The B.C. government has no long-term plan for managing B.C.'s future timber supply, B.C. Auditor General John Doyle has concluded in a new report.
B.C.'s forests have been ravaged in recent years by both fire and the mountain pine beetle.
Approximately 22 million of B.C.'s 95 million hectares of forest are available for timber production and harvesting. As Doyle points out in his report, forest companies that harvest Crown timber are required by law to replace what they cut.
"When industry harvests from this land, it is legally required to, and does, reforest it," Doyle writes in his report.
But there is no such obligation on the B.C. government to replace timber lost to non-industrial forces, such as development, fire and disease.
"As such, very limited replanting has occurred," Doyle writes. "While not legally obligated to reforest damaged areas, this should not prevent government from acting in the public interest by actively managing these areas."
Doyle makes three key points in his report:
• the B.C. government has no clearly defined timber management objectives, without which it cannot ensure it will have effective management practices;
• current practices do not anticipate future forests having a lower timber supply and less species diversity;
• the government has no monitoring and reporting mechanism to measure timber management results against objectives.
"In light of the devastation resulting from mountain pine beetle, the ministry [of forests, land and natural resource operations] has a window of opportunity to shape our future forests and mitigate the impact with a timely, strategic reforestation plan and cost-effective silviculture," Doyle concludes.
"To do this, government needs to establish a provincial plan that states its long-term timber objectives."
