tapes, Vol. 1

Several months ago, I put out a call for musicians to participate in an album of tree planting themed music.  The goal was to make this music available as a free download for the entire tree planting community.  A number of artists responded, and the album is available now (the download links are in the middle of this post).  The album is called "The Flagging Tapes, Vol. 1"

Track Listing

01. Yankee Yanni & the Lowballing Jazz Band - Pockets Full of Cream.
02.  B Cruisey - Similkameen Rises.
03.  Claire Kuzmyk - This Life.
04.  New Red River Rebellion - Ride On Rooster (In Memory of Eric Rousseau).
05.  Sydney Sandia - Planto Ranto.
06.  Tommy Pelletier - Cigs & Scotch.
07.  Nigel Eberding - Treeplanting Song.
08.  Jennifer Noble - The Happy Planter.
09.  Stephane Levesque - Shoulder.
10.  Shnarby Mess - Tree Zombie Monkey.
11.  Lars Zergun - Gravediggerz.


Planters may recognize three or four of these songs which have been shared widely in the past.  Most of the other songs in this compilation are being released widely for the first time here.


Free Download

To download these songs, there are three choices:  Dropbox, RAR Archives, or SoundCloud.

To download from Dropbox:
1.  Go to my public Dropbox folder:  www.replant.ca/dropbox
2.  Go into the "Canadian Reforestation" folder.
3.  Go into the "Planting Music" sub-folder.
4.  Go into the sub-folder called "The Flagging Tapes, vol 1".
5.  You can either pick MP3's to download (good quality 320 kbps, smaller file size) or WAV files (uncompressed audio, slightly higher quality, larger files).

If you're able to uncompress RAR archives, either of these downloads would be a slightly faster way to grab the entire compilation:

www.replant.ca/music/The_Flagging_Tapes_vol_1_full_album_MP3_format.rar

www.replant.ca/music/The_Flagging_Tapes_vol_1_full_album_WAV_format.rar

Finally, to download individual songs from SoundCloud, click on the download arrows on any of the SoundCloud widgets throughout the rest of this page.



Liner Notes

Here's some detailed information about each of the tracks on the compilation, and the artists behind them:


Song:  Pockets Full Of Cream
Artist:  Yankee Yanni & the Lowballing Jazz Band

About the Song: 'Pockets Full of Cream' was recorded in Toronto on January 12, 2020. It was played three times; this is take 2.

About the Artist:  Yankee Yanni enjoys coffee, prime numbers, and wearing appropriate PPE. He planted his first tree at age 4, and his second at age 19. The Lowballing Jazz Band can be both assembled and disassembled in a matter of minutes, making them the perfect choice for your morning meeting entertainment, or for long cache breaks in the shade.




 
Song:  Similkameen Rises
Artist:  B Cruisey




 
Song:  This Life
Artist:  Claire Kuzmyk





Song:  Ride On Rooster (In Memory of Eric Rousseau)
Artist:  New Red River Rebellion

About the Artists:  Brothers Brian and Clayton Lorraine, the two founding members of Winnipeg roots rock band New Red River Rebellion, have planted trees all over British Columbia.  Their careers have spanned twelve and fifteen seasons respectively.

About the Song:  Eric 'Rooster' Rousseau was a true legend among the many characters encountered during all our years of treeplanting.  We were lucky to work with Rooster for several seasons around Merritt and Squamish, along with a crew of folks as tight knit as family.  It was a special period of our treeplanting careers, experiencing this family-like atmosphere.  A renowned skier and instructor at Whistler in the off season, Rooster was a tree runner extraordinaire, mechanic, and the guy who made everyone on the crew feel connected.  He was the last one to bed after night-off shenanigans, and the first one up in the morning, cleaning up the party mess.  We received news of Rooster’s passing in a tragic falling accident while we were planting on the north Island in the Fall of 2011.  This song came from a riff that we sat jamming over and over with Rooster, one hazy hangover day-off afternoon, while sipping white wine and basking in the sun with carefree smiles.

