Performance Reporting

Goal 1: Sustainable Forest Resources

As stewards of British Columbia's forest and range resources, the Forest Service has the responsibility to ensure:

• That the use of the forests to generate economic benefits is balanced with the long-term health of the forest and range resources;
• The use of appropriate forest and range management practices to maintain and improve the long-term sustainability and health of the province's forest, range and recreation resources; and
• That incremental investments in the forest resource are effective.

Key outcome indicators of sustainable forest resources were chosen to represent the extent of the forest landbase, timber productivity, ecosystem health of the forests and rangelands, and compliance of forest operators with laws governing forest and range practices.

Key Outcome Indicator: Sustainable Forest Landbase

The area in provincial forest reflects provincial land use decisions. Changes would be expected if the government removed Crown land from forest management for other uses (e.g., preservation, parks or agriculture, or Crown land sales) or converted land from other uses to forest management.

Provincial forestland for the purposes of this measure is the Crown land in timber supply areas, tree farm licences, woodlot licences and community forest agreements. Data are from the Ministry of Forests Allowable Annual Cut (AAC) database, as at January 1 each year. This measure was 47.8 million hectares at January 1, 2003 and reduced to 47.7 million hectares at the 2004 reporting period. The small reduction in the productive forest area reflects updated inventory information and minor changes to land use and administration.

Key Outcome Indicators: Sustainable Timber Productivity

The ministry uses measures of reforestation and losses from fire to represent sustainable timber productivity. These measures use data from the past five years.

The area reforested includes planting and natural regeneration and is net of reforestation failures. Harvesting is by any method. Losses to fire and pest are unsalvageable.

• A ratio of 1.0 would indicate that areas being reforested are in balance with those being harvested or lost to fire and pest. A ratio of less than 1.0 reflects a trend towards increased Not Sufficiently Restocked (NSR) with more area being harvested or lost to fire and pest than reforested.
• The ratio was greater than 1.0 from 1993 to 1999 reflecting a focus on backlog reforestation through cost sharing with the Federal Government under Forest Resource Development Agreements and activities funded by Forest Renewal BC.
• Forest licensees are meeting their legal obligations to reforest harvested areas (Forest Practices Board report in 2002).
• The decline is due to limited reforestation of backlog not-satisfactorily-restocked (NSR) areas denuded prior to October 1, 1987 and limited reforestation on areas disturbed by fire and pests between 1988 to 2002. These statistics do not include areas denuded by the Summer of 2003 fires.
• The ministry's policy is that licensees may choose to reforest backlog NSR and areas lost to fire and pest through funding allocated under the Forest Investment Account (FIA). However, insufficient or uncertain year to year funding has resulted in industry focusing on other priorities. Reforestation and tending of backlog and current fire and pest areas are at their lowest levels in 20 years.
• By regulation, forest licensees must report 2003/04 data by May 31, 2004. The most current data available to update the 5-year rolling average for this 2003/04 report includes only reforestation and harvesting activities completed up to March 31, 2003.
• In addition, neither licensees nor government agencies are adequately tracking recent losses to the forest landbase from insects and disease, so it is likely that new NSR areas are increasing faster than natural stocking is decreasing older NSR areas lost to such factors. Consequently, provincial NSR statistics may under-estimate the current area considered NSR.

Unwanted wildfire is unplanned or accidental, with the potential to cause damage to or loss of timber, range or public resources. The total area lost to unwanted wildfire is highly dependent on weather. Data are from the ministry's Historical Fire Statistics Database.

The exceptionally severe 2003 fire season, the worst since 1958, will impact the 5-year rolling average of area lost for the next five years. Extreme weather was the main cause of the severity of the season. Increased residential development encroaching on the forest interface was also a contributing factor. It is hoped that by 2006/07, the area lost will return to the baseline of <30,000 hectares per year.

Key Outcome Indicators: Healthy forests

Healthy forest ecosystems sustain the quality and quantity of soil, water and timber, and therefore, indicate sustainable forest resources. The indicators chosen are linked to national forest criteria and indicators of global forest sustainability. Although the indicators presented here are chosen to represent key elements of healthy ecosystems, these indicators are only meaningful at the ecosystem level, need to be considered over time, and none can be taken by themselves as a sufficient indicator of sustainability. The ministry intends to present more comprehensive information in a "State of the Forests" report published periodically.

All three of the following indicators were introduced in the 2003/04 Service Plan.

Permanent access roads include any un-rehabilitated roads, excavated or bladed trails, landings, pits or quarries. Harvest area is by any method and includes areas with retained mature timber and naturally occurring non-productive areas within the cut block boundary.

• A percentage greater than five per cent indicates that the amount of permanent roads exceeds the long-term (17 year) average but is still within the seven per cent limit set by the regulation under the Forest And Range Practices Act. A percentage less than five per cent indicates areas in permanent roads are below the long-term average.
• By regulation, forest licensees must report 2003/04 data by May 31, 2004. Thus, the most current data available to update the 5-year rolling average includes only reforestation and harvesting activities completed up to March 31, 2003.

All community watersheds with active logging now have watershed assessments completed. Data are from the Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management's Community Watersheds website at srmwww.gov.bc.ca/wat/cws/.

During 2003/04, the definition of forest was changed to align with an international definition¹ (trees are >5 m tall at maturity and tree crown cover is >10%). This change now classifies some alpine and non-productive forest originally included in the 26 million hectares as "other wooded land" rather than forest, and therefore the actual area reported here is 24 million hectares. This does not represent a change in the forest itself.

Data are the best available as of early 2001, compiled into a seamless forest cover inventory for the whole province. Sources include detailed ministry inventories (90% of the province), detailed company inventories (6%), and older, more general inventory for some parks (2%) and more general baseline thematic mapping from satellite imagery for the remainder (2%). When updated over time, any change in area will reflect both actual changes in the forests and changes to new inventory methods.

Key Outcome Indicator: Effective forest protection and management by forest operators

Compliance reflects management decisions and actions of forest operators, and is key to the outcome of sustainable forest resources.

Forest operators include all major and small business licensees. Information is from the ministry's Compliance Information Management System. The rate of compliance has consistently been in excess of 90 per cent for the past eight years.

The 92 per cent compliance rate in 2003/04 is within the expected normal variation for this measure.