The Coulson Group of Companies

By Paul Pashnik, ManagerForestry News

Forest Stewardship Plans (F.S.P.)

Good news, on January 22, 2008, the District Manager, South Island Forest District approved our amendment to Iisaak Forest Product's Clayoquot FSP. This approval amends in all of TFL54 forest lands and in effect creates a joint Licensee FSP which includes TFL57 managed by Iisaak and TFL54 managed by Ma-Mook Coulson TLF54 Ltd. A big thanks to Ron Sorensen for all the hard work he undertook in writing the amendment and conducting the public review - - it took a total of 6 months from the time Ron starter to write the plan, conduct the public review, attend Central Region Board meetings and get official Ministry approval.

Cutting and Road Permits

Cutting Permits - We have submitted a cutting permit for blocks E19A, E22, & E24 located in the Escalante River. This cutting permit CP116 contains 20,000m3 and will be logged, trucked, sorted and dumped at Stewardson Camp. Stewardson Camp is being re-activated and it is planned to house up to 35 workers.

Roads - In order to access the projected TFL54 300,000 m3 Total AAC within the current 5 year cut control period, approximately 37 km of road construction will be required. The roads are located in the following units:
- Stewardson - 22 km
- Kennedy - Tofino Flats - 15 km

Reforestation

Our spring 2008 reforestation plans are well underway. We have approval to plant 205,000 seedlings. The areas to be planted are:
- Toquart bay (CFP & Echa Peh) 110ha 81,000 trees.
- Cataract Lake (CFP & Echa-Peh) 95 ha 67,000 trees.
- Tofino - Kennedy Lake Flats (TFL54) 66 ha 57,000 trees

Tenders have been prepared and local contactors will be invited to bid. Ron expects to award the contracts by the end of February for planting to start in March.

Silviculture Surveys

Ron awarded a survey contract for assessing plantations and the status of free growing of areas reforested under various license managed by Coulson. The contract was awarded to Sproat Lake Forestry Services Ltd of Port Alberni. They will survey approximately 250 hectares of previously reforested logged. These surveys are required in order for our companies to meet our Silviculture legal obligations under the Forest act and related regulations.

Fire Protection

During the first part of February Ron and I will be sending in our fire weather stations for annual maintenance and re-calibration. We are pleased that management has approved the purchase of a fully automated new weather station for TFL54 operations. This new weather station will have telemetry which means the readings will be sent in automatically via sat phone to our Head Office computer and not require logging supervisors to take our submit readings.

Busy year is forcasted for Forest Engineering Team

This year will be a very busy year for our engineering team. We currently will be bringing on line approximately 300,000m3 within TFL54. Zolie and his contractors are well underway with this task but have had some set backs due to heavy snow in the Stewardson Inlet unit where we are laying out approximately 150,000m3. Certainly mild rain weather is needed to get rid of the snow and help ground crews get around in the higher elevations. As a temporary measure Zolie is concentrating engineering in the lower elevation Tofino-Kennedy unit.

January, 2008 Volume 08-131