BC Forestry

Just under 50 million hectares of the province’s land area is productive forest land. 48 million hectares of this area, or approximately 94 percent of land that is actively logged, are owned by the province (thus called “Crown Land”) and managed by the Ministry of Forests. 96 percent of BC’s forested land is coniferous, making BC home to around half of the country’s softwood inventory.

The province’s forests are divided into two different major forest regions: the coast and the interior. Hemlock is the dominant species in coastal region forests, while lodgepole pine and spruce are the major species in interior forests. Coastal forests account for 30 percent of BC’s total harvest while interior forests account for 70 percent.

The history of BC’s forest sector goes through six major stages. The first stage occurred prior to European colonization, when much of BC was inhabited by First Nation peoples who utilized a plethora of forest species for everything from food, medicine, housing and clothing to cookware, furniture and tools. Forests and their associated biota played (and still play) an important role in First Nation cultural practices and economies. Some of their historic activities within forests are recorded by "culturally modified trees" (CMTs), which are important indicators of First Nation traditional territory.

BC Timber Harvest by Species, 2001 (million cubic metres)
(Source: BC Stats)

Species	Volume	Percent
Lodgepole pine	22.9	31.7
Spruce	12.4	17.2
Douglas Fir	10.8	15
Hemlock	8.3	11.5
Balsam	7.1	9.8
Cedar	6.2	8.6
Other	4.5	6.2
Total	72	100

The second major stage of BC's forest sector is marked by a major influx of European colonists in the mid-eighteen hundreds when forests began to be exploited for European industry and trade. Up to 1912, the provincial government was primarily interested in developing the industry by attracting labour and capital. Most of the six percent of private land that currently exists within the province was granted during this period to promote the industry.

The third stage began in 1912 when British Columbia's Forest Act was established, which allowed the province to manage public lands as "forest reserves" using a tenure system to regulate private forest activities. One-time harvesting was allowed for stands on public land, which was regulated by the Forest Service.

In 1947, an amendment to the Forest Act brought in a new stage for the forest sector that emphasized maximum sustainable yield. This allowed the Forest Service the ability to regulate forest activities by not only the area in which they occurred but also the volume of wood harvested. Also introduced during this stage were forest licenses that allowed companies long-term access to forest areas and secured agreements for fibre supply to encourage the development of the pulp mill industry.

In 1978, the forest industry's fifth stage commenced when a new Forest Act introduced Timber Supply Areas (TSAa) and allowable annual cut (AAC), and new forms of licenses replaced their older predecessors. The harvesting that occurs on Crown Land is regulated within different management units called TSAs and tree farm licenses. Private operators are allowed to harvest their AAC within these areas under these licensing agreements. Other government regulated forest operations also exist within the province, like the Small Business Forest Enterprise Program and Woodlot Licenses. In 1995, the province also introduced the Forest Practices Code under the New Democratic Party (NDP) government, a series of strict regulations that restricted the activities of forest operations to address the growing public and governmental concern for sustainable and environmentally sound forest practices.

The sixth and final stage of BC's forest sector has yet to play out. In January of 2004, the province instituted new regulations based on the Forest and Range Practices Act, which was created in 2002 by the Liberal Government under Gordon Campbell. The new regulations replaced the Forest Practices Code with "results-based" forest management, which deregulated many forest activities. Essentially, the onus was taken away from companies to prove that they are meeting a set of provincial regulations; instead, companies were encouraged by government to achieve specific results and protect ecosystem values with their own cost-saving methods. The impact of this change in regulatory focus on the forest industry and rural BC, where the economy is primarily resource-based, has yet to be fully studied.

Some of the major forest products produced in BC include lumber, pulp, paper, newsprint and plywood; however, Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) are also gaining prominence in BC. These are forest ecosystem resources that are not traditionally accounted for or regulated by forest management, and include everything from floral products like salal to specialty-market food products like Chanterelle, Pine and Morel mushrooms.

BC Forest Product Exports, 2001
(Source: BC Stats)

Commodity	$Millions	Percent
Softwood lumber	6522	45.1
Pulp	3068	21.2
Paper and paperboard	1330	9.2
Value-added products	956	6.6
Newsprint	623	4.3
Cedar shakes and shingles	334	2.3
Plywood	224	1.5
Other	1407	9.7
Total	14463	100