British Columbia may be known for clearcuts when it comes to harvesting operations, but Integrated Operations Group (IOG) is now proving that commercial thinning is do-able—and can be financially feasible with careful planning and selecting the right stand—in B.C.
And the commercial thinning is delivering benefits, such as reduced wildfire risk and improved forest health, yield and wildlife habitat.
IOG, based in Campbell River, has operations both on the Coast and Interior of B.C., and was initially formed to fill a need for specialized full-phase heli-logging services in the forest industry. Since then, it has utilized the company’s combined production forestry skillsets to expand into a variety of services and sectors.
IOG says it has a drive for innovation, and seeks out niche opportunities—and those harvesting activities now include commercial thinning, exclusively using Ponsse harvesting and forwarding equipment from Prince George, B.C. Ponsse dealer, Valhalla Equipment (please see Valhalla sidebar story). They are clearly demonstrating that commercial thinning can be a very viable option in B.C.
Quentin Stefani, a Managing Partner at IOG, and Operations Manager of Commercial Thinning, recently hosted Forestnet Magazine at a commercial thinning operation in B.C.’s Southern Interior, near Summerland, for Gorman Bros, a family-owned forest company based in Kelowna, with sawmill facilities in the region.
“We’re definitely trying to advocate commercial thinning,” says Stefani. “I think there’s a big need for it in B.C. We just want to show what we do, show that there is a different path to it, and show that commercial thinning is going to be part of our future in British Columbia.
“And we’re proud of what we do,” he added.
One of the things you first notice about the Summerland commercial thinning operation is the small landings.
The main reason why the landings are so small is because IOG is not moving full length trees to the landing. The trees are felled, processed and bucked directly at the stump. “So, we’re moving short logs that are already processed, to the landing. We can utilize some very small spaces,” says Stefani.
Trails are built every 20 metres. The reach of the Ponsse Scorpion Giant harvester is 10 metres, so they are able to reach all parts of a 20-metre-wide block. They then use the openings of the trails to stack up the wood high. Ponsse Elephant King forwarders pick up the logs, and then transport them to the landing where they are loaded onto trucks.
“We’re really utilizing every little space that we can to minimize the landings,” says Stefani.
IOG operations carry out a variety of harvesting activities including heli-logging and single stemming, but their cut-to-length (CTL) equipment is strictly doing thinning. Ground-based operations (thinning division) are focused on commercial thinning. “We sent over 100,000 cubic metres of commercially thinned wood to mills, for four clients in the Okanagan and Cariboo regions of B.C., in 2025. That’s equal to around 2,000 truckloads of wood.
“Relative to other logging operations in B.C., that might not seem like a big number, but when you’re cutting trees that are very small, it is a lot of cutting and a lot of area that’s been treated. About 1,200 hectares was thinned in 2025.”
And following this prescription, they could go back in 10, 20, 30 years into most every stand that they thinned and harvest again.
Another advantage: with this harvesting method and the Ponsse harvester/forwarder equipment set-up, they are not bringing any waste to the roadside. All the branches, all the tops, stay in the bush, scattered on the ground. “We’re bringing clean logs to the landing. So, our machines, whether it’s a harvester or forwarder, drive on the mat of branches, which considerably reduces the ground pressure of our equipment.”
It also breaks up all the branches, and helps mulch up the material, so it speeds up its decomposition. Essentially, any branches are gone in three to five years.
Stefani also notes the light touch of the Ponsse equipment on surrounding trees. The way the harvester is designed, it always swings inside its wheel tracks. So basically, the operator doesn’t have to worry about hitting any trees beside or behind them because as long as the front wheels go by, the rest will go by. Feller bunchers, on the other hand, can have big tail swings.
“It’s a completely different design,” explains Stefani. “You can see that the base, the frame of the harvester, stays on the trail. It’s not actually moving. The only piece of the machine that’s moving is the cab and the crane. So, this is one of the reasons why we’re able to work in pretty tight trails.”
The fact that IOG now has five Ponsse harvesters and four forwarders underlines the commitment—including financial—they have in commercial thinning.
In the Summerland-area operation, the stand is 37-years-old, and they are able to harvest a good number of sawlogs, with a percentage of pulp logs. Stefani explained that they do a “thin from below”, targeting small, defected, crooked or diseased trees—not prime sawlog material. The larger and nicer trees will stay standing for better growth in the future. The goal, he says, is to make the forest healthier when they’re finished, but still recovering small sawlogs and pulp logs.
Stefani explained, big picture, how commercial thinning works.
“Commercial thinning is a forest management practice,” he says. “So, we always talk about a treatment versus an actual just logging operation. Our objective is to enhance the health of the forest. But we’re leaving a fully stocked stand behind us. So, the majority of the good trees will stay standing and will have better chance to grow and make a better-quality log in the future.
