More details have emerged on new, long-term woodland licences that will be made available to First Nations.
The province expects that 40 to 50 First Nations will be interested in the 25-year licences, which would provide, on average, for 20,000 cubic metres of timber to be harvested each year. That's about 450 logging truck loads of timber, and similar in size to recent community forests awards in northern B.C. in places like Smithers, Burns Lake, Mackenzie and Dunster.
The province says the timber for the new First Nation's licences will be supplied by timber that was taken away from major forest companies several years ago.
The timber was taken back from major forest companies as part of the B.C. Liberal government's sweeping forestry reforms.
The province says it's difficult to predict when the first licence will be awarded because following the signing of an interim agreement, a management plan needs to be approved.
The province said it is working with the Huu-ahy-aht First Nation on Vancouver Island to be one of the first to receive this licence.
B.C. Forests Minister Steve Thomson made the new tenure announcement Tuesday on national aboriginal day, but few details were immediately available.
The new form of tenure was first announced by the B.C. Liberal government more than a year ago, when it introduced enabling legislation. Since then, the forests ministry has been working on the regulations that put the new tenure into effect.
The new tenure makes good on a recommendation from the Liberal's roundtable on forestry delivered more than two years ago.
The tenures, starting at a duration of 25 years, would give exclusive rights to First Nations to harvest timber on Crown land. First Nations would also have the right to cut timber, manage and charge fees for botanical forest products.
The B.C. First Nations Forestry Council has said the tenures are a move in the right direction, but cautioned that a big challenge will be finding enough timber volume to create the licences.
