Jon (sawmill...)- In the grand scheme of things, I don't think a few tens of thousands or even a few hundreds of thousands (the value of the metal scrap left behind your dismantling) matter to big corporations when compared to the scale of the investment as large as your mill. How much do you think it would cost the corporation to build that mill from scratch in Chile (hundreds of millions? more?)?? The scrap left behind is probably just an after thought.
I'd like to visit Chile and see how they can be a player in so many primary sector (ag, forestry, mining) commodities. They really only have a narrow strip between the coast and the mountains in the central and southern (but not too far south) that can support temperate ag and forestry. Northern Chile is the mining area but its too fricking dry to do much else with it. I don't think your big ole BC Doug fir will ever lose their commercial value but what is done with them may (is?) change(ing). Probably gone are the days of making pulp out of them. Probably still in demand for higher value building products, export logs to Pacific Rim Asia for uses that can't be meet (or desired) with tropical hardwoods, and carbon sequestration. Our Chinese friends are probably buying BC forest carbon credits to offset their rampant coal burning in a "dirty" way. Younger trees sequester carbon at faster rates than old trees but older trees still have all that biomass (read carbon) tied up in them. BC foresters who used to plan for rotational long-term harvesting will probably have to become more forest fire fighters so that investment in big tree carbon does go up in smoke and defeat that whole purpose (just one of the potential land uses available for Douglas fir) of letting the big trees stay there in the current state of things...
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