General News · 10th December 2019
Nancy Beach
I have not yet had a response to my yesterday's email to our Registered Professional Forester, Ione Brown, below. But, I think it makes sense to postpone her "deadline of Dec. 13" for anyone to submit their recommendations to improve the 5 year Cortes Forest Operating Plan. Please let her know if you approve Bruce Ellingsen's recommendation to limit the Annual Harvest to 15-20% of the Annual Incremental Growth (AIG) of the trees on the entire Community Forest land base. His recommendation was derived from results from the few studies that he found that reflect the long-term, sustainable dynamic of removal of nutrients by Harvesting/Extraction/Predation activities (HEP rate) from complex, interconnected, interdependent living ecosystems in nature. And, I am still waiting for our Forest Manager to agree on Tideline to limit cutting of trees to those less than 3 feet in diameter at chest height. Ione provided her email contact information in her previous Tideline submission. Merry Christmas, Everybody!
Editor's note: Nancy received a reply, please contact her directly if you want to discuss details.
also no reply
Comment by Ian Lennon on 11th December 2019
Ha, and i found notice of the plan posted in whistler. In pique news magazine. For Cortes' forest. . . ?
How 'bout we leave the forest there. Rather asking our children to replant it. . .
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/planting-billions-trees-best-tackle-climate-crisis-scientists-canopy-emissions
re clarification
Comment by Nancy Beach on 11th December 2019
Thank you, Mark Lombard, for trying to clarify things in my muddled brain. But, when I clicked on the link to the (recently renamed to) CFMO document on the CFGP website, it said, "Oops!", & had no such document to show me.
I appreciate that the CFGP doesn't harvest the largest trees in general. But, I think we need a "hard rule" that trees over 36" in diameter at chest height are not to be cut. That is because rules that are not hard can be broken!
CFGP Points of Clarification
Comment by Mark Lombard on 10th December 2019
The document up for the review at this time is the Forest Stewardship Plan (FSP).
The FSP is a requirement under the Forest and Range Practices Act and must be reviewed every five years. The public comment period has been open for 10 weeks and the revised document must be completed and approved by government by April 2020.
There are two other planning documents that the CFGP has developed to guide its activities going forward, both of which are separate from the FSP.
The first is the Community Forest Management Objectives (CFMO), which has been developed as a means of expressing the values of our communities as they relate to the management of the tenure.
The second is the 5-year operating plan which is an outline of where the community forest expects to operate in the next five years. The dates, volumes, and sequence of activities are only projections and subject to change based on a range of factors including, but not limited to, log markets, infrastructure and access, weather, and contractor availability.
There are no changes being made to the CFMO or 5-year plan at this time, and it is not possible under the regulations to include either as part of the revised FSP.
Given the multiple aspects involved in managing the community forest, it is necessary to have these three separate document in order to clearly define how the tenure is managed. All of these documents and supporting background information are available on the CFGP website.
In general, the CFGP does not harvest the largest trees in any area. As such almost no trees over 36" at breast height have been harvested in the community forest to date and that policy will continue in the future. This is not a hard rule and the CFGP's policy is to maintain operational flexibility going forward.
The CFGP welcomes input at any time from members of the community. All comments are taken into consideration on an ongoing basis.