Website:  http://www.newredriverrebellion.com

About Eric Rousseau:  http://www.replant.ca/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=65741




 
Song:  Planto Ranto
Artist:  Sydney Sandia

From the Artist:  I began writing this song in my first season, knee deep in Alberta sludge and my first heartbreak. The following year, I returned to the bush lighter and happier and decided it was only fair that the song, which had become my personal planting earworm, deserved an equally upbeat final touch. As planting goes, the song has its up and downs; deceptive revelations of joy followed quickly with epiphanies of deep loneliness. Now a couple of seasons later, I wonder if my song will ever truly be finished. Planting has transformed my outlook on the world completely... each time I play this song around a raging box fire I am reminded of the heartbroken little girl I was when I stepped off the greyhound at a motel in Williams Lake that first season, and I stand a little taller as the person I have become.





Song:  Cigs & Scotch
Artist:  Tommy Pelletier

About the Song:  Written in 2019.  Copyright 2019, Tommy Pelletier.

From the Artist:  I planted my first year in ontario in 2014, did BC interior and alberta the three years after, became a foreman on the last year. Did picking work around the seasons and went to australia in 2017. Had the broken travel guitar the whole time. Fucked my wrist long-term on the 3rd season but when I ended up in Australia after the cherries my long-time lover and travel partner and I split. I didn't know what the hell to do. So when someone shouted "tree-planting!" I just went for it. I left tasmania and crossed the country south to north (3K drive, in the desert and bush roads, alone). When I managed to get to Kyogle the drought made it so the season lasted two days, but the company I was with (Outland Australia) paid my gas to cross the country again and go back south (another 3K kilometres, alone in the desert, with the friends gone back home, and dead sheeps and sand out the window. That's when cigs and scotch came to be, 'cause at that moment that was all life was. Just driving , not even coming across a car for hours, no phone signal and parking wherever to sleep in the driver seat. After another year there I was offered a job back home (quebec) and my now totally wrecked wrist / shoulder/elbow urged me to take it. I came back the same week the inscriptions to our local amateur music competition was on (Trois-Pistole en chanson). I went to the auditions just for laughs, and they somehow made me sing 'till I was in the 2019 finals even tough I didn't know how to sing, use a microphone and could only do minimal strumming 'cause wrist mobility and stuff. I am currently working on a facebook page ( Tom Malaavy, and can be found on youtube under "Tommy Pelletier with the songs "violon" and " la pire maison du monde connu". I've got around 40 songs written and played trough the years, and right now the main objective is to record it all in the little home studio. It should all come together eventually. Thanks all for reading, watching, encouraging fuckers like me who don't know what they're doing but try their best, 'cause campfires aren't the same if no one does it.  P.S. on the text -The Scotch was Grantz and the cigs were waaay to expensive (like 2$ each). And the car was a 1996 pathfinder.

Artist Links:  Facebook and Youtube





Song:  Treeplanting Song
Artist:  Nigel Eberding




 
Song:  The Happy Planter
Artist:  Jennifer Noble

From the Artist:  I wrote this song to entertain myself as I trudged between plots as a checker, first for the BC Forest Service and later for a local sawmill.  Silviculture surveys and cone-picking contracts sent me all around the magnificent  Cariboo-Chilcotin of BC.   I’m 74 now, long retired from my circuitous job history, but springtime still gives me an itchy feeling that I should be greasing my boots and finding my hipchain.  Most of all I miss interacting with the planters, their dreams, their stories and the adventurous ruggedness that kept bringing them back.




 
Song:  Shoulder
Artist:  Stephane Levesque

About the Song:  Written in November 2019, Copyright 2019 Stephane Levesque.

About the Artist:  Stephane is originally from Sainte-Flavie, Quebec.  He now lives in Masset, Haida Gwaii, BC.  Stephane has been feeding treeplanters since 1998.




 
Song:  Tree Zombie Monkey
Artist:  Shnarby Mess





Song:  Gravediggerz
Artist:  Lars Zergun

Artist Page:  King Kong Reforestation



 

Videos

A few of these tracks have videos associated with them.  If anyone knows about other videos for these songs, let me know so I can include them here.

