As a part of its 2009 audit program, the Forest Practices Board randomly selected the Cascades Forest District, located in the Southern Interior Forest Region, for an audit of the appropriateness of government enforcement of forest and range practices legislation.
The audit examined enforcement activities under the Forest and Range Practices Act and the Wildfire Act from January 1, 2008, until March 4, 2010. This report describes the results of the audit, which looked at activities such as tracking, inspecting and reporting licensees’ forest activities, and taking action to address non-compliance.
In August 2009, the Forest Practices Board conducted an audit of visual resource management in the Kamloops Timber Supply Area portion of the Headwaters Forest District. Visual resource management is the process of identifying and classifying scenic landscapes, and managing forestry activities on the landscape to meet the visual needs of the public, visitors and other resource users.
In July 2009, a resident of Kamloops submitted a complaint about motorcycle and other off-road vehicle use resulting in vegetation and habitat destruction across the province. The complainant identified the Sonora Road area east of Kamloops as an example, asserting that off-road vehicle (ORV) use has caused:
- Extensive soil disturbance
- Erosion
- Potential for slope destabilization
- Disturbance of wildlife
- Damage to aesthetics
- Conflicts with hiking and wildlife viewing
- Destruction of rare dryland vegetation
- Destruction of key wildlife habitat
The complainant gave several examples of substantive and obvious alteration of the environment by ORV users. For example, in the Sonora Road area, sagebrush areas have been impacted by ORV users driving in ever-increasing circles in formerly undisturbed meadows—either flattening the sagebrush or uprooting it entirely.
On October 13, 2009, the Forest Practices Board received a complaint that some range tenure holders were not respecting an agreement about a no-grazing buffer zone in the Meadow Valley and that government’s enforcement of that agreement had not been effective. The Board consulted with the complainant and the Ministry of Forests and Range (MFR) to try to settle the complaint. This is the resulting resolution report.
In British Columbia, use of Crown range is regulated by the Range Act and the Forest and Range Practices Act (FRPA). The Range Act provides the authority to grant range agreements, including permits and licences. These agreements include things like the tenure area and the amount of forage that can be consumed by livestock on Crown land. Similar to the former Forest Practices Code, FRPA provides the necessary authority for government to manage the Crown land resource. This includes authority to require the agreement holder to prepare a range plan and follow practice requirements.
The investigation found that the current framework for range planning under FRPA is not working well for agreement holders, MFR range staff or for management of the range resource. First, there is widespread uncertainty about what the objectives for range mean and what is required to achieve them. Second, agreement holders are expected to write measurable and enforceable plans, yet may not have the necessary qualifications and experience to do so. Finally, the preparation and approval of RUPs is a time consuming and challenging task for agreement holders and the MFR, and it is not clear if range planning is achieving any measurable benefit in managing the range resource.
