The primary European forest industries e-news has reported on the HFHC initiative here, and The North Island Gazette reports on the some of the findings from the Port McNeill Community Dialogue Session.

Rural communities must influence forest management and are an important part of BC’s GDP. To emphasize this important point to municipal governments, our initiative releases a summary of rural community challenges to the UBCM Area Associations.

RURAL COMMUNITIES MUST INFLUENCE FOREST MANAGEMENT

October 2011

Rural communities, dependent upon forest resources, need to take a leadership role
in designing the future of BC forest lands!

The British Columbia (BC) forest industry makes up 29% of the provincial GDP and 41% of total export
values. Over 70% of the exports come from the resources around rural communities compared to 30%
from BC’s metropolitan centres. Consequently, rural communities are a major contributor to the
provincial economy.

The rural communities dependent upon the forest sector are strongly influenced by the management of
local-regional forests which, in turn is critical for the continued support for local families, businesses and
communities. Therefore, local government and the communities are entitled to have a say in forest
management and be provided with a mechanism to inform decision-makers of their views, concerns and
current and future needs.

A wide range of knowledgeable forest leaders have raised the question of whether BC forests are on a
course that will significantly impact the future of communities and families. Sustainable Forest
Management (SFM) requires management that “maintains biological diversity, [forest] productivity,
regeneration capacity, [forest] vitality and the potential of the forest to fulfill, now and in the future,
relevant ecological, economic and social functions, at local, national and global levels, and does not
cause damage on other ecosystems.” 1 There are a number of actions taken since 2000 which challenge
whether the future of BC forests will be able to deliver on these requirements (See attachment).

The concerns of the knowledgeable forest leaders generated the Healthy Forests-Healthy Communities:
A conversation on BC forests (HFHC), an initiative to provide an opportunity for communities to inform
decision-makers of their views and concerns. The HFHC is a non-partisan, volunteer-supported
initiative intended to capture the concerns and recommendations of experts and community members
(including practicing forest and biology professionals, Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals) to enable
informed decision-making for BC forest lands management. The securing of background information
from experts in the field and the creating of opportunities for citizen dialogue both inform decisionmakers
of a vision for BC’s forest lands that can be used by Government, Aboriginals and stakeholders in
shaping policies, regulations and legislation for SFM in BC.

1 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Canadian Institute of Forestry’s The Forestry Chronicle Vol 70
(6): 666-674)

To date, the following common themes have arisen from the Community Dialogue Sessions and the
supporting expert analyses and opinions:

• Communities want more influence in forest lands decisions
• Communities need to be more informed of the state of local forest lands
• Communities are concerned regarding the future of local forest lands
• Communities want a viable and sustainable local forest industry that meets their needs

Communities can take a leadership role in the future of BC forests through:

• Making there concerns known through participating in the HFHC initiative
• Establishing a local mechanism (e.g., advisory committee) of local government to identify and
  focus on local priority forestry related issues
• Insisting on a BC forest lands vision that will guide legislative and operational decisions and
  actions
• Developing a vision for the local-regional forest based on the BC vision
• Requiring local forest managers to demonstrate how proposed plans and actions will meet
  community needs
• Participating in third party forest management certification processes that evaluate forest
  operations of forest companies and BC Timber Sales
• Influencing third party certification by 1) ensuring performance standards meet community
  needs, 2) community concerns are a priority for certification audits and 3) participating in
  certification audits

A void exists in BC for a forest management champion. Communities, with assistance from forest
professionals, academics and concerned citizens, can become the champion. The challenge resides with
local government and the communities. It is critical the local-regional forest lands are managed to
deliver the needs of the communities!

HFHC contact:
Bill Bourgeois, RPF, PhD
Coordinator, HFHC
E-mail: info@bcforestconversation.com
Phone: 604 924-0765
Cell: 604 836-0765

ATTACHMENT
Examples of recent actions impacting the practice of SFM in BC:

