The 2025 British Columbia Crown Timber Harvest...Did Not Get The Memo

An Editorial Opinion – Right From The Stump, January 14, 2026

British Columbia’s provincial crown timber harvest data for the complete-year 2025 shows the harvest slipped by 2% to 32 million cubic metres (excluding waste). It’s a result that disappoints when stacked up against the Premier’s mandate letter to the Minister of Forests to increase the provincial harvest to a target of 45 million cubic metres, a commitment made just over a year ago.

While the overall harvest performance for last year might be keeping the Minister up at night worrying, there are a few distinctions that the Minister can take some solace in.

Despite mill closures, wildfires and the fallout of the mountain pine beetle epidemic amongst several other issues influencing harvesting, the interior harvest actually increased by 2% in 2025.  

Where the current angst comes from is the coastal forest sector with a million cubic metre reduction in crown harvest volume for 2025, a decrease of 13% to 6.8 million cubic metres (excluding waste).

With a sizable representation of the coastal timber harvesting community coming to listen to the Minister at the Truck Loggers Association convention this Thursday (January 15th), the audience will undoubtedly be keen to hear discussion on this dismal harvest level and more importantly, what actions can be taken to improve it.

While the harvest decreasing, coastal pulp mills have been noted to have been importing fibre from the United States Pacific Northwest. Importing of fibre is a desperate move but one that points to domestic fibre supply situation as being either too expensive to access or limited in availability (or both).  That kind of fibre pressure likely contributed to Domtar’s decision to permanently close its Crofton pulp mill. For a province literally covered in trees and a public that cries murder when its harvested trees are exported, no one says anything about the irony of importing fibre.

And before someone blames log exports (as a scapegoat for everything wrong with the coast forest industry), please note that log exports were down 12% (ytd through October) to one of its lowest levels in over a decade.

One source of reduced harvesting on the coast has been the USW strike since last June that has impacted harvesting on La-kwa sa muqw Forestry LP (LKSM)’s forest tenure with an AAC of 900,000 cubic metres. The strike has been impactful but it’s not entirely the source of the reduced harvest, especially because the harvest was declining prior to the start of the strike.

As a bit of a plot twist and one that the Minister will surely note, the overall BCTS harvest from sold timber sale licences increased in 2025, up 16%, with the BCTS coastal harvest jumping by 27%.  That is a good result, but with the overall harvest having decreased, it means the non-BCTS licensees took the full brunt of harvest reduction on the coast with weak markets along with duties and tariffs as contributing factors. I expect the other major influences on harvest will be discussed at the convention including forest policy.

The industry will look forward to what the Minister might say at the convention, including, we hope, an action plan for implementation of the BCTS Review’s 54 recommendations (of which I shared my opinion on what should be done in the November 2025 View From The Stump) and also, how the Minister intends to achieve his 45-million cubic metre harvest target.

For more opinion and industry analysis, it will all be in the January 2026 View From The Stump newsletter coming out later this month.

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Written By David Elstone, RPF

Publisher, View From The Stump newsletter

Managing Director, Spar Tree Group Inc.

david@spartreegroup.com