“When we start a project like this, the trees we target are the trees that are dominated, trees that are crooked, trees that are damaged. These are the trees we’re going to be targeting to make the forest healthier, to bring more space, more access to the light and more nutrients for the trees that are remaining after we do our thinning operations.”
Stefani said that commercial thinning is financially viable, but emphasized it needs to be planned accordingly, and the right stands selected. It can cost a lot of money if it’s not well thought-out—that’s where the experience and expertise come in.
“There is no subsidy on what we do in most cases—the product that we bring to the mill pays for the operations. It’s obviously important to identify the ratio between sawlogs versus pulp. The more sawlogs you get, the easier it gets to pay for the operations, of course. But this is not what drives us to do a commercial thinning. We’re not here to high grade. We’re not here to actually target value. We’re here to actually leave the value standing.
“Our objective,” he says, “is to set up the stand for better growth and better yield. “ Essentially, accelerating the growth of the remaining forest, as it transitions, in this case from a younger 37-year-old forest, to a medium or mature forest.
On average, they are removing about 30 to 33 per cent of the stems on the site.Some 20 to 25 per cent come from the trails that they are building, and the rest is from the thinning on either side of the trails.
“We can remove anything from 50 cubic metres a hectare up to 100 cubic metres per hectare,” he added. “We can expect probably 8 to 10 cubic metres of growth on a yearly basis per hectare. So, if you remove 70 or 80 cubic metres per hectare—or even 100 cubic metres—you can expect to regain that volume in the next 8 to 10 years just by the gain of growth of the trees you left behind.
“The volume you’re going to get per hectare after doing one or two entry thinnings will be significantly higher than you would otherwise get doing just a single clearcut harvest.”
A bonus in this location is that, because they are so close, they can quickly get the wood to the Gorman Bros mill in Kelowna. “We’re talking about a couple weeks. So, the mill gets a product that’s freshly cut. Green trees are a wood profile that they really like.”
Added to this, commercial thinning reduces the risk of wildfire, and the resulting visuals are much better than a clearcut area, a priority in B.C. these days, which has a focus on viewscapes.
There are a variety of different prescription guidelines, and Stefani says they, and their operators, are very familiar with all of them.
Compared to other thinning methods, which might involve a forester flagging each tree to be taken out, the IOG approach is far more efficient.
“A good example is this Summerland block. We have some pretty rolling hills, and it would take someone with very extensive knowledge about what a machine’s capabilities are when you’re marking trails or you’re marking trees.
“If the machine cannot follow the ribbon or cannot access one tree, you can end up with a very confusing layout, and where the machine can go safely—and you end up with ribbons everywhere, which makes it very confusing.
“If your operators are trained properly, they know what to do, they’ve been doing a pre-work with all the objectives, there’s really no need for it. It should be up to the operator to know where the machine can go safely without being pushed to follow a ribbon.
“The operators are trained in what trees to take out.” And they, with the Ponsse harvesters, have great visibility. The operators can see both left and right and in front with zero hindrance on visibility because the boom is coming over the top of the cab. And when the operator has to make split-second decisions, cutting 100 plus trees an hour, visibility is key.
Besides the forwarders being the right equipment to move the wood, they are also more efficient, hauling more wood, and hauling it further.
Studies have shown that a skidder will be a bit more efficient with hauls of up to 150 metres to the landing—beyond that, forwarders are more efficient, both in volume, and delivering volume per hour roadside, making longer hauls more economically feasible.
And with thinning, they need less spur roads.
“For us hauling wood 350 up to 500 to 600 metres, we can do it pretty efficiently without having to build secondary roads, spur roads,” says Stefani. “And much of the road and trails system is made up of those matted branches.”
The Ponsse forwarders IOG employs offer versatility, among other features, says Stefani.
“Besides commercial thinning, we also have the ability to use the forwarders for various other applications whether it’s partial cut, or clearcut settings and using it in different parts of the province, like the coast that have bigger and heavier trees.
“It’s able to tackle a variety of different stands, not only strictly thinning. Luckily enough, though, we’ve been very busy in commercial thinning.
“I’ve been in this industry for 15 years,” he added. “To date, I haven’t done a single clearcut.”
And despite the very challenging times in the B.C. forest industry, that versatility and IOG’s willingness to tackle different harvesting work, has been key to its growth. It started with five employees, and they now have 70 people.
“To be honest, we’ve been kind of forced to innovate,” says Stefani. “As a small contractor starting from scratch, we’ve been the outsider. So, in order for us to survive we had to come up with some specialties. It was hard to give it a go at first and we slowly realized that if we wanted to make it in this industry we would have to specialize.”
Stefani’s IOG partners are taking on different aspects of harvesting on the coast.