Other Tree Planting Albums

Hi & Ho, We Plant Trees:  www.replant.ca/hiandho

Planters' Punch:  www.replant.ca/planterspunch

I should also point out that I'd like to do this again in the winter of 2023-2024, with a whole new set of songs.  Musicians, please feel to contact me at jonathan.scooter.clark@gmail.com if you'd like to get involved.

Planters' Punch - Tree Planting Album

I just realized that although I shared the music from Planters' Punch several years ago (on Replant.ca), I didn't really give any background history about the album.

This music was recorded by various planters, and the CD was released at some point in the 1990's (possibly 1997).  I can't remember which year since I left my copy of the CD out in Prince George.  Anyway, Michael Mloszewski gave it to me years ago and suggested that it should be shared with a wider audience of planters and friends.  Michael has passed away since then, but you can Click Here for more information about him.

I've uploaded each of the tracks individually and put them into separate threads in the Music section of the Replant forums.  An even easier way to download them would be this:
1.  Go to my public Dropbox folder:  www.replant.ca/dropbox
2.  Go into the "Canadian Reforestation" folder.
3.  Go into the "Planting Music" sub-folder.
4.  Go into the "Planters' Punch" sub-folder.
5.  You can either pick MP3's to download (good quality 320 kbps, smaller file size) or FLAC files (uncompressed audio, larger files).

If you're able to uncompress RAR archives, either of these downloads would be a slightly faster way to grab the entire compilation:

www.replant.ca/music/Planters'_Punch_full_album_flac_format.rar

www.replant.ca/music/Planters'_Punch_full_album_mp3_format.rar

Finally, here are the links to all the tracks on Soundcloud.  These are the MP3 versions, and you can download the songs individually from these Soundcloud links (as an alternative to going to my public Dropbox folder).









































To discover other free tree-planting themed music, visit:

www.replant.ca/music

How Many Trees are Planted in Canada Each Year?

I've been curious to know approximately how many trees are planted in Canada each year.  Apparently, I'm not the only one, since several other people have asked me this same question over the past month.  I'm going to try to come up with a very rough guess here, based upon what little information I can find, coupled with some semi-educated assumptions.  If anyone has any access to official data for any of the provinces, please let me know so I can update this post!

British Columbia
This one is easiest, since the Western Forestry Contractors' Association pays close attention to these numbers, and publishes charts frequently.  Their best guess for 2020 planting in BC is approximately 308 million trees.  They base their information upon a survey of sowing requests at various forest nurseries.
Source:  https://wfca.ca/2019/09/western-forestry-contractors-association-rumour-mill-roundupdate-volume-19-issue-13/

Alberta
I have 2016 data for Alberta.  That year, the province planted 57,605 Ha of the 83,786 Ha harvested (the rest was left for natural regeneration).  Assuming an average planting density of 1500 stems/Ha, which is purely a guess, I estimate approximately 86 million trees.

Saskatchewan
I have 2016 data for Saskatchewan.  That year, the province harvested 17,701 Ha.  Let's assume that they planted half of that amount, and that the average planting density was 1500 stems/Ha.  Those assumptions may be quite inaccurate, but the number of trees in Saskatchewan doesn't significantly affect the national total.  I estimate approximately 13 million trees.  Lots of room for growth in the northern boreal.

Manitoba
I have 2016 data for Manitoba, which is very similar to Saskatchewan in limitation.  Manitoba harvested 10,686 Ha in 2016, so if we again estimate that half of that area was replanted, at a density of 1500 stems/Ha, we have another 8 million trees.

Ontario
In 2016, Ontario planted 67,369 Ha of land (57% of the 117,230 Ha harvested).  If we estimate a planting density of 1500 stems/Ha, that works out to approximately 101 million trees.  Incidentally, Ontario is the only province that also seeds significant areas.  In 2016, about eleven thousand hectares were seeded throughout the province (this figure is not included in the planting totals).

Quebec
I have 2016 data for Quebec.  Quebec harvested 205,859 Ha and planted 36% of that (73,344 ha).  Incidentally, Quebec is the only province that harvests a greater land base annually than BC.  Let's again assume an average planting density of 1800 stems/Ha.  I based this on feedback from several long-term Quebec planters.  That gives us about 132 million trees planted annually in Quebec.

