Reform forestry management in BC so that it serves the long-term needs of local communities and supports a truly sustainable industry, where community and ecosystem values are the primary focus of management.
Take back control of our forests from major corporations, ensuring forestry is meeting the needs of local communities. Our forests are a public resource that belongs to the people of BC, and we need to start managing them that way. To achieve this goal the BC Greens would:
Reinstate government authority in decision-making at provincial and local levels, beginning with enhancing the authority of district managers to refuse or amend permits.
Begin a process of tenure reform to redistribute tenures from a few major companies and grow the proportion of tenures held by First Nations and community forests.
Establish a forester general position, an officer of the legislature who is non-partisan and reports to the House annually.
Establish a Chief Scientist as a counterpart to the Chief Forester to ensure multiple values are adequately incorporated into timber supply analysis.
Enhance capacity in FLNRO and establish more community based Ministry of Forests staff, to support the sustainable management of local forest resources and provide well-paying community jobs.
— From _The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC_.
Shift the management framework through reforming legislation, away from an exclusive focus on timber supply to managing for all the values that our forests hold.
Adopt a wider variety of logging practices, including selective logging and longer stand rotations.
Undertake landscape-level ecosystem-based planning, reforestation and restoration in partnership with local communities and First Nations.
Protect communities from wildfires and flooding through landscape level ecologically-centered, forest management and fuel treatment projects.
Restore government capacity to ensure forest stewardship, monitoring and enforcement, and enhance funding for forest inventory research and primary research.
— From _The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC_.
Immediately move to fully implement the recommendations of the old growth review panel in partnership with First Nations. This includes:
- An immediate end to the logging of old growth forests in high risk ecosystems across the province.
- Enacting legislation that establishes conservation of ecosystem health and biodiversity of BC's forests as an overarching priority.
Establish funding mechanisms to support the preservation of our old growth forests.
— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.
Ensure that small producers have access to fibre and incentive value-added product innovation, including non-traditional uses of wood fibre including bio fuels, and productive uses of residual fibre.
Apply the carbon tax to slash-pile burning to reduce carbon emissions form our forestry sector and ensure that we use residual materials.
Put an end to raw log exports.
Ensure the benefits of B.C. resource flow to local communities by directly sharing more resource revenues with local First Nations, municipalities, and regional districts.
Better support (sic) forestry workers and communities, including through expanding investments into retraining and support finding new job opportunities.
Investigate opportunities to diversify milling and secondary manufacturing to better use existing timber.
Promote more sustainable development of forest resources, including investing in tourism opportunities and low-carbon economies.
— From _The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC_.