BARRIE - Simcoe County forester Graeme Davis stands on the shoulder of Oro-Medonte Line 1 North, at the entrance of the forest’s Drury Tract, to survey the damage caused by the recent ice storm.
Everywhere he looks, he sees devastation.
Mature deciduous trees, some of them up to 60 feet tall, have been ripped apart, huge limbs and branches snapped off and discarded, left to rot on the forest floor. Red pines, their crowns sheared and lying in jumbled heaps at their base, are virtually worthless.
Trails and access roads are impassable, blocked by full-sized fallen trees and piles of debris.
It’s absolute carnage, the likes of which Davis has never experienced.
“In my career, in this part of the world, I’ve never had anything approaching this level of damage,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “We can certainly use the term ‘unprecedented’ here.
“Ice storms aren’t that unusual, but this level of damage and this kind of breadth across Simcoe County and beyond is,” he added.
He’s standing in what he considers the epicentre of destruction.
“We’ve got a handle of where we think the worst damage is, and we’re right in the centre of it. Some of the most impacted areas are right through the centre part of Oro-Medonte,” he said.
“We just happen to have a lot of county forests right through here.”
While Davis doesn’t know the exact toll the ice storm levied, he estimated about 20 to 25 per cent of the 34,000-acre forest was “impacted” and a smaller area was “impacted dramatically.”
The areas that have experienced the greatest damage are the areas Davis and his team will address first.
“Basically, the strategy over this coming week will be to get out to the highest impacted pine plantations, in particular, to get a little more detailed assessment done. We will determine how we’re going to move forward with salvage contracts and get those issued so that we can get our contractors lined up,” he said.
“Pine is a perishable product and we have a limited time to deal with it.”
Davis said by June or July, there won’t be any salvage value left in the damaged timber.
“If it can’t be a saw log, there’s no value,” he said.
He pointed to a stand of red pines that had their crowns toppled and their trunks snapped off halfway up. If they were harvested at their peak, when they were full trees, they would’ve generated substantial income.
Now, not so much.
“We’ll recover pennies on the dollar,” Davis said.
But that doesn’t mean the forest has lost its monetary value.
Far from it.
“There will be an impact on our county forest revenues, but the impact will be spread out over many years,” he said. “It looks devastating right now, but woodland forests are resilient and will recover.”
In 10 years, he added, people won’t see any sign of the ice storm as the forest will continue to grow, albeit with a slightly different composition.
Davis explained that since the ice storm removed quite a bit of the forest canopy, sunlight will now reach the underbrush, which in turn will generate new growth.
“We’ll see a change to the forest, but we won’t lose it. If anything, we’ll be challenged by invasive species. If we create the right conditions for buckthorn to take off, it will take off,” he said.
“We have to manage it.”
To do that effectively, the forestry crew will provide constant attention and increased vigilance.
Davis hopes the general public will exercise the same considerations when, or if, they decide to wander into the county’s forest any time over the next couple of months.
He said the county can’t close the forest to keep people out when it’s not safe to be there, so they have to be aware of any dangers that may exist.
“The forest is still dangerous,” he said. “Look up and be aware. There are natural hazards when going into a forest, and those hazards are elevated right now.”
He said the county is updating its website to ensure the public knows where forest access is safe.
The public can also access the county’s website for information on how to care for ice-damaged trees, ice-damaged woodlots and plantations, and caring for trees after an ice storm.
