Babine Forest Products (BFP) held an open house on the draft of its new Forest Stewardship Plan in the Heritage Centre in Burns Lake on March 21.
The open house is part of the 60-day public review and comment period on the draft.
It is due to wrap up in early April, “but I’m always open to having people come to me after the fact,” Daniella Oake, planning supervisor with BFP told Lakes District News.
Oake spoke with visitors and had several large maps of the region where the company operates.
“[The draft] outlines what we will and won’t do on the land base and some maps that go with it,” she said.
The maps showed areas from the Southside north to around Babine Lake.
Numerous land use details were on the maps, such as areas off-limits to harvesting because they contain mountain goat habitat, Old Growth Management Areas, and landscape connectivity corridors.
Many small, green blocks on the map comprised reserve areas, which sit beside cut blocks but aren’t harvested.
“We’re required to leave some of that gross area in reserve for no harvesting. It’s trying to address the biodiversity requirements in the block,” Oake explained. “I believe in our FSP it says we’re going to reserve 10 per cent and that’s greater than what the requirement is at the legislation level.”
Thus far in the review period there have been few major issued raised. But usually public comments take the form of concerns over wildlife – like grizzly bear populations – block sizes or road networks, Oake said.
“Or if a community doesn’t want forestry going into a specific area we’ll figure out a way of working with them.”
Harvesting plans are also subject to Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development directives, like the Annual Allowable Cut (AAC).
READ MORE: New harvestable timber limit to be set by Fall, forester says
“We have a volume that we can plan under for these licenses but when the AAC is set that volume will get reduced to whatever number the minister determines.”
It wasn’t yet known when the FSP would be finalized and the process also involves back and forth consultation between BFP and the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development.
Blair McBrideMultimedia reporter
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