The Atlantic Provinces
There's a surprising amount of planting in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.  Not as much in Newfoundland, and practically none in Prince Edward Island.  It's hard to tell how much planting actually takes place, because a very large percentage of blocks in the Atlantic provinces are left for natural regen.  Despite this, I know that several hundred planters work in the very fragmented industry each year.  Perhaps the best indicator would be to get a census on total sowing at all the forest nurseries in those provinces.  I'm going to have to guess for now, in lieu of any sort of reasonable data, and say that 40 million trees are planted each year in these four provinces combined.  I did find that New Brunswick planted 17,625 Ha in 2016, Nova Scotia planted 5,024 Ha in 2016, PEI planted 317 Ha, and Newfoundland planted 3,721 Ha, for a four-province total of 22,167 hectares.
Source:  https://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/statsprofile


Totals:
308m  British Columbia
  86m  Alberta
  13m  Saskatchewan
    8m  Manitoba
101m  Ontario
132m  Quebec
  40m  Atlantic Provinces
688m  Canada-Wide

Well there you have it.  There are probably several inaccurate numbers in there, but hopefully the mistakes balance each other out to some extent so that the overall total is reasonably close.

Incidentally, I found data from Natural Resources Canada which states that 410,221 Ha were planted in 2016, Canada-wide.  Too bad that they didn't give the number of trees.  Anyway, if our estimate of 688 million trees is correct, then that would suggest that the average planting density across the country is approximately 1677 stems/Ha.


- Jonathan Clark
www.replant-environmental.ca

Analyzing the Liberal Promise to Plant 2 Billion Trees

With the recent federal election results giving the Liberal party a win, many tree planters' minds turned to that party's election promise to ensure that Canada plants 2 billion trees in the next ten years.  Let's try to decide if that's possible, and also try to estimate how many trees are currently planted in Canada each year.

First, let's break it down into an annual number.  Two billion trees over ten years is 200 million trees per year.  Now I don't think that we're going to see 200 million extra trees flooding the market next year.  The planting industry isn't prepared for that, and the forest nurseries across the country might not even have that much spare capacity right now.  The forest nurseries in western Canada are probably operating very close to capacity, and I don't know if the nurseries elsewhere in Canada are in the same situation.  Also, if the federal government is concerned about budgets, they will probably not front-load that spending commitment.  IF they follow through on their promise, they would probably prefer to spend small amounts in the first five or six years, and then reluctantly ramp up their financial commitments near the end of that 10-year period.  That's what politicians like to do.  Of course, if they do their research, they'll learn that a gradual but consistent ramp-up would be the best way to achieve their goals in light of labour and growing constraints from industry.

Due to the absence of details associated with this election promise, it's not inappropriate to ask, "What did they mean by this?"  Are they saying they will plant an average of 200 million per year, or are they saying they will plant an extra 200 million per year on top of what is already being planted?  I can answer that, based upon simple logic.  Two hundred million trees per year sounds like a big number.  It isn't.  Right now, the province of BC is expected to plant slightly over 300 million trees in 2020.  In that context, we've answered our first question:  Trudeau has implied (whether intentionally or not) that these two billion trees are extra trees above what is already happening.  Otherwise, he's promising a number that would be a reduction from current levels.

I've been trying to figure out what the biggest challenges with this promise will be.  Off the top of my head, I can think of three, and I've already mentioned two of them.  Three challenges will be labour supply, growing capacity, and where to put the trees.

Labour Supply shouldn't be a problem.  It's true that a lot of people don't really want to plant trees once they find out what is involved, because the work is quite physically and mentally demanding.  But to plant an extra 200 million trees per year would require perhaps only another four thousand seasonal (summer) tree planters, if those planters average about fifty thousand trees apiece per summer.  Recruiting that many people won't be easy, but if the wages are fair, it's an achievable goal.  And for any planters who think that an average of 50,000 trees per planter per season is low, remember that I'm taking attrition into account (people quitting after a week) and also considering that some of the land may be more difficult than what most planters are currently accustomed to working on.

