This week:

Hot and dry, cool and wet

ith Milton Jovial’s coastal Management and Working Plan complete,

: Herby Squish quickly reviewed a

draft copy of a similar plan for Jovial’s interior Forest Licence. It was basically the same plan, with

some important differences, and it

had to be finished today.

Milton, with-another unsuccessful Victoria chip export lobby effort nearly behind him, would be retuming to Tetrace tomorrow. And Herby knew all too well what Milton’s return would mean. Pro-

ductive work would become ex-

tremely difficult.

To properly explain the dif- ferences of the interior plan to Milton would take about an hour. Herby knew, however, that he would have to have a five-minute spiel prepared, Between questions and complaints concerning chip exports, a five-minute summary would take at least an hour to complete.

With this in mind, Herby began forming an outline in his mind as he reviewed the highlights of Mil- ton’s Management and Working

Plan for Forest Licence 12346, The primary difference between the coastal and interior licences is climate. An interior climate doesn’t offer nearly the same amount of

of trees, types of pests and even the logging methods used.

Where to stari? How about the Most positive aspect of holding both a coastal and interior Forest Licence? It means a resource diversity that can result in greater economic stability. At any given time, you simply cut the size and species of tree that will produce the product in greatest world-wide demand.

Coastal species, from the most to least common, are hemlock, cedar, spruce and a few balsam. Deciduous species include alder and cottonwood. Interior coni- ferous species are pine, interior

‘spruce, a few cedar and some sub-

alpine fir (balsam). And deciduous growth includes aspen, a few cottonwood and the smaller slide alder.

These differences, of course, offer a few complexities. On the

linsights

rain and this affects soils, species

Terrace Review — Wednesday, March 27, 1991 A7

by Tod Strachan, in consultation with Rod Arnold and Doug Davies

‘milling side of things, the smaller interior trees produce smaller dimension. lumber and have to be sorted differently in the mill. And coastal and interior logging opera- tions are quite different.

Steepness and slope stability are primary concems on the coast, and these factors are, obviously, com- plicated by much greater annual ‘Tainfall. And that coastal rainfall also produces a couple of other operational considerations.

Higher precipitation on the coast means that logging operations are more seasonal. And the soil is richer, softer, and therefore com- pacts more easily. For all these reasons, mechanical falling is much more common in the interior, and about 80 percent of a coastal logging operation is done by high-lead cable while in the

See It...

. by Stephanle Wiebe

Where did the idea of coloured Easter eggs originate? A person could really blow some brain cells trying to answer that one. But after weeks of extensive research, I am able to summarize the contents of thick encyclo- pedias and dry history volumes, and save you, the curious reader, hours of heavy, dull reading. My synopsis of all the data from all the Easter Egg experts in the universe: They don’t have a clue.

The ancient Egyptians and Persians believed that the world was hatched out of an enormous egg — a silly idea, but it worked at the time. The ancient Greeks

' and Chinese exchanged gifts of

eggs in early spring, in celebra- tion of new life. The Druids felt that eggs, serpent’s eggs in parti- cular, were sacred, and held secret ceremonies around piles of these reptilian eggs — yes, eggs due to burst forth at any minute

with masses of venomous snakes.

This, no doubt, is one reason we are not overrun with Druids these days,

Throughout the centuries, people have had some strange ideas about Easter eggs. The Yugoslavians once believed that painted eggs buried around Easter made their grapevines flourish — anything for better wine, evident- ly. The British believed that the yolk of an egg lain on Good Friday would turn into a diamond after a hundred years. Some old English guy with an egg laid in

The Way I

1891 is getting preity excited just about now.

Meanwhile, the custom of Easter egg dyeing continues in North America. Small children become excited, rub vegetable dye all over themselves, get a little on the egg, and set it ina basket on the table, to rot. No family actually eats every single coloured Easter egg — nobody. There’s a rule about this written down somewhere. At least one egg gets dropped and smashed against the linoleum, another looks "just too yucky to eat", and a few are ignored until family health risks must be considered.

Throughout April, thrifty moms are pushing egg salad sandwiches and high cholesterol diets onto an egg-overdosed family. The children don’t suspect until they catch a glimpse of pink dye peek-

_ ing through the mayonnaise,

So why do we do this? Because the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Druids started it, and our society just loves tradition. Sure, we update our traditions, evident in the chocolate eggs with the creamy icing centres, bul we do stick with the basic ovoid shape. Chocolate bunnies are another mailer entircly, deserving the same respectful awe given to any edible idol.

