Fort St. John Results Based Pilot Project

Public Advisory Group Meeting #12

February 4, 2002

5:30pm to 9:30pm

Fort St. John Cultural Center

APPROVED MEETING SUMMARY NOTES

Name	Interest		Phone	E-mail
Participants:			-
Roger St. Jean	Small Business Forest Enterprise Program (SBFEP)		787-5645
Jeff Beale	Slocan L.P OSB Corp		261-6464
Warren Jukes	Canfor		788-4355
PAG Interest Representatives and Alternates:
Mike Waberski	Oil and Gas		787-0300
Ron Wagner	Labour		787-0172
Frank Schlichting	Range, Agric. & Private Woodlots		787-5383
Orland Wilkerson	Urban Communities		787-6243
Wayne Sawchuk	Environment & Conservation		788-2685
Karen Goodings	Rural Communities		785-8084
Facilitator:
Gail Wallin			305-1003
Advisors:
Joelle Scheck		Ministry Water Land Air Protection	787-3283
Dave Menzies		Canfor	787-3613
Paul Wooding		Canfor	604-661-5423
Daryll Heber		Consultant	250-428-3092
Observers:
None

1. Review of Meeting Agenda

· The draft Agenda was distributed and reviewed by the PAG for additions, deletions or corrections

· Draft Agenda was changed to include discussion on MK values.

2. Review of Meeting Summary Jan 7 2002

· Copies of the Jan 7 2002 PAG meeting were distributed and time was given for review of the text portion.

· Change 3a and 3b to Outstanding Actions (not be a subset of 3).

· PAG was asked whether the Matrix attached to the Jan 7 2002 Meeting Summary accurately captured their intended input.

· Meeting Summary and Matrix from Jan 7 accepted

3. MOF update

· Roger St Jean provided an update on the changes in the Ministry of Forests

· Further updates will be provided as information becomes available

4. Scientific Technical Committee

· Jeff Beale reviewed the role / purpose of the committee

· ACTION: further info on carbon cycling requested

5. Continue Input to CSA Matrix

· Input to Criteria 6

· ACTION: provide new / revised goal for 4.1

6. Other Business

· How are the LRMP objectives reflected in CSA?

· ACTION: If not captured in matrix, SFM plan to include wording to be consistent with LRMP objectives and intent of strategies.

7. Daryll Hebert presentation on Ecological Systems

· Attached to these meeting notes

8. Next Meeting

· Feb 25 5:30 – 9:30 (new location to be determined)

· March 11

· April 9 (or 8)

· Apr 22

· May 6 or 13

Attachment to Feb 4/02 PAG Mtg Notes

Feb. 04, 2002 Presentation on Ecological Systems to PAG

(by Daryll Hebert, Member of the Scientific Technical Advisory Committee to the Pilot project)

INTRODUCTION

1. General concepts
2. Natural disturbance
   1. Multiscale components
3. Forest level/landscape
4. Stand level
   1. Habitat elements

i. Snags

5. Indicators
6. Research/ Adaptive mgmt strategies

DETAILS

• Elements 2-4 above are all indicators
• Understand the system you are managing first, before setting objectives, targets and indicators
• How well can you test the indicators (and the assumptions behind them)?
• Sustained yield transition to sustainable forest management; we are moving full-bore into the era of sustainable forest management
  • Single forest yields to multiple resource yields (resulting in new tradeoffs, both from environmental and economic risks)
• Multiscale: i.e., big picture ecological function down to the finer levels of ecological relationships at the stand and levels below that::
  • comprised of: for example
  • Fire return interval, patch size/patch shape & severity of disturbance
  • This effects the structure composition and function of the forest
• Coarse-filter to fine-filter approaches: a way to deal with enormous numbers of species, therefore raising the level to higher groupings… this drives us to dealing with the ecological processes (coarse filter)
• Research Framework: development strategies, tools and policy analysis (ref. Overhead)… We have been using fire disturbance rates as the basic construct for understanding the “historical processes”.
• What’s the appropriate balance at the landscape level between Intensive, Extensive and Protected areas of management? This is multiscale dependant.
• Forest ecosystem management:
• Selection of indicators that provide for multiscale, multitemporal measurement and monitoring.
• Contributions of non-contributing land base (NCLB) compared to the timber harvesting land bases (THLB)… note that the non-contributing land base often contributes a great deal to the ecological system as ratios of NCLB to THLB often range 2-3 to 1. (2-3 times more contribution from NCLB than THLB).
• Comparisons between disturbance rates e.g., from fire compared to harvesting? Linking the forest productivity and rotation lengths to the natural disturbance cycles retains the best level of sustainability. For example, fire return interval of 100 yrs linked to 100yr rotation length of boreal forests. In the boreal forest it appears that the fire disturbance interval of ~100 yrs is coincidental with the normal stand rotation length from a productivity perspective (also ~100 yrs).
  • Sub-discussion on successional pathways in juvenile stages, even though there are different pathways the often converge 25-40 yrs into the rotation.
  • Sub-discussion on nutrient depletion
  • Sub-discussion on random harvest patterns linked to random fire disturbance patterns (emulation of nature???, costs and access tradeoffs)
• Rate:
  • Age class structure, temporal variability
  • Distribution, spatial variability
• Age class distributions relating to heavy harvesting, heavy conservation etc showing the variability… test for species richness via Adaptive Management between different scenarios
• Habitat elements: baseline & thresholds
  • Looking at snag levels, and managing for snags at levels below natural disturbance levels and greater, than would be found in sustained yield…. but determined to be acceptable for attaining some ecological management threshold. That is to say, one can manage somewhere in between a reasonable baseline and apparent thresholds… the level will depend upon what it is you are managing for.
• Snags densities/hectare, recruitment, fall down etc.
• Objectives for Indicators:
  • Species represent a broader set of species
  • Species that represent a habitat element
  • Consistent inventory methodology
  • Reasonable cost
  • Reasonable timing 3-5
  • Selection of identified species rare/endangered etc
• Looked at species types across a variety of BEC zones;
  • Illustrated species plasticity across BEC zones
  • Species richness declined with elevation
• Indicators were/are selected on the basis of what common habitat elements meet the needs of most species (the famous 8 indicators):
  • Snags/cavities
  • Coarse woody debris
  • Broad leafed
  • Riparian
  • Adjacent late successional
  • Shrubs
  • STUFF missing
• Research projects
  • Looking at tradeoffs between extensive and intensive mgmt
• Adaptive Management: scale
  • compare systems: high variability
  • Forest level: seral stage specie comp.

NEED critical pathways for SFM: see HIS all 3 parts of the system. See his last Overhead from the multipage fax