Growing Capacity at forest nurseries would likely be a problem if the industry ramped up to 200 million in year one.  However, that's not likely to be the case.  The forest nursery industry on Canada's west coast has dealt with growing pains (pardon the pun) for the past two years.  The record-breaking wildfire years in 2017 and 2018 made many nursery owners realize that they needed to build more greenhouse space, because otherwise, the industry wouldn't be able to grow enough trees to meet demand.  And they did expand to meet needs for the 2020 season.  Going forward, with 24 months' notice, the national forest nursery industry will be able to accommodate demand.

Finally, Where are the trees going to be planted?  There's a big difference between reforestation (replanting logged areas) versus afforestation (planting vacant land, such as old pasture land).  A lot of reforestation needs are already being taken care of by the existing patchwork of regulations in various provinces.  In those cases, either provincial governments or private industry (and public mills) are taking care of reforesting the recently logged areas.  The main opportunity then will probably come from planting three specific types of land:  forests burned by wildfire, forests ravaged by insects or diseases, and vacant land or unused farm/pasture land.  To be clear, the first two of these three options are just additional types of reforestation, even though they aim at post-disaster targets instead of post-harvest activities.

I've been told that the estimated budget for these two billion trees is three billion dollars.  If that's the case, then that works out to $1.50 per tree.  Any tree planters who are reading this probably just had their eyes light up!  But settle down, that's not the windfall that it sounds like.  Many tree planting companies are accustomed to receiving perhaps 40 to 75 cents to plant each tree, and they manage to survive.  But remember that the federal budget of perhaps $1.50 per tree will also have to cover land acquisition costs (probably averaging over 60-80 cents per tree, if the government starts buying land), seedling costs, compliance costs, and administration costs.  The government could also pay for planting on private properties (for example, by funding regional woodlot owners' associations), but then there is no guarantee that the trees won't just be cut down in 50-60 years.  If we're going to plant two billion trees to help fight climate change, we can't just cut them down in a few decades.  They need to be protected by law.

There may be some non-planters who are reading this, who think that this is a good time to start a tree planting company.  If that's the case, I would urge extreme caution.  The planting industry is much more complex than it appears on the surface.  If you're reading this post and think that you should start a planting company, and you don't have prior experience as a seasonal post-harvest tree planter in Canada, I would highly, highly recommend that you try tree planting for a few seasons to give yourself a chance to start to understand the industry.  Otherwise, you're going to lose your shirt (speaking in a financial sense).  Having said that, there may be opportunities for many experienced planters to start their own small companies over the next several years.  The greatest opportunities for these individuals will probably be in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec.  BC and Alberta are quite saturated with a mature planting industry.

Incidentally, my estimate of how many trees are planted in Canada each year is 666 million.  Check out this blog post to find out how I arrived at that number.

- Jonathan Clark
www.replant-environmental.ca

The Relationship between Target Density and Minimum Spacing

If you're a forester right now, you're probably trying to figure out how to manage your budget, considering that planting prices are trending back (somewhat) to be on par with their inflation-adjusted historical numbers from the 1990's and early 2000's.  Some foresters (mostly in the private sector) are cutting back slightly on volumes, others are dropping helicopter blocks from their programs, and some are eliminating fertilizer packs (tea-bags).

I'd like to throw out a suggestion that may be useful for a few foresters:  Take a close look at your planting specs.  To be clear, I'm not saying, "Let us plant shitty trees."

Instead, I'd like to take a close look at the science and math behind certain specs, specifically as they relate to spacing/density/excess.  I'm going to refer to the FS 704 system which is used by BC government offices, and also used by many private mills throughout the province and in Alberta.

One of the goals when the FS 704 was designed was to build in a "spacing tolerance" to allow the planter some leeway in picking the best microsite, or the best spot to plant a tree.  Yes, hitting a specific target density within a block is important, but the designers of the 704 system didn't want to be so rigid that planters would simply plant a tree at the perfect spacing every time, with no regard for how suitable that microsite was for the tree.  If there was no spacing tolerance, the benefits of hitting density would be outweighed by decreased yields and increased mortality from trees being planted in poor spots.  A planter might plant a tree in a pile of sticks or needles or chunky red rot, instead of planting in a microsite only 12 inches away that had appropriate soils.

