Forest Practices Board report: B.C. needs new planning process for forestry

In a new report, the Forest Practices Board recommends that government adopt a tactical forest planning process to direct forestry operations on Crown land.

“For more than 20 years, the board has called for improved planning and objectives at the landscape and watershed scales,” said Kevin Kriese, chair, Forest Practices Board. “Recent board work has confirmed that forest stewardship plans, despite considerable energy and effort to develop and approve, do not address the need for planning for multiple forest values across the landscape.”

The board recommends a planning process that takes broad objectives from land-use plans and translates them into a plan for achieving the desired future forest on a specific area of land. The report goes on to say such a process must:

• be inclusive of Indigenous peoples, stakeholders and the public;
• integrate all forest values;
• be place based and forward looking;
• be embedded in the forest management system; and
• include monitoring and continuous improvement over time.

“The need for landscape-level planning is more critical now than at any time in the past, as forest resources are increasingly affected by the cumulative effects of multiple developments and natural disturbances due to climate change,” said Kriese.

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