Document Details

Title
Effective Landscape Level Planning Approaches to Sustain Biodiversity in the Managed Forests of Southeastern British Columbia
Author
Wells, Ralph W.
Date
2007
Abstract
In the East Kootenay region of British Columbia, requirements under the Forest and Range Practices Act (FRPA), the Kootenay-Boundary Land Use Plan Higher Level Plan Order (KBLUP HLPO), Criteria and Indicators for biodiversity under forest certification, private land initiatives through the East Kootenay Conservation Program (EKCP) partnership and the recent Species at Risk Act (SARA) have increased the necessity for managers to undertake landscape level planning for sustaining biodiversity. Ideally the efforts to meet these requirements would lead to the development of an integrated strategy for sustaining biodiversity at the landscape level, but they currently are hampered by a lack of tools to facilitate landscape level planning. Challenges include determining the most effective locations to represent a range of habitat values associated with different planning approaches and to balance among competing objectives (such as improving ecosystem representation vs. retaining larger old patches of forests), and how to coordinate activities across a range of tenure types and jurisdictional boundaries. In this project, we wish to address the following questions: 1. What are effective and efficient strategies to determine conservation priorities for sustaining species in forested landscapes managed for forestry? 2. What are effective approaches to identify and resolve trade-offs among conservation priorities and with economic values? 3. How is conservation responsibility best allocated among tenure holders across a range of tenures and jurisdictions? Question (1) will address the identification, mapping and analysis of conservation priorities. The approach will include assessments of 'vulnerability? and 'irreplaceability? to define conservation priorities, and incorporating 'concentrations of values? as a measure of efficiency (see Methods for description of terminology). Question (2) addresses issues related to making choices among different conservation opportunities. This evaluation will include sensitivity analyses examining the effects of adjusting targets or thresholds for different biodiversity indicators relative to others. Evaluating trade-offs between conservation and economic values will allow identification of areas high value for sustaining biodiversity and lower economic value and the converse, as well as areas of potential conflict. Assessment of trade-offs with economic values was not identified as a priority for Project Theme 3, Priority C, so this component will be funded externally by project partners Tembec, Canfor and BCTS. Question (3) is concerned with identifying tenure holder responsibility for different conservation values and priorities in different locations on the landscape, since conservation opportunities will not be evenly distributed across the landscape. For example, project partners TNT and NCC and are providing external funding and data to support this evaluation on private lands (to facilitate conservation property securement and development of management strategies on covenant properties) and Parks Canada is providing funding and data to support development of conservation management strategies for National Parks in the region. The study area for this project is the Rocky Mountain Forest District (RMFD), a 2.6 million hectare management unit in the Southern Interior Forest Region. The study area includes the Invermere Timber Supply Area (TSA), Cranbrook TSA, Tree Farm Licence (TFL) 14 and Managed Forest (MF) 27, and includes much of Kootenay National Park and has a significant private land component. The results of the project will be directly applicable to the RMFD, and the approach will provide a template and toolkit for application throughout the province of British Columbia. The project is somewhat unique in proposing to develop landscape approaches to sustaining biodiversity that incorporate both public and private land by partnering with members of the EKCP. This is significant be ...
Report Number
 
Title
View
Executive summary
Technical report
Web module
Map - Scenario 1
Map - Scenario 2
Map - Scenario 3
Map - Veterans
Map - Hardwoods
Map - OGMA rankings
Map - Priority EcoGroups

EIRS Search Options

Useful Contacts