A Forest Practices Board audit of the old-growth timber supply available across B.C. is recommending that the provincial government better track old-growth areas and evaluate whether or not they are effective in protecting biodiversity.
The old-growth in this region is most commonly found east of Prince George in the vicinity of Dome Creek to McBride.
"All the licensees [the companies who cut down trees] who operate in the district have a working group and share information on where harvesting is happening, they use Geographic Information System analysis and other forms of existing information and see how much old growth is there, and they are supposed to ensure that whatever harvesting is going on doesn't bring the old growth amounts below provincial objectives for the area," said Darlene Oman, spokeswoman for the Forest Practices Board.
"The purpose of the report was to see whether or not these areas were being actually identified and protected to do that preservation, to protect biodiversity," Oman said. "Were the legal orders being carried out? We found that yes, they, the licensees, were doing that work."
There are 55,000 identified stands of old-growth in the province, amounting to about four million hectares. The intention is to protect certain amounts of it to allow a natural ecosystem to perpetually cycle, with tracts of the working forests at different stages of growth in all areas of B.C.
What the Forest Practices Board audit did not do was "ground truth" the information by sending people out into the cutblocks to observe if the claims of old-growth protection were actually true, but Oman said there are many checks and balances in the harvesting rules that would indicate likely problems if any existed. The fact the licensees are actually making the plans to quantify and identify old growth, so each district's provincial targets are met, is the big first step.
Some of the old-growth is formally mapped but much of it is "aspacially" accounted for, which means actual surveying and line-drawing on maps has not occurred.
"We saw examples of forest companies voluntarily protecting old-growth management areas to ensure they are meeting the province's objectives," said board chair Al Gorley. "However, because many of these areas do not have legal status, that protection is not guaranteed in the future. Even with legal status, protection is not assured when other industries operating on public land are not subject to the old-growth rules."
Even the government itself has posed the notion of allowing more old-growth logging in order to keep mills afloat in areas hit hardest by the pine beetle devastation.
A committee of MLAs is working now to study the supply of merchantable timber out there on the forest floor, and the ways the pine shortfall can be made up. John Rustad, MLA for Nechako-Lakes, is chairing that analysis team.
Rustad said the Forest Practices Board report will be taken into account as the committee develops suggestions on how to tackle a looming shortage of timber for Interior sawmills.
One option the committee will consider is to ease constraints on harvesting in areas set aside for other purposes, such as visual quality objectives, preserving old-growth forest and providing corridors for wildlife.
"All of the information that's out there are things that we will be taking into consideration," Rustad said. "There are obviously some critical components to some of the restrictions that are on the land base, whether it's from a wilderness tourism perspective to an ecological and wildlife perspective, and so all of those will be factors in the discussions. But really, the consultation going out is to ask the people what are the priorities we should be thinking about, what local knowledge should we keep in mind, those types of things are what we're looking for input on."
The committee will be in Prince George on Thursday, June 21, at the Ramada from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
A discussion paper and further information on how to participate in the public consultation can be found at www.leg.bc.ca/timbercommittee. The deadline for submissions is July 20.
