Volume of logs cut on public land 2000-2022

THERE HAS BEEN A DECLINE in the volume of logs cut on public land in BC. This decline is more gradual than the decline in direct jobs, which were cut in half over this period. The industry and forests ministry attribute the decline in available volume to the Mountain Pine Beetle outbreak, which peaked in 2006, to forest fires and to more protected lands being created. But logging has removed more volume than both the beetle and fires combined, and there has been little additional land set aside for conservation during this time. As old forest continues to be liquidated and younger, lower-volume second-growth forests have become a larger fraction of the cut, volumes have inevitably declined. This is the so-called fall-down effect. 

The anomalous dip around 2009 was due to the crash in American housing starts that resulted from the world financial crisis at that time.

The volume cut in 2022, a year of record high prices, was even lower than 2009.