We have been deluged by responses to Barry Wynsma's thoughtful essay on Forest Service leadership - or the lack thereof. Provided here is some feedback on the essay.
New Brunswick
| Population: | 756,652 |
| Total Area: | 7.3 million ha |
| Land Area: | 7.2 million ha |
| Forest Land: | 6.1 million ha |
| Provincial Parks: | 23,451 ha |
New Brunswick measures roughly the size of South Carolina and would slide handily into a corner of most Canadian jurisdictions. Even so, you can see forests from every highway in the province, often reaching unbroken to the horizon. Trees cover 85% of the landscape—a greater proportion of forested terrain than any other province in the country. What’s more, the New Brunswick government has one of the most sophisticated forest management programs in North America. Reasons for this are twofold.
First, New Brunswick’s social and cultural traditions are intertwined with forestry. It has buttressed the provincial economy since Thomas Jefferson was a babe in arms, and today more than 18,000 New Brunswickers work directly or indirectly in the industry. Visit any local museum, and you’ll find walls hung with rusty bucksaws and peavey handles alongside faded photographs of men driving logs downstream. This sense of history encourages constant adaptation, helping New Brunswick forestry folk to incorporate lessons from the past with a powerful vision of the future.
Second, more than half of New Brunswick’s forests grow on Crown land, which the province owns. Government thus can administer Crown woodlands to suit all aspects of its forest management program. Put simply, the program aims to integrate values such as water quality, biodiversity and wildlife habitat, the so-called non-timber values, with industry’s need for sustainable volumes of timber. Bob Dick is manager of Forest Management Planning with the provincial Department of Natural Resources, and explains: “Our ultimate goal is to balance all forestry objectives, economic, social and environmental, while making sure the Crown forests are sustainably managed for the long term.”
Which brings us to the keystone of Crown forest management in New Brunswick: the Crown Lands and Forests Act.
The Crown Lands and Forests Act was proclaimed in 1982 after years of preparation and consultation. It divides New Brunswick Crown land into ten timber licenses ranging in size from 277 to 2,641 square miles. Each license is leased through a 25-year forest management agreement to a large forest-based company: the licensee. Licensees manage their Crown forest licenses under the administration of Department of Natural Resources personnel.
The act gives the licensees access to timber on Crown land in exchange for meeting specific ‘objectives and standards’ set by government (more about those in a moment). Binding contracts called Forest Management Agreements define the responsibilities of each party.
 Selecting spruce cones at Kingsclear Provincial Nursery. The nursery produces 20-25 million seedlings annually for New Brunswick Crown forests |
• Establish forest management objectives reflecting current society values and new scientific data.
• Define standards that licensees must follow while carrying out those objectives on Crown land.
• Monitor all activities of forest companies operating on Crown land.
Each licensee must:
• Develop a forest management strategy incorporating all objectives set by government.
• Produce a forest management plan describing how it will meet those objectives. Management plans cover a 25-year period, are updated every five years and must be sustainable over an eighty-year planning horizon.
• Produce an annual operating plan. These highly detailed reports show how the company will carry out the strategies, how it will conduct harvesting and silviculture activities with appropriate attention to biodiversity and other environmental concerns.
The Department of Natural Resources regularly monitors forestry operations on Crown land across the province. Staff members assess criteria ranging from silviculture activities, road construction and harvesting methods to wildlife habitat and water quality. Billie Lewis is the department’s Monitoring Coordinator and spends at least three months a year in the field with his inspectors. “Our job,” says Mr. Lewis, “is to visit the harvest and silviculture operations, making sure people follow the government’s requirements and the licensee’s own management plans.
We monitor how they construct watercourse crossings, whether they’re leaving proper buffer strips beside streams, the size of their deer wintering yards, that sort of thing.” Inspectors also check that forestry companies meet specific operating standards while working on Crown licenses. The standards are designed to make the most sustainable use of Crown timber, while at the same time limiting environmental disturbance.
Every five years, the department formally assesses each licensee’s management performance over the past five years. If satisfactory, if the company has honoured its management objectives, the department extends the 25-year forest management agreement for another five years. If unsatisfactory, the agreement is not extended, and the department requires the licensee to take corrective action.
And now for a closer look at New Brunswick’s forest management goals to see how they play out on the ground. The Department of Natural Resources defines two categories of forest management goals or ‘objectives’: timber and non-timber. The timber goal is to harvest the maximum sustainable volume of wood from each Crown license while accommodating non-timber objectives. Non-timber objectives concern the social and environmental aspects of forest management—values such as biodiversity, wildlife habitat, water quality and protected natural areas.
The timber objective of Crown forest management appears straightforward; yet achieving that objective is anything but simple. Government must consider two vital issues: How much timber can be removed? And how and where can timber be harvested?
Each forest management agreement addresses the question of ‘how much’ by specifying the volume of timber that licensees can remove from their licenses. The so-called annual allowable harvest, the sustainable harvest level, represents the volume that can be harvested from a Crown license year after year without depleting the resource. Scientists calculate the sustainable harvest levels through a detailed wood supply analysis that incorporates timber and non-timber objectives. The total wood volume harvested by all Crown licensees in New Brunswick cannot exceed the province’s annual allowable harvest. Government and licensee personnel track the actual harvest from each license.
