Forest Practices Board (FPB) chair Tim Ryan, RPF gave an interesting PowerPoint presentation at a recent City of Quesnel council meeting.
Noting he’s been with the FPB for four years and he was appointed through an Order in Council by the previous provincial government, Ryan said the board was created because of public concern with the impartiality of government or the industry to police themselves.
“We serve the public interest as the independent watchdog for sound forest and range practices on British Columbia’s Crown land. The board acts like an auditor general… and the board is unique in that we’re the only one in the world.”
Ryan went on to talk about the FPB’s mandate and the makeup of the six appointed board members, who have a broad range of expertise and experience.
The FPB staff consists of foresters, biologists, engineers, accountants, lawyers and communication experts, and the board has an annual $3 million-plus budget.
Ryan said the board must perform audits and follow up on public complaints, and it may do special investigations, special reports and participate in appeals.
“We make recommendations to government. We don’t have any teeth. Enforcement of what we call non-compliance or poor practices is left to the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations & Rural Development or the Ministry of Environment.”
He noted the FPB interacts with municipal governments when it audit community forests.
Ryan said the board has done 12 such audits in the past nine years and they found no issues in nine of them.
He added one audit had an improvement noted around soil disturbance; another had a significant finding regarding regeneration of harvested sights; and a third audit had several non-compliance findings.
“Most concerns involved logging, visual quality impacts, recreation/tourism impacts, water impacts and landslide risks.”
The FPB has done reports on managing forest fuels in Wildland Urban Interface – fuel reductions and FireSmart efforts; Forest Stewardship Plans and community watersheds.
During a question-and-answer session, Councillor Ed Coleman asked Ryan if The FPB has ever audited fire guards that are put around wildfires to slow their progress?
Ryan said it was part of the FPB’s mandate, but he has been asked what’s to be done with these fire guards?
“The Wildfire Branch is required to rehabilitate those guards, as well as any other fire structures, such as a back fire, must be rehabilitated. Access roads have to be properly deactivated. The back fires have to be reforested if they had trees on them….”
Coun. Sushil Thapar asked whether the FPB audits reforestation practices?
Ryan said it is part of the board’s auditing process.
“Virtually the board never finds an issue with reforestation. The performance is very good.”
During his time on the board, Ryan said where they have found weaknesses has been at the woodlot level.
“Woodlot holders, for a couple of reasons, have been slow or deficient in terms of reforesting their harvested areas … invariably there are some extenuating circumstances of the process. It isn’t that the individuals being delinquent necessarily; they’re delinquent in terms of compliance but they’re not being a delinquent.
Ryan adds some people might not agree with the types of trees that are being planted, how they’re being distributed cut blocks, whether there’s enough mixture of species and whether we’re properly reforesting site regarding climate changes in the future.
He added the FPB will be doing a special report on these issues in the near future.