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Snapshot #3

More Community Forests for BC!

In 2002, the BC Liberals said they were not interested in community forestry, and considered it “social engineering.” Now, they are more than doubling the community forest program. “There is nothing temporary about community forests,” said Minister of Forests, Mike de Jong.

Since September 2004, eight new BC communities have been invited to apply for five-year probationary community forest licences, and more are expected. Each community has been invited to apply for 20,000 to 30,000 cubic meters of annual harvest – many times larger than the proposed Cortes community forest. These eight communities are: Barrier, Bella Coola, Clearwater, Masset, Powell River, Sechelt, Terrace, & Ucluelet. It has been made clear, however, that the government will not be inviting applications from communities with ‘unresolved stakeholder issues’. And although CES has continually made our desires known to government, we on Cortes currently have unresolved stakeholder issues.

De Jong promised that the majority of these new community forests would be awarded through an open and competitive process where only the best applications would be accepted. Instead, all eight communities have been hand-picked by the Liberals and specifically invited to apply. In December, at the BC Community Forest Association’s AGM, even de Jong admitted that these community forest invitations have been largely political allocations, helping to appease communities recently hit by mill closures and industry downturns.

This is BC’s second round of community forests. Four to six year ago, 11 communities were awarded ‘agreements in principle.’ Eight of those are now operational – meaning the trees are coming down. These eight are Bamfield/Huu-ay-aht, Burns Lake, Cheslatta Carrier First Nation, Esketemc First Nation in Alkali Lake, Fort St. James, Harrop-Procter, Likely/Xatsu’ll First Nation and McBride.

In addition to the eight new invitations, there have been other recent improvements to existing community forests. Kaslo and Creston have been invited to convert their industrial community licences into proper community forests. Fort St. James has been granted a three year extension on its five-year pilot agreement, and Burns Lake and Alkali Lake have been awarded BC’s first two long-term community forests, each with a 25-year term.

Community forests are becoming a larger and more permanent part of BC’s landscape. Read on for Bella Coola’s story, one of the recent community forest invitees.

Noba Anderson
Executive Director, Cortes Ecoforestry Society

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