In general, depending on the region, spacing tolerances usually allow for about a meter of tolerance.  For example, if the target spacing is 2.7m between each tree (thinking in both the X/Y axis, or both "ahead" and "laterally") then a simple generalization is that a tree is considered to be good if the tree is somewhere between 1.7m and 3.7m away from all of the other trees around it.  You don't want all of them to be only 1.7m away from the others, or all of them to be 3.7m away from the others; you want a healthy mix of some closer and some further, so the overall average spacing still balances out to be pretty close to the target (2.7m in this example).  However, this variability or spacing tolerance allows the planters to feel more comfortable in looking for the best microsites for the trees, without having to worry too much that they're going to get faulted for "tree too close" or "missed spot" penalties.  Having a spacing tolerance is ultimately what's best for the plantation, as long as the planters utilize the tolerance to hit the best microsites for the trees.

We've seen an increase over the past several years in the amount of FFT (Forests For Tomorrow) funding on reforestation contracts in BC, mainly due to wildfire restoration.  Traditionally, the average target spacing on BCTS and MOF contracts within British Columbia was usually in the range of 1400-1600 stems/Ha (except on the coast).  However, a lot of FFT funding is attached to projects and blocks where the target spacing has climbed to 2000 stems/Ha or even more.  And I'm not disagreeing with this change.  A lot of the wildfire damage has come in pine stands, for multiple reasons (pine is more dominant on dried ground, mountain pine beetle has killed and dried a lot of standing pine, etc.).  Pine is a species which grows better at higher densities.  If you're going to plant one stand at 2400 stems/Ha and another at 1600 stems/Ha, and you have pine for one stand and spruce/fir for the other, you're almost certainly going to plant the pine in the high density stand.

The problem is that while densities have frequently increased from 1600 stems/Ha to 2000 stems/Ha, there hasn't always been a corresponding drop in "minimum acceptable inter-tree distances" (MITD), more casually known as "minimums."  The minimum spacing on 1600 stems was usually 2.0m between trees.  Unfortunately, the minimums on some 2000 stem target densities are still set at 2.0m.

To be clear, for non-foresters who are reading this, a 2.0m minimum means that if you plant two trees and they're 2.1m apart, that's acceptable.  If they're 2.0m apart, that's acceptable.  If they're less than 2.0m apart, one of the two trees gets faulted as a "too close" tree, which gets counted as a quality fault under the FS 704 system, and a reduction in the assessed quality of the block means a reduction in payment to the planting company.

Let's look at the TARGET spacing distances that are required to meet various densities:

Under a target density of 1600 stems/Ha, all trees are supposed to be 2.7 meters apart (on average).  This means that with a 2.0m minimum, the planter has at least 70 centimeters (on the close side) to work with.  There's also a tolerance on the "further apart" side, but the method of calculating that exact distance is complex (it relates to "missed spot" assessments).  Let's just focus on the close side.  Under a target density of 1400 stems/Ha, the trees need to be about 2.9m apart, which means that the spacing tolerance before being assessed as "too close" has increased to 90 centimeters.

Let me switch focus for a moment here, and go back to the goal of hitting the best possible microsites for the trees.  On some planting contracts, foresters ask for "obstacle planting" to come into play.  This approach asks the planters to plant seedlings beside an "obstacle" to maximize growth and/or survival.  Typically, logs and stumps are viewed as excellent obstacles (unless root diseases in stumps is a consideration).  A planter can even consider a big rock to count as an obstacle if there are no stumps or logs that are close enough.  There are different reasons why obstacle planting is useful.  In cattle country, a cow is less likely to step on a seedling if it is very close to a stump or log.  In the Alberta foothills of the Rocky Mountains, a tree planted on the correct side of an obstacle is possibly protected from chinook winter winds that lead to exposure and desiccation (snow is a good insulating blanket in the winter).  Anywhere that extreme heat is a problem, a tree planted on the northeast side of an obstacle is usually protected from the hottest afternoon sun, at least for the first couple years.  Expect obstacle planting to be useful then in both cattle country and in the most southern regions of Alberta and BC.  The relative "direction" of the obstacle (in relation to the microsite for the seedling) is important when weather-related, and unimportant when cattle-related.