“Commercial thinning is what I’m looking after, but it’s really when times are tough like this this that we realize that being a specialty contractor is finally paying off.”
And they have since established a solid reputation in the industry.
“You know, people hire us for who we are and for what we do. And there is a really good momentum about specialty harvesting right now. We all suffer from a difficult market in many different ways, but we at IOG see it as a good opportunity for exploring new avenues.
“Our industry is changing and adapting and we want to be part of it. With commercial thinning, it’s just a matter of getting the ball rolling. We’re fortunate enough that we work with amazing clients that really trust us and really see that long term vision.”
Ponsse and dealer Valhalla Equipment the go-to equipment suppliers for IOG’s commercial thinning operations
Integrated Operations Group (IOG) partner Quentin Stefani said that choosing the right logging equipment is of course a major part of the decision when you are setting up a commercial thinning operation, but from there on, a large part of a company’s success can be all about service and parts support.
“You need to have someone picking up the phone when you have a breakdown in the middle of nowhere in B.C.,” he says.
Stefani says Dan Fuhrer and Valhalla Equipment has been their go-to supplier with their Ponsse equipment.
“Dan knows Ponsse equipment like nobody else.” Added to this is that Valhalla is a Ponsse-only dealer, and Ponsse only produces logging equipment. All of their machines are purpose-built.
With their significant investment in equipment, for IOG, logging equipment has to be operating—period. “You can’t afford to have it sitting for three days while you’re waiting for parts.
“This is a machine that costs more than the average forestry machine and you’re dealing with low value product at the end,” Stefani explained. “So, the simple math is that consistency is key to make it work in commercial thinning. High machine cost, versus low value product. The only way to make it work is continuity—reliability and keeping the uptime of our machines as high as we can.”
Dan Fuhrer has gone from working for Ponsse to having his own dealership which covers western Canada, and is based in Prince George. And Fuhrer does know the equipment, inside and out, having personally worked with it.
“I used to be a logging contractor myself in northwest Ontario where I grew up, and I’ve owned harvesters and forwarders,” explains Fuhrer.
“I started in 1997 with the Timbco harvester and forwarder machines. And the only reason I bought the machines was economics. We thought, my brother and I, that it was a cheaper way to log. Two machines and we do everything. We don’t need a lot of operators. And in our case, it turned out to be the case. And to this day, my brother still runs that company in Northwest Ontario.”
Fuhrer notes that they only have the dealership in Prince George, but what he believes sets Valhalla and Ponsse apart is they want to help their customers do fixes on the phone, wherever possible.
“Not only is it less costly—that’s always important—but if the customer can go back to work an hour sooner, he can cut for that hour.
“So, for sure he’s going to save the service call, but it’s much more than that. It’s the downtime. From our location in Prince George to a customer might be a seven- hour drive, give or take. So, if we have to come for a 30-minute fix, he’s going to lose a shift.
“If we can talk with the operator on the phone, check this, chat that, and he fixes a wire, he’s back to work in an hour.”
Fuhrer notes that all logging equipment is getting more technically advanced, which can add to a logging contractor’s grey hair.
“Actually, in my opinion, it makes it easier, though,” he says. “It might make it harder for the operator to do some more intensive troubleshooting. But now with the Starlink satellite links, we now have direct access to the machine’s computer from the office.
“We can log right into the machine’s computer. We can see what the operator sees. So, we can troubleshoot right from the office. We can update the software.
“And that’s been a huge, for us—Starlink is a game changer.
“So now, if Quentin’s operator, Jamie, has even a very basic question, we can go right into his computer, talk to him through Starlink and show him what we’re doing, and he goes back to work. And we’ve actually used it quite a few times.
“It’s a little bit intimidating to the person that doesn’t understand it. But what we like to tell customers is don’t worry if you don’t understand it. As long as we can connect to the machine, we can help you through the process.”
More customers are also looking to connect with the company’s data management software system, Ponsse Manager.
With Ponsse and Valhalla, Fuhrer is working against some industry resistance to commercial thinning, the thinking that it won’t work in B.C.
“It works pretty much everywhere else in the world. With Ponsse I’ve traveled quite a few places, South America, Australia, all over North America, Europe. And basically, it works everywhere.
“Some places if it’s really steep, of course, it won’t work. But that’s getting less and less and Ponsse also offers winch assist machines that can tackle steep terrain up to 100 per cent slopes. I really believe in the system. It’s been proven everywhere in the world. I’m confident it will work here, in B.C.”
With his wife, Barbara, Fuhrer started Valhalla Equipment six years ago and though he says they are still small, they are slowly growing.
And he notes that it really helps with guys like Quentin Stefani of IOG among those leading the charge in adoption of new harvesting techniques.
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