• Leadership: No long-term forest lands vision exists to guide policy and management decisions
  in BC; the Government’s “The State of the Forest Report” did not include a vision to evaluate the
  success of existing forest management.
• Re-stocking: Regeneration levels (40-70%) in Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) impacted areas; this
  level of regeneration is expected to significantly compromise future productivity if not
  corrected, especially with increasing global external influences.
• Monitoring: Staff reductions (25% in 10 years) in BC Forest Service, much in the area of
  monitoring; current levels of oversight are expected to challenge the ability to both adequately
  determine the state of BC forests and ensure sustainable management; no evidence exists that
  other efficiencies or delegation have compensated for the staff reductions.
• Resource inventories: Funding levels of resource inventories (45% of the estimated essential
  staffing levels for inventories maintenance; 75% of the inventories are 25 years old); lack of
  updated and readily available resource inventories is expected to limit managers’ ability to
  evaluate and manage forest conditions appropriately.
• Research: Unprecedented low funding levels for forest lands research (80% over the last 3
  years); reduction of research expenditures is expected to affect the ability of researchers to fill
  knowledge gaps and respond to impacts of global external influences.
• Management: Short-term management policies to assist industry while maintaining forest
  stewardship (e.g., management plans deferred for up to 10 years beyond earlier agreements;
  Government operational decisions focused on reducing industry costs; relaxation of small scale
  regeneration in MPB salvage areas); decisions to focus on short-term competition gains are
  expected to negatively impact the future forest productivity and the forest asset base.
• Policies: Transfer of Community (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) interface hazard reduction
  planning and implementation responsibility from Government to communities; increased largescale
  fire risk exists due to required levels of implementation and funding with all the risk
  residing with communities and not the Provincial Government.
• Industry: Industry focus on marketing at the expense of forest management; failure of the
  forest industry to request Government assistance with long-term forest management costs,
  compared with recent requests for product marketing assistance, suggests forest management
  is not a priority.
• Planning: Activity level of public involvement in strategic land and resource planning; public
  involvement limited to providing input into Government plans with limited or no oversight by
  pubic advisory committees to harness past world-class land use planning and threaten global
  land use planning leadership.
• Forest use: Coordination and timber impact limits associated with non-traditional forest
  resources management; reduced lack of policy coordination and the continued legislated limit
  regarding impacts of recreation, road access, fish and wildlife, parks and reserves, cattle
  management and non-timber forest products suggest the focus is on timber management at the
  expense of other resources.
• Product development: Marketing of “value-added products” (10-25% of total Government
  marketing allocation); low levels of market development funding is expected to limit the growth
  of the secondary manufacturing industry and hence community diversification and full
  utilization of the fibre resource.
• Community development: Funding levels ($1 M/year for each Beetle Action Coalition for three
  years) for community diversification in MPB impacted areas; current funding allocations for
  community diversification in each of the three BC regions is expected to limit diversification and
  be far short of the projected funding needed to establish viable and sustainable communities.
• Community diversification: Policy barriers to the encouragement of wood utilization for bioenergy;
  existing barriers limit opportunities for broader diversification and full utilization of the
  forest resource.
• Biodiversity: Biodiversity protection initiatives; BC biodiversity “…is vulnerable to rapid
  deterioration, especially in light of climate change,” thereby requiring action to prevent loss of
  species and ecosystems.
• Adaptation: Response to global environmental influences; with a focus primarily on research
  and not operations adaptation is expected to limit future opportunities.
• Productivity: Cumulative impacts; without concerted coordination of broader resource
  management interests (especially in the Northeast) involving oil and gas exploration, forestry,
  mining, hydro development and agriculture, resource management and extraction activities are
  expected to create significant cumulative impacts to ecosystems and forest productivity.
• Restoration: Habitat restoration in areas impacted by the MPB epidemic; current level of
  habitat restoration is expected to significantly reduce ecosystem productivity.
• Watersheds: Impacts of MPB harvesting on streamflows; ecosystem and forest productivity is
  expected to be impacted by rising water tables due to tree harvesting and salvaging in MPB
  harvested watersheds.
• Public involvement: Level of meaningful community participation; local communities and family
  desires regarding forest lands management influence is expected to be limited unless policies
  are changed.

Article in the September edition of the Logging and Sawmilling Journal discusses wildfire management in BC. This issue is pertinent our initiative as it was raised during many of the spring and fall community dialogue sessions.

A grassroots groundswell of support – our initiative gets some good press in the Sicamous Eagle Valley News after the Shuswap Community Dialogue Session. Click here for the full article.

The Healthy Forests-Healthy Communities initiative is getting feedback from BC communities. Communities are concerned about the future of local forest landscapes. Communities want a viable and sustainable local forest economy and greater influence in forest land decisions. Click here for the full report from Andrew Mitchell entitled “Better Community Control Over Forests”.

BETTER COMMUNITY CONTROL OVER FORESTS
Andrew Mitchell

The Healthy Forests-Healthy Communities initiative is getting feedback from BC communities.
Communities are concerned about the future of local forest landscapes. Communities want a viable and
sustainable local forest economy and greater influence in forest land decisions.

