Over the last two-and-one-half years, the Board has become concerned about the occasional failure of government officials to give adequate weight to environmental damage when setting penalties for Forest Practices Code contraventions.

Forestry officials are experienced at calculating the value of timber, and they are generally efficient at calculating timber values that have been affected by contraventions. However, in some cases, officials have not given full consideration to the environmental and other non-timber values affected.

The Board monitors penalty decisions by receiving public concerns, scrutinizing all review panel decisions and receiving copies of certain district manager decisions. The Board then has the opportunity to appeal district manager decisions to a civil servant “review panel” or to appeal review panel decisions to the independent Forest Appeals Commission (FAC).

Section 41 of the Forest Practices Code of British Columbia Act (the Act) governs the approval of operational plans to effect forest operations on Crown land. An operational plan in the Act means a forest development plan, logging plan, range use plan, silviculture prescription, stand management prescription and site plan. Section 41(1)(a) states that district managers may only approve an operational plan if it has been prepared according to the Forest Practices Code of British Columbia Act and related regulations (the Code). It also states in section 41(1)(b) that district managers must be satisfied that the plan will “adequately manage and conserve” forest resources in the area of the plan. Section 41 was to be informed by strategic planning as provided for in Part 2 of the Forest Practices Code of British Columbia Act. Without a completed Code, there has been a greater need for discretion in the section 41 decisions by statutory decision-makers.

The Forest Practices Code has requirements in place to ensure that bridges along logging roads are built, maintained and removed safely and don’t cause harm to the environment or to the people using them. However, bridge maintenance problems are showing up more frequently in the Board’s recent audits.

Over half of all bridges audited by the Forest Practices Board for maintenance obligations in the past two years were not in compliance with the regulations of the Forest Practices Code. In this period alone, three audits have turned up instances of significant non-compliance in the bridge maintenance programs of licensees in British Columbia’s public forests.

The Forest Development Planning Special Project is a broad-based review of the current status of forest development planning throughout BC. The purpose of the project is to provide a public report about the state of forest development planning and the resulting forest development plans (FDPs) in the province.

Eighteen forest development plans were randomly selected for review: one FDP from each of three forest districts within each of the six forest regions in the province. Included in the three FDPs from each region is one Small Business Forest Enterprise Program (SBFEP) plan. The plans were all approved or in effect during 1999. Data were collected through review of the FDP content and review and comment input contained in the FDPs, as well as from interviews. The project did not include field inspection or verification.

The project methods included:

• comparison of each of the 18 FDPs to an FDP content checklist to assess the degree of Code compliance;
• interviews with 361 individuals including the FDP preparers, legislated FDP approvers, review agencies, First Nations, licensed users, interested parties and the public; and
• review of findings from other Board work (compliance audits, investigations, and reviews) related to forest development planning.