Bill Bourgeois provides his opinions in Long-term stewardship-summary report regarding the progress made in delivering on the recommendations arising out of the 2011-2013 HFHC dialogue. Although there have been activities on 82% of the 22 selected recommendations, most of the action appear to be in response to political issues or of limited impact on moving toward the HFHC vision and goals for BC forests.
Category Archives: 2013-2020 Articles and Resources
Teacher links to resources
The Teacher awareness electronic information document posted in the Teacher Resources section of the Education page provides a number of links for teachers regarding K-12 teaching resources .
Kitimat Mayor encourages value-added
The Kitimat Mayor is encouraging Canada through an open letter to Governments and Canadians (kitimat-mayor-an-open-letter-to-canada) to increase value added manuracturing. The forest sector in identified as one of the natural resource industries being challenged to take action. Increasing value-added or secondary wood manufacturing then BC is not new. Actions have been taken for over several decades on this issue with limited success. The most recent is the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations’ mflnro-competiveness-agenda and companion value-added-sector-action-plan. Both of these documents address issues related to markets and other support services but they do not mention the major factor of certainty of wood supply which has been identified as a major barrier for many manufacturers. The MFLNRO Fibre Working Group is supposed to be working on this through creating regulations to encourage “business to business” opportunities. However, it is yet to be shown this approach will work when there is a disparity of interest and control between the parties. Hopefully, this will be resolved but until then, the identified priority issue of communities to diversify their local forest sector will be limited at best.
BC Wood Products
BC produces a wide range of very impressive products from BC forests. A graphic description of examples-of-bc-wood-products are presented to bring this to the attention of British Columbians and others interested in some of the output from forest management.
BC Forest Management Process
A graphic description of the forest-management-process is presented to provide basic information for those wanting to learn about the management of BC Forests
Student career information
Information on forest-sector-career-jobs and career-day-invitation-suggestions for teachers planning a career day are provided.
Teacher resources accessing tool
A series of decision-making tables k-12-collaborative-accessing-resources have been prepared to assist teachers in accessing the products and services available within the K-12 Forest Education Collaborative.
Forest stewardship leadership
Opinion-Bill Bourgeois-The BC forest sector lacks leadership in forest stewardship. Without this, the sector is being challenged by communities and others as to whether they have the social license to manage the Crown forest. I have outlined in a BC Foresters Magazine article (Forest stewardship leadership and social license) why there is a need for foresters and communities to assume the leadership role.
First Nations and industry working together
Success story video http://interfor.com/responsibility/community (Building value for communities video) – Homalco First Nation is working with forest companies and a wilderness resort to integrate forest management with tourism businesses.
Educators’ advice to Premier Clark regarding students and forestry
A number of educators have offered advice to Premier Clark in a the Tyee article Experts Grade Premier’s Forestry Teaching Moment _ The Tyee. The comments are in response to her comments at the COFI AGM regarding the need for forestry to provide jobs for their parents and money for their hockey equipment, etc. A message of considering information on both economics and conservation is suggested along with encouraging students to think for themselves. The suggestions are very consistent with the views presented in HFHC.