The investigation found that progress has been made in planning and implementing old-growth retention: thousands of old-growth management areas (OGMAs) have been established, and, in areas where OGMAs do not exist, specified amounts of old-growth forest must always be available.
The Board saw good examples of the professional reliance and Forest and Range Practices Act delegation models working – some licensees identify non-legal OGMAs in their forest stewardship plans, and conduct forest practices to protect those areas, even though they are not legally obligated to do so.
However, the investigation also highlighted some of the challenges licensees face in achieving old-growth retention on multi-tenured Crown forested land bases where some tenured users are required to maintain old-growth and others are not. The Board believes that old-growth retention requirements, as well as requirements for other values (e.g., wildlife habitat areas), should apply regardless of which industrial sector is developing the land.
This investigation examines licensees’ compliance with the Chief Foresters Standards for Seed Use. When planting seedlings on harvested sites, it is important that the seedlings are suited to the location and climate of the planting site to ensure they will grow well and become healthy trees.
This report concerns a 2011 investigation by the Forest Practices Board into fire management planning in British Columbia. Specifically, the Board looked at the status and use of fire management plans and fire analyses to determine whether accurate and complete land and resource information is adequately incorporated into fire control activities.
Reports from the forest industry about the effects of their activities have always been important to managing the public forests. However, forestry in BC is in a new era that differs from the past in two important respects in the context of reporting.
First, the move to a results‐based regime under BC’s Forest and Range Practices Act (FRPA) means that accurate reporting is now more important than in the past. Under FRPA, forest licensees have been given freedom to carry out their forest practices provided those practices are consistent with objectives set by government for forest values. One corollary to this freedom to manage is that licensees must provide complete, accurate and timely reports about what has happened, and what the effect has been on the forest, so that government can assess whether its objectives are being met.
A second and perhaps more important difference is that, over the last decade, the forest ministry has dramatically reduced the number of field and office staff responsible for overseeing forestry activities and the role of the remaining staff has changed. In the past, ministry staff could, and did, go to see what was happening on the ground and they provided first‐hand reports. They also received reports submitted by agreement holders, and were involved in ensuring the quality of those reports, and maintaining information in their own offices
British Columbia’s Forest and Range Practices Act (FRPA) and Wildfire Act (WA) are at the core of the provincial government’s stewardship framework, setting out rules that must be followed when forest or range activities are undertaken. If an activity results in a breach of these rules, and it is determined that FRPA or the WA has been contravened, government may order a licensee to remedy the harm.
During the course of this investigation, the Board looked at 55 orders made since 2004 under FRPA and the WA. Most of the orders investigated were in response to contraventions arising from road construction, timber harvesting, silviculture, fire suppression, and range use. The investigation found that some orders raised a concern as to whether or not they were enforceable. It also found that government’s response to non‐compliance with orders has been weak, and that the consequences for not carrying them out have been minimal.