To address these needs, the BC Government and forest corporations will seek a symptomatic treatment
and possibly supply some new public involvement processes. There is no doubt that effective and
meaningful involvement by communities in management of local forest landscapes could be a
foundation for sustainable stewardship. A few new opportunities to review and comment on the
intentions of central government and forest corporations will not provide meaningful involvement.

Most of BC’s forests are Crown forests owned by the Province of BC. In the days of absolute monarchy,
Crown lands would be chartered to feudal lords and formed the basis of feudal systems. The majority
had little or no say. However, Canada and British Columbia are democracies and the appropriate role of
the BC Government over the Crown forests is to act as trustee and see that the forests have wise
management to sustain communities and a strong forest economy. This progressive view of Crown
forest land was expressed in BC over 100 years ago by a Royal Commission on forests. The commission
recommended that the Crown forests be retained in Crown ownership, supplied independent
management by professional forest service with the intent of providing sustainable communities and a
healthy forest industry. They noted that the priority of Government was to ensure that there was a wise
system of forest stewardship through a progressive legal and institutional framework.

Given the enlightened early vision for BC’s Crown forests, the last 100 years should have brought some
devolution of control and management of forests to the local level. Unfortunately, the legal and
institutional framework for Crown forest land has been regressive. The allocation of harvesting rights
for most of BC’s Crown timber to a few commodity forest products corporations restricted the
diversification of the BC wood products industry and the administered prices made wood exports
vulnerable to export tariffs and taxes. Improvident stripping of the best virgin timber led to major
problems in the coastal forest industry. In the interior, improvident forest management led to the
accumulation of huge areas of old Lodge Pole pine and set the stage for the loss of tens of billions of
dollars worth of timber to beetle attack. independent professional forest management was
compromised by passing more and more forest management responsibilities to forest corporations. BC
Government administrations have developed a legal and institutional framework that has enabled
forest corporations for more than 60 years. It can be said to be regressive because it is akin to that of an
absolute monarch handing out the benefit of land to the feudal lord. The only difference is that the
feudal lord has been replaced by a corporation. This is not progress. The feudal lord was a real person
and there were some expectations of human decency. The corporation is a legal person constituted to
make profit; not the best profile for the steward of the local forest landscape.

The legal and institutional framework for managing BC’s Crown or public forests, involving corporate
timber harvesting rights has become the established paradigm in BC. There is fear that any change will
have adverse economic effects. There have already been enough adverse economic effects that we
should really fear failure to make major change. The legal and institutional framework has been headed
in the direction of giving more control over public forests to corporations for over 60 years. We are at a
tipping point and any moves toward stronger tenure by forest corporations will complete the slide
toward enclosure of our Crown or public forests into the private interest. It is the inevitable destination
under the present paradigm.

If BC communities are concerned about the future of local forest landscapes and their forest economy
and want more control, they need to do more than ask our political decision makers for some more say
in the present framework. BC communities need first to remind our politicians that the local forest
landscape is our land. The rightful relationship of the community to the local forest is through an
elected board that directs a local professional forest management staff that manages the forest
landscape for the benefit of local communities.

The building block of a new framework would be the local forest trust. It would involve a sufficient area
of local forest landscapes to form a viable economic forest enterprise. More than one community or
rural area in the vicinity could be represented by a ward system on the elected board. The board and
professional forest managers would operate under trust documents or a charter modeled on the
international Montreal Process definition of sustainable forest management and conservation. The
managers would develop a local forest economy that includes timber, non timber, and nature based
economic activities. Delegation of forest management responsibility for anything greater than a family
woodlot or stewardship license would not be permitted and timber would be sold on an open market.
A provincial institution would be required to audit, support and provide a court of appeal for decisions
made by local forest trusts. A provincial forest trust assembly governed by an equal number of elected
board and professional forest management delegates could fulfill this role. Major policy changes would
require ratification by local forest trusts.

These new institutions also provide an innovative mechanism to resolve First Nation claims. First
Nation’s will be able to have local forest trusts or equitable representation through a ward system on
local forest trusts. The Montreal Process provides for customary aboriginal use.
Forest dependent communities should seek direct control of the management of local forest landscapes
under the new institutions of Local Forest Trusts and a BC Forest Trust assembly. This is a much more
sustainable alternative than gaining a facade of more public involvement in the existing centralized
government and corporate framework. It has been moving and will continue to follow a path of stealth
privatization that will result in the enclosure of Crown forests into the private interest. Communities
should grab the opportunity to ask for changes that will bring a sustainable future under their own
control. The default alternative is debilitated industrial wood forests and probably gates restricting
access to privatized local forest landscapes.