38 resources found

This paper examines how extension, a dynamic process of knowledge exchange, can bridge the gap between scientific research and field application to support innovative silviculture in British Columbia. The authors outline a framework of five extension forms, ranging from one-way sharing to co-produced knowledge generation, designed to help foresters adapt to modern pressures such as climate change, wildfire severity, and the legal recognition of Indigenous Rights and Title. By reviewing the history of extension, this document acknowledges the field's colonial and anti-Indigenous origins while advocating for a future grounded in reciprocity and ethical collaboration. This document serves as a call to action for organizations to formally value and resource extension staff, ensuring that stewardship practices are effectively informed by a diverse range of social, economic, and ecological values.

Out On A Limb is a series that uplifts trailblazers in BC communities who are leading innovative management practices for the betterment of the forests of tomorrow. This episode of Out on a Limb features Li?l?wat Forestry Ventures and highlights their unique holistic approach to forest management. Join Klay Tindall, General Manager, and Jordon Gabriel, Forestry Technician, as they reflect on how innovation is built into the very core of their approach to forest management, stressing the importance of adaptability and learning from the land. They offer advice to those considering similar innovative practices in forestry management and emphasize the use of local knowledge to manage the forest for a variety of values.

Out On A Limb is a series that uplifts trailblazers in BC communities who are leading innovative management practices for the betterment of the forests of tomorrow. In this episode of Out on a Limb, the SIP joins Alkali Resource Management, which is 100% owned by Esk'etemc First Nation, and project partners from the Government of BC to learn more about the impacts and benefits of ARM's innovative approaches just south of Williams Lake, BC. Francis Johnson and Julian Paul walk through some ways ARM aims to create resilience in stands that possess dense understories of small trees, increasing wildfire risk, and decreasing suitability as wildlife habitat using partial harvest with clumpy spacing and prescribed burning to restore forest health and revitalize cultural uses and values. This collaborative project evaluates the efficacy of ARM's treatments on understory vegetation and wildlife use, wildfire risk, disturbance agents, and overall forest integrity and resiliency. By blending Indigenous stewardship, applied research, and on-the-ground treatments, the trial is generating valuable insights into how these forests can become more resilient to disturbance while supporting mule deer winter range, biodiversity, and culturally important plants.

This extension note examines the evolving management of boreal and sub-boreal mixedwood forests in British Columbia, specifically focusing on the integration of broadleaf trees like aspen and birch into traditionally conifer-dominant landscapes. While historical policies treated broadleaves as an impediment to timber production, this document highlights their essential contributions to ecological resilience, biodiversity, and soil health, alongside their potential for industrial diversification. Through a comprehensive literature review, the authors identify a critical trade-off in growth and yield, noting that while broadleaf competition can reduce individual conifer size, mixed stands often achieve a higher total wood volume than pure stands. This document serves as a call for enhanced research and policy reform to bridge significant knowledge gaps, seeking to balance economic timber supply with the diverse long-term benefits of a natural forest mixture.

In this webinar, representatives from the First Nations Emergency Services Society and their conservation partners detail the implementation of Integrated Fire Management Planning to protect both human infrastructure and ecological connectivity corridors. The project uses a sophisticated integrated spatial database that layers historical wildfire data, old-growth status, and wildlife habitats with modern fire modeling and LiDAR technology to forecast risks. By moving beyond isolated, project-based grants toward landscape-level planning, the initiative seeks to foster collaborative governance between Indigenous communities and government agencies.

This document integrates the harvesting of non-timber forest products, specifically wild berries and nuts, into standard British Columbia forestry practices. This document promotes compatible management, a strategy that balances commercial timber production with the preservation of ecologically and culturally significant understorey species. The authors emphasize the vital role these plants play in Aboriginal livelihoods and regional food security, while detailing how modern pressures like climate change, industrial development, and shifting land ownership have made reliable wild harvests increasingly difficult to secure. To assist land managers and community stakeholders, this document provides specific ecological profiles and management recommendations for five key berry species: Saskatoon, beaked hazelnut, blackcap, soapberry, and black huckleberry. This document serves as a practical toolkit and a call for collaborative stewardship that honors traditional ecological knowledge and sustains the diverse biological values of understory species.

This document examines the shifting paradigm of sustainable forest management in British Columbia, specifically focusing on the integration of non-timber forest products like wild mushrooms and floral greenery. The authors argue that as traditional timber industries face a decline due to climate change and global competition, these diverse biological resources offer opportunities for economic diversification and the opportunity to support of Aboriginal communities. This document explores four distinct management scenarios that range from conventional timber-centric models to emerging systems that prioritize ecosystem services and clear property rights.

This LMH #67 handbook serves as a strategic guide for navigating the constraints and potential solutions regarding non-timber forest product development in British Columbia's community forests and small woodlands. The document is structured around a survey of forest managers, identifying critical barriers such as a lack of regulatory clarity, high costs of ecological inventory, and the importance of negotiating Aboriginal rights and title with local First Nations. By offering practical advice on compatible management, the author emphasizes the importance of integrating non-timber values into traditional timber-based economies. The handbook provides a framework to achieve economic diversification while maintaining ecological integrity and fostering respectful cultural collaborations.

This FREP Report #18 evaluates how forestry proponents manage cultural heritage resources within British Columbia's results-based regulatory framework. It analyzes a sample of forest stewardship plans to determine how companies define and protect values such as monumental cedar, culturally modified trees, and traditional use sites. The document reveals a significant reliance on information-sharing strategies and pre-harvest field assessments to bridge the gap between industrial operations and the preservation of Indigenous cultural values. Overall, this document provides strategic recommendations to improve professional due diligence and ensure the sustainability of resources that are of continuing importance to First Nations.

This document details a 2016 experimental fire conducted in the Northwest Territories to analyze how mulched fuel treatments influence wildfire behavior in boreal forest environments. The study evaluates a mechanical clumping technique, measuring its effectiveness in reducing fire intensity and the rate of spread compared to untreated natural stands. Beyond scientific data on weather and fuel moisture, this document explores practical implications for fire suppression, noting that while mulching creates better access for crews, the resulting surface debris acts as a flashy fuel that responds rapidly to wind shifts. This document serves as a guide for fuel managers to refine wildfire mitigation strategies by combining mechanical efficiency with manual thinning to better protect communities.

This guidebook serves as a comprehensive framework for community forest managers in British Columbia to evaluate the potential of non-timber forest resources, such as wild foods, medicinal plants, and floral greenery. The guide is structured to help users identify local biological assets, understand the human resource base, and navigate the complexities of ecological sustainability. Key themes include the importance of compatible management, balancing traditional timber harvesting with the cultivation of other forest products, and the importance of addressing First Nations' cultural interests and legal regulatory requirements. This guidebook functions as an assessment tool to help communities determine if specific resource development is economically viable, socially responsible, and environmentally sound.

This document explores how fire can intentionally contribute to wildfire resilience