In July 2007, a woodlot licensee in the Central Cariboo Forest District (the complainant) filed a complaint with the Forest Practices Board saying that a recent change in the Ministry of Forests and Range’s policy on issuing salvage permits would create a forest health risk on his woodlot.
The complainant has a woodlot licence on Crown land adjacent to his private land parcel. The forest in the woodlot is dominated by Douglas fir, with small amounts of lodgepole pine and spruce. As with many of the Douglas fir stands in the interior, the stands in the woodlot licence have a high degree of bark beetle infestation. The beetle bores into the bark, and heavy infestations can kill the tree. Trees that are weakened by drought, disease or other agents are more susceptible to bark beetle attack and are therefore more likely to facilitate the spread of the infestation.
This investigation assesses the effect of recent range practices in maintaining the ability of upland grasslands to provide forage for livestock and habitat for threatened and endangered grassland species. The investigation is limited to open grasslands in the Interior Douglas Fir (IDF) Biogeoclimatic Zone in the south central portion of BC, because half the grasslands in BC occur in that zone.
In early 2007 the Forest Practices Board began a special investigation of fire hazard assessment and abatement. As a first step, we surveyed all forest licensees in the province harvesting more than 100,000 cubic metres per year and all 12 British Columbia Timber Sales (BCTS) business areas.
Although BCTS is not responsible for hazard assessment and abatement activities, with over 1,100 registrants in the BCTS program we decided it would be most efficient to survey only the 12 business areas.
The purpose of the survey was to understand how licensees are meeting their fire hazard assessment and abatement obligations under the Wildfire Act, specifically assessment methods and abatement practices.
In January 2004, the Forest Practices Board initiated an investigation of bridge and major culvert inspection and maintenance practices on forest service roads (FSRs). This special investigation assessed Ministry of Forests’ compliance with the Forest Practices Code requirements to inspect, repair and maintain bridges and major culverts. The investigation, consisting of both office and site visits, was conducted in the winter and spring of 2004. The Board examined bridges and major culverts on FSRs in six forest districts: Sunshine Coast, North Coast, Peace, Headwaters (including both former Clearwater and Robson Valley districts), Central Cariboo, and Kootenay Lake.
The audit examined BCTS’s operational planning; timber harvesting; road construction, maintenance and deactivation; silviculture; and fire protection practices for the period of August 1, 2002, to August 22, 2003.
As detailed in the Report from the Auditor, the audit found that except for the failure to meet free-growing obligations, the operational planning; timber harvesting; silviculture; road construction maintenance and deactivation; and fire-protection planning and activities of BCTS were in compliance with the Forest Practices Code, in all significant respects.
