Does BC need more small-scale forestry?
Managing forested lands for community benefit is not a new concept. Evidence of humans clearing forests with fire to modify ecosystems dates back to the Middle Pleistocene, around 400,000 years ago. These ‘first foresters’ significantly predate the ‘first farmers’, whose food crops appeared a mere 12,000 years ago during the Neolithic Revolution.
Following millennia of altering forests to support community needs, including the traditional forest clearing and harvesting practices of Indigenous Peoples, Western science-based forest management practices emerged in the 18th century from a desire to create a quantifiable and rationalized discipline. This led to forestry entering academia at the turn of the 19th century, the upshot of which established management principles and silvicultural practices, initially, to support the creation of production forests.
By the start of the 20th century, sentiments about how forests should be viewed and used began to shift, giving rise to a sustainable forestry movement that continues today. As opposed to managing solely for timber production, the goal of sustainable forestry is to take a wide-lens, systemic view that accounts for the forests and lands on which they are found, as well as the human and biodiverse populations that forests support.
Today, the ethos of sustainable forestry can be found all over the world — nowhere more than in smaller, localized forest operations like community forests. This is a topic that Dr. Meike Siegner (PhD(Forestry)’21), Senior Manager of Project Design and Standards with Taking Root, knows well. Meike’s PhD dissertation investigated success factors in community forest enterprises, and she has published extensively on community forestry structures and policy-making.
“Community forest ownership starts from the premise of being and remaining in place, which keeps the operations and jobs in the community,” says Meike. “This differs from larger corporate structures based on global markets and pricing, where company headquarters can be located anywhere in the world, distant from the community members and values impacted by forest operations, and with a great deal of the profits flowing outside of the community.”
In British Columbia, historic policies and existing supply chains have tended to favour high-volume, large-scale harvesting operations focused on cost-minimization to produce competitive commodity productsfor global markets. In comparison, smaller, decentralized operations, such as community forests, often pursue alternative strategies focused on generating value for their land, as well as investing in their forestsand communities to ensure their combined long-term viability.
“Forestry in BC is presently in the midst of recognizing the problems inherent to centralizing forest management, including that local values are difficult to codify in legislation that tends to apply equally to everyone,” explains UBC Faculty of Forestry & Environmental Stewardship Assoc. Prof. Harry Nelson.
“The growth in scale and impact of forest harvesting have meant that other values on the land beyond timber production have too often been overlooked,” Harry adds. Attempts by the Government of BC to offer clearer direction on who can access forest management areas and for what purpose through new policy frameworks, such as the 2021 Forest Landscape Planning initiative, have made little difference in changing management approaches, so far.
BC’s roughly 62 community forests range in size from 360 hectares to 185,000 hectares at the top end of the scale, with a total of about 3.5 million cubic metres of annual harvest in the province allocated for small tenures such as these.10 By comparison, the total available annual allowable cut in timber supply areas on BC’s public lands sits at around 42.4 million cubic metres, with 21.5 million cubic metres held by five large forest companies.11
On the forest products value chain, pulp and 2x4s sit at one end, representing lower-value products that are easier to mass produce and sell on existing national and international supply chains. At the oppositeend are value-added products like mass timber, furniture and bioplastics from a wide variety of sources, including lower-value trees and forest residues. At present, these higher-value products are under-represented in BC’s value chain, with value-added production using only 7% of the total harvest.12
Scaling up value-added manufacturing has become a target of the BC government’s forest policy modernization strategy. The Kalesnikoff Lumber facility in the West Kootenays is a rare example of a BC manufacturer using a variety of high- and lower-grade trees to produce marketable value-added products. Family-owned and medium-sized, Kalesnikoff operates sawmilling and multi-species mass timber manufacturing facilities, as well as conducts sustainable woodlands management.
But, while BC’s community forests are also well-positioned to venture into value-added production, several roadblocks remain in their path. “The current scale of community forests in BC is conducive to supporting a strong and vibrant value-added market segment; however, a lack of available processing facilities and equipment are making it more challenging to scale up,” says FES Dean Rob Kozak . “To compete with larger, established forest companies, community forests in BC could cluster together and collaborate to produce value-added products that can integrate into existing supply chains.”
A scattering of more small- to medium-sized forest operations, such as Kalesnikoff, across the province could offer innovative and agile forest solutions for community forests, establishing new markets while managing for a tailored set of community, cultural and environmental values and needs. Community forests could also offer an economic boost, particularly for Indigenous, rural and remote communities. Even now, community forests employ, on average, 76% more local workers than the industry average, according to 2022 statistics from the BC Community Forest Association.
In Mexico, the tide turned in the direction of community forest ownership following a period of government reforms in the early 1900s, including the enactment of a new constitution in 1917, coupled with significant grassroots action. Today, community ownership covers over 50 million hectares of the country’s 63 million hectares of forest.16 Communities also own a greater share of the production of forest products through small- to medium-sized forest enterprises, with the monies flowing back to communities, as opposed to multinational organizations.
Changing values and landscapes in BC are adding to the voices calling for policy reform to shift more momentum toward community ownership. Much of BC’s harvestable forest now consists of second growth stands of lesser value. These same forests are under increased pressure from climate change, floods, wildfires, pests, diseases and political uncertainty in the form of tariffs and duties. Urban encroachment and competing values on the land are also raising the stakes, as more interest groups — eco-tourism, recreation, hunting, fishing, biodiversity conservation, habitat preservation, among others — vie for a seat at the table.
“I see a lot of folks in forestry constrained by the legacies of power under which they work,” says FES PhD student Dane Pedersen, whose research focuses on analyzing the shifting relationships betweensociety and nature in emerging forest management practices, processes and policies. “There are government officials acting in good faith, trying to make a difference, trying to address some of the issues in this sector, but they are bound by the existing policies and don’t have the latitude to challenge some of the foundational tenets on which this country was built.”