The ‘how and where’ of timber harvesting is even more complex, sometimes involving an acre-by-acre scrutiny of each operating plan. In brief, the government encourages licensees to tailor their harvest methods to suit different types of forest stands. Clear-cutting is appropriate for some stand conditions, and alternative harvest methods are preferable for others. About 30% of Crown forest stands are now selectively cut, part of a provincial trend towards using non-clearcut methods.
New Brunswick’s forest management philosophy emphasizes the importance of accommodating non-timber goals while meeting timber objectives. Close to a third of provincial Crown land is managed for the protection of biodiversity, wildlife habitat, watercourses and recreational or protected natural areas. The most striking aspect of these non-timber goals is their degree of refinement. Rather than vague statements such as “licensees must preserve old forest habitat,” government spells out the types of tree community, the percentage to be maintained, the trunk size of mature trees... even the decayed quality of their branches.
Here is one example. Tree communities are fundamental to forest biodiversity. Their complex ecological systems support a characteristic assemblage of wildlife, insects and other organisms. Crown forests in New Brunswick support nine types of naturally occurring tree communities named for the species dominating upper levels of the forest stand, e.g. Balsam Fir. Companies first must identify where each type of tree community grows on the license and report that data in their management plans. Next, their harvest schedules must ensure that 12% of the total area for each type remains in a mature stage, ‘mature’ meaning trees at least 18 inches in diameter and/or with deteriorating uppermost branches.
Forest habitat objectives are similarly refined. Scientists working on Crown land in New Brunswick have identified six types of old forest habitat needed for wildlife survival. Government requires licensees to track the total area of each habitat type on their license and monitor its continued presence. Further, they must maintain individual ‘patches’ on the ground, sized according to the habitat type. Old Spruce-Fir Habitat, for instance, is preserved in patches measuring at least 927 acres.
New Brunswick winters are not aggressive by Alaskan or even Michigan standards, but local white-tailed deer need protective habitat to survive the low temperatures and deep snow. Licensees maintain a specified area of land on each license as deer habitat. Deer wintering areas on Crown land presently total 680,000 acres. Another area under special management is watercourse buffer zones, vegetated strips of land immediately adjacent to banks of lakes, rivers and streams. Buffer zones protect watercourses from effects of erosion, soil compaction and siltation caused by tree harvesting. Timber removal is permitted in buffer strips, as long as their protective function is maintained. Licensees also must leave an aesthetic buffer zone 98 feet wide beside all numbered highways in the province.
New Brunswick recognizes the intrinsic worth of sites with exceptional aesthetic, cultural or ecological value. Protection of such sites is yet another forest management goal, one that mirrors evolving society values within and beyond the province. Government recently has established ten Protected Natural Areas across New Brunswick. They total approximately 383,240 acres and occur mainly on Crown land. Forest management activities in these areas are disallowed or highly restricted.
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Silviculture work such as tree planting and pre-commercial thinning can boost the rate of natural forest renewal. Properly tended tree stands, ones that are cleaned and thinned on schedule, grow more quickly and produce more timber in less time than do untended forests. The end result: larger volumes of sustainable timber over the long term. Government requires Crown licensees to plant trees and conduct thinning on specified areas of their licenses. Since the 1970s, silviculture workers have planted 583 million trees and treated 716,590 acres of forest stands on Crown land.
Mike McDonald coordinates the provincial forest inventory, which, according to him, is “the best forest inventory in Canada. We use it daily in forest management decision-making ... to analyze timber supply, determine sustainable harvest levels, forecast biodiversity requirements, you name it.” The most recent inventory began in 1993 and is updated, 10% of the province annually, on a continuous ten-year cycle.
New Brunswick’s forest management program may be sophisticated, but it still is evolving. Government adjusts its strategies every five years to reflect new inventory data, recent scientific advances and changing society values. New Brunswick’s commitment to aboriginal harvesting rights and forest certification are two cases in point.
The province recently signed five-year harvesting agreements with each of New Brunswick’s fifteen First Nations. They receive 5% of the annual allowable harvest from Crown forests, all royalties generated by the aboriginal timber harvest, and proceeds from the sale of that timber. In 2002 New Brunswick also became the world’s first jurisdiction to require forest certification of all licensees operating on Crown land. Licensees must be certified under the ISO14001 Environmental Management System. As well they must be certified and routinely audited under an independent Sustainable Forest Management System, either CSA, the Canadian certification standard, the Forest Stewardship Council [FSC] or the Sustainable Forestry Initiative [SFI].
New Brunswick’s willingness to constantly adapt its forest management strategies is “perhaps our greatest strength,” says Bob Dick. “We’ve been at this a long time. Whenever we add new objectives, improve the inventory, and so on, we’re in a better position to find common ground between the various users of our Crown forests.”
Which, it seems, is the end game of wise forest management.
human need to use natural resources is fundamental to our continued presence on earth."