Plans by government to convert some forest harvesting from a volume-based model to an area-based model will come into clearer focus in the next few weeks.
It was announced on Tuesday that the specialist consultant tasked with initial design of the program - former B.C. chief forester Jim Snetsinger - had concluded his information gathering process and was only a few weeks away from releasing his report.
"During the two-month consultation period [Snetsinger] travelled throughout the province collecting feedback and ideas from stakeholder groups, First Nations and members of the
general public," said B.C. Ministry of Forests officials in a written statement. "He presided over 97 meetings in nine different locations: Smithers, Burns Lake, Quesnel, Williams Lake, Prince George, Kamloops, Cranbrook, Nanaimo and Vancouver."
More than 8,650 visits to the website were recorded, and over 4,300 inputs were received from a variety of sources including email, blog comments, tweets and comment ratings. The discussion paper was downloaded 771 times, and the average website visit lasted just over 10
minutes. While 179 comments were generated on the blog, many visitors took the time to read and rate online comments, with over 1,008 ratings.
It is estimated that 4,300 people provided some sort of input to the study.
"Government is not considering conversions on a provincewide basis, but rather as one 'tool in the toolbox' that may help with mid-term timber supply issues in parts of the Interior that have been impacted by the mountain pine beetle,"said the ministry statement.
Snetsinger has a deadline of June 30 to hand in the report to minister Steve Thomson.
At issue is having large tracts of forest devoted to the harvesting and replanting cycles of a few intermingled companies (volume-based) instead of smaller tracts of land devoted to the harvesting and replanting cycles of a single company (area-based). The same amount of timber would be cut and replaced, by the same companies, according to government, but it would allow each company to take better care of the land.
