Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

NNSL (Sep 07/98) - John Plowman can't get to the forest for the trees.

Plowman, who owns Digha Log Homes in Fort Smith, wants to use NWT trees to build log homes here for Northern customers. But Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development turned down his timber-cutting permit.

"We're select loggers, not clear-cut," Plowman said.

He applied for a permit to harvest 500 cubic metres of building logs in the Grand Detour area, 40 kilometres north of Fort Smith.

He said that's about 500 trees and a tiny portion of what is taken from NWT forests in a year.

The authorized harvest in the Fort Smith area is about 2,000 cubic metres per year.

"I acquired trees from local loggers in the past (but) they may not have suitable logs for building," he said.

Buying from any logging companies can be difficult he said, because they make more money by turning the logs to timber and selling it.

Plowman, because of the specialized nature of log home building, is after white spruce logs with 30-centimetre to 45-centimetre butts and lengths of about eight to 16 metres.

"If we knew we had the wood, we could advertise and promote more."

Faced with a lack of NWT logs, Plowman said he is forced to bring in logs from northern Alberta this winter for next year's building season.

Ideally, Plowman would like to be able to tell his Northern customers that he will be building with NWT logs.

He argues that he lives, works and employs about six people in the NWT.

Plowman, builds two to four log homes per year.

This is the first time he will have to get building logs from outside the North.

With a permit, Plowman would get a logging company to do the harvesting.

"I'm not a logger, I'm a builder."

Bob McLeod, former RWED assistant deputy minister (now municipal and community affairs deputy minister), said Plowman was approached about alternatives.

RWED did invite Plowman to look at other areas, McLeod said.

And Plowman did not opt to appeal the permit refusal, he added.

"Digha's application was refused after consultation with local resource users who advised of their land claim interests, and after consideration of ongoing demands of existing licence and permit holders," RWED said in a written response to Northern News Services.

Currently, there are three loggers operating in the area where Plowman wants to take white spruce.

No new logging applications have been approved in the South Slave region in recent years.

"Certainly we are very supportive of Northern enterprise and business, that's why we offered John Plowman help with some (alternative) timber," McLeod said.