The Community Forest’s priority is to supply local sawmills with logs that fit their specialized product lines. This provides the raw materials used by our talented local carpenters and craftsmen to build structures that showcase the Bella Coola aesthetic. It’s like our contribution to the ‘100 mile (wood) diet’. However, with less than 2,500 people in this small isolated community, local demand is less than the volume of timber that the Community Forest can sustainably produce. Therefore, the majority of timber is transported by barge to the lower mainland (Vancouver) log market where the logs are sold to larger domestic mills and offshore markets.
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Locally, logs are manufactured into a variety of products for different end uses. Mostly, they are cut into timbers for post and beam construction of private as well as public structures. Regular lumber is also produced for projects that do not require kiln drying, like outdoor decking, fencing and siding. There is also a small local market for top quality wood used to make high end products like window trim, musical instruments and clear laminated panels to be carved into murals.
Due to its isolation and mountainous operating conditions, costs are high on the Community Forest and therefore it is vital that a portion of the logs are targeted at the higher value, log export markets to offset the high costs of producing the logs. Without the ability to export some of the logs, the Community Forest would not be able to produce logs for the local and domestic markets as domestic prices would not cover the logging costs.
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Most exported logs are destined for the higher priced Asian market, where people place high value on quality wood. Japanese and Korean markets especially demonstrate how important wood is in their cultures, where quality precedes production and price. High quality logs sold to Japan are sawn into products like ‘Hirakaku’ beams that are a fundamental appearance component of traditional homes and come to embody the soul of the house. Small clears are cut into ‘Tategu’ which is used to finish ‘Tatami’ rooms while timbers are used to replace deteriorating beams and posts in traditional palaces.
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A small portion of select cedar logs are sold as house logs and delivered to the bustling log home manufacturing industry in the central interior of the Province. These logs often become the ‘show logs’ in spectacular log buildings that are shipped around the world.