If a planter is being asked to seek obstacles, the spacing tolerance comes into play.  Depending on the terrain, there may be anywhere from a few to a dozen "acceptable obstacles" in a plot.  When there are less obstacles than trees, it becomes obvious that not every tree can have an obstacle.  It also becomes obvious that the planter has to think carefully about where to put trees, in order to maximize the use of any obstacles that are available.

Let's say that there are only five useful obstacles in a given "plot" (a section of the block covering 50 square meters).  Without delving deeply into the math, you can multiply the number of obstacles in a plot by 200 to come up with the expected number of obstacles in a full hectare (because 50 square meters is 1/200th of a hectare).  So if you multiply 5 x 200 you get 1000 obstacles per hectare.  You can use the same spacing chart above to see that the obstacles, on average, are about 3.4 meters apart.

If the "perfect spacing" for your next tree puts the tree in a very specific microsite, and you have a 70 cm spacing tolerance away from that spot, what is the chance that you'll be able to utilize a good obstacle if the average spacing between obstacles is 3.4 meters?  You might be close enough to an obstacle to use it, or you might not be.  You'll certainly be able to hit some of the obstacles in your piece, but not all.  The math (and spacing rules) may make it impossible to hit all obstacles.  But a larger spacing tolerance is better than a small one.

Going back to the high planting densities on FFT funded work (usually 2000 stems/Ha), the planters don't have a lot to work with in cases where the minimum has not be adjusted downward.  For 2000 stem density, the average spacing is 2.4m.  If the minimum is 2.0m, the planters only have 40 centimeters to work with.  Look down at the ground (or floor) right now, and imagine that.  If you put an "X" on a specific spot, you have only a little over fifteen inches of flexibility that you can use to move the tree from that "X" and still be within your tolerance.  What's the chance that you'll be able to find an acceptable obstacle in that very small area?

If the MITD does not allow for sufficient spacing tolerance, it leads to planters planting in bad microsites, rather than encouraging good microsites.

My camp planted a BCTS contract last year with target spacing of 2000 stems/Ha, a minimum of 2.0m, and a requirement to try to utilize obstacles.  It was terrible.  The science made it almost impossible for the planters to meet all three requirements simultaneously.  They made a valiant effort.  When I said that 2000 stems/Ha was the priority, they could do it.  When I said that no trees could be closer together than 2.0m, they could do it.  And when I said that they should try to hit obstacles, they did it.  In fact, they could even do any two of those three things simultaneously, with no problems.  But doing all three simultaneously was almost impossible.  My solution was to ask the forester what should be sacrificed.  There wasn't much movement on minimums, and I was told that obstacles were really important, so I said that my only solution would be to tell the planters not to worry much about the density.  I told them to consider obstacles and minimums to be very important.  Although a density of 2000 stems/ha was requested, there were no penalties in the contract for planting a lower density.  However, there were penalties for planting trees too close (B1, a quality fault) or not utilizing the obstacles.  In the end, we ended up having tons of trees left over after we finished planting all the regular blocks on the contract, and we had to scramble to find a number of overflow blocks to accommodate the rest of the trees.  This was a challenge, both for us and for the foresters.  But in the end, it was the inevitable choice.

I see that a lot of contracts this year, in one region in particular, are once again asking for that difficult combination of 2000 density, obstacle planting, and a 2.0m minimum.  That's unfortunate.  I would think that the industry would realize that this is a big mistake, and these specs are very problematic for planters.  And "problematic" leads to higher bid prices.  The problem could be mitigated by reducing the MITD down to 1.6m as acceptable.  Foresters would be more likely to achieve their planned densities, and there would be better utilization of obstacles.  In many other regions, minimum spacing ranges from 1.5m down to as low as 1.0m.

For this year, I've asked my employer to bid especially high on those contracts, because I don't want my camp to work there.  For foresters who are trying to manage their budgets, a bit of flexibility on these specs would lead to more competitive bidding.  In the past, I've really enjoyed working with the foresters in the region that I'm referring to.  But in the end, I have to think about the best interests' of my planters, and seek to work elsewhere.


If you want to follow public bid results on tree planting contracts within British Columbia, visit this link:

www.replant.ca/publicbids

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)