A government mapping error lead residents of Granite Bay (the complainants), on Quadra Island, to believe that the area across the bay from them was a park and would not be logged. When the Granite Bay residents discovered that the area could be logged they asked the district manager to establish a visual quality objective of retention so that any logging will be difficult to see. This letter reports the resolution of this complaint.
In May 2016, Sierra Club BC submitted a complaint about logging practices in the East Creek Valley. This valley is just north of Mquqwin / Brooks Peninsula Provincial Park on northwest Vancouver Island. Sierra Club BC (the complainant) was concerned with a wide range of issues related to forest planning and practices.
The Board examined the licensee’s forest operations on the ground in the East Creek Valley, their planning activities relating to the operations, and whether the licensee provided adequate access to site plan information when requested by the complainant.
In August 2016 the Forest Practices Board audited the activities of Husby 's Forest Licence A16869 in the Haida Gwaii Natural Resource District. Husby is part of the Husby Group, a privately held forest products company with operations mainly located on Haida Gwaii. The licence permits it to harvest 192,044 cubic metres of timber each year within the district.
Husby passed the audit with operational planning, timber harvesting, road construction and maintenance, silviculture, and fire protection activities complying in all significant respects with the requirements of the Forest and Range Practices Act, the Wildfire Act and related regulations. However, because Husby did not complete fire hazard assessments on time, the audit found an area requiring improvement for fire hazard assessments.
In April 2015, Board staff noticed logging near Port Alberni that appeared to exceed the government’s visual quality objectives for the area. After making some initial enquiries, the Board decided to investigate the issue—looking into compliance with the Forest and Range Practices Act, the licensee’s consideration of visual impacts, and appropriateness of government’s enforcement.
The Board found issues with the licensee’s management and government’s enforcement of visual quality, and makes recommendations to the government and the Association of BC Forest Professionals.
In January 2015, Spirit of the West Adventures, a guided adventure tourism company that has a base camp at Boat Bay, complained that proposed harvesting by TimberWest Forest Corp. would adversely affect their clients’ kayaking experience. The complainant was also concerned that neither TimberWest nor the district manager of the Ministry of Forests Lands and Natural Resource Operations, North Island Central Coast District, addressed its concerns about visual quality in a reasonable manner.
Because the concern did not focus on the licensee’s compliance with government’s established visual quality objective, this report focuses on whether TimberWest and the district manager addressed the visual concerns in a reasonable manner.