What I wonder about is, two thousand years from now, when the historians of 3091 look back on the quaint 1990's, will they be

ts layeon be Bh . po RE 2 AAOUIN AD TTT TL ee FTA ade

able to figure out. why we have turned the traditional coloured chicken’s eggs into chocolate and peanut butter eges? Nobody’s documenting this stuff while it’s happening, they’re too busy scarfing back the chocolate. Somebody really should be keeping records. °

And so, as a journalist dedi- cated to preservation of the facts for tomorrow’s historians, I volunteer my research talents toward the documentation of today’s Easter Egg traditions for intellectual study in years to - come. When this newspaper has — yellowed and crumbled with age, on some Year 3000 microscopic film, historians will read:

Regular dyed boiled chicken eggs: Healthy and tolerable, but losing the novelty, Cadbury’s Easter Creme egg: nice choco- late, over-sweet filling, Lowney’s marshmallow egg: Fair chocolate, rubbery centre. Huge chocolate eggs filled with Smarties: not enough Smarties. Reese’s Peanut Butier egg: good chocolate, great peanut butter centre, further studies required.

Final results will be available when the research is complete. This could take a while — some of these specimens require repeat testings, particularly the Laura Secord selections. That's okay, you can thank me later — I'm incredibly busy right now, dili- gently working my way through the dark chocolate and caramel samples.

Yes, it’s just another working holiday.

interior about 80 percent is done by ground skidding.

These differences in logging methods wouldn’t mean much to Milton, though. Things like har- vesting and hauling the raw logs would be contracted out.

Resource protection and tree planting are two things Milton should be concerned about, how- ever, There isn’t much need to

worty about the pesky porcupine .

in the interior, but the variety and volumes of pests like the Mountain Pine Beetle and Spruce Bark Beetle is far greater, and a formal short- and long-term Pest Manage- ment Plan is be required.

In the interior there is also a potential for attacks of Warren's root collar weevil and a variety of root rot fungi, and the Pest Management Plan would have to address detection, prevention, control, management and training regarding those dangers.

The drier interior climate also

affects things like’ fire protection’

and tree planting. Trees planted on a south-facing slope under a hot summer’s sun can literally be "cooked". Also, natural re- generation is more difficult to

achieve in the interior, and the

survival of planted seedlings is far less in a drier climate with poorer soil. This means more trees must

‘be planted per hectare to maintain _ the resource,

As far.as fire protection is con- cerned, in the interior less rain

Means more thought will have to

go into the Fire Pre-organization Pian. In remote areas, it may even be necessary to provide a weather station to monitor the fire hazard.

And finally, one of the more interesting and perhaps frustrating considerations is range land. This can affect the location of access routes and cut blocks, and tree planting practices. Free-roaming livestock have been know to cat the odd seedling or two. On occa- sion, in fact, cattle have demon- Strated the potential to destroy an entire tree-planting effort.

The Management and Working Plan skirts this issue to a degree, though. Any grazing permits issued will be dealt with in the applica- tion of cutting permits. And the Pre-Harvest Silviculture Prescrip- tion and Development Plan will address the range potential of the interior licence area in much. greater detail.

Herby considered for a moment the amount of information he had outlined. "It won’t work,” he mut- tered. "Pll be lucky if I can explain this stuff to Jovial between chip export stories without wasting away the better part of a day...”

Rupert port cuts

deal with ' The Prince Rupert Port Corpor- ation announced the signing of a contract March 14 to ship copper concentrates sent from Noranda’s Bell Mine in Granisle. The con- tract is for shipment of 120,000 tonnes over a 15-month period, but mine manager Maurice Ethier is cited by the port corporation as saying that an extension to the mine currently under consideration could lengthen that period to as much as 15 years.

Port general manager Terry Andrew said the corporation is currently negotiating mineral con-

Noranda

centrate shipping contracts with other companies. If successful, Andrew said, the negotiations could result in an increase of 500,000 tonnes per year in the port’s mineral concentrate shipping activities.

The first Bell shipment is” expected to go through the port May 1. New storage facilities will have to built to handle the con- tract.

A port official declined to dis- close the dollar value of the con- tract, citing confidentiality.

Pifer =m" Continued from page A6

If that materializes, B.C. will become the first province in Canada to have a woman pre- mier — Johnston or Grace Me- Carthy.

You heard it here first, folks (and if I am wrong, you'll for- get I said it, right?)

Parting Thought: The (wo- week resumption of ihe Legis-

lature, a decision which was unwise, illogical and damaging to the government, mercifully ended on Friday.

We may never know the {ruth of why Mr. Vander Zalm chose to proceed with the sit- ling while facing the Hughes probe. But what the hell, truth is something hard to come by these days in B.C. politics anyway, isn’t it!?