The Bush administration imposed the tariffs mainly to offset the benefits of what it says are subsidies to Canadian sawmills, in the form of low "stumpage" fees paid to cut down trees in government-owned forests.
"They've hired their experts, and we've hired ours," says John Allan, president of the British Columbia Lumber Trade Council.In Canada the provincial governments own forests, and each province is given considerable freedom in pricing its "stumpage", as standing trees are oddly called.
As a consequence, the majority of forest owners do not receive any income from timber and in some cases stumpage prices can even be negative.
We then estimated the mean per-hectare timber or stumpage volume of commercial timber in this forest by analyzing 89 hectares of tree plot data collected at five locations around Tambopata between 1994 and 2007 (Supporting Information Table S2).
The tariff was intended to offset the benefits of what the department called Canadian sawmill subsidies, like low "stumpage" fees paid to harvest trees in government-owned forests.
Future real stumpage prices were assumed to be stationary in this study.
Several researchers have adapted the template to work best in their situation, such as: modifying timber prices from a stumpage basis to a mill basis; adding more product classes; or adding more analyses of land or other factors.
In relation to the categories of factors that affect forestry profitability defined in this study (Table 1), previous studies have considered the stumpage price (Penttinen 2006) and planting density as an economic condition and silvicultural system, respectively.
Currently stumpage is calculated on the basis of volume of extracted logs of different species in respective girth classes.
In Canada, provincial governments own the timber, set harvest levels, restrict the export of raw logs and set stumpage rates (or cutting fees) according to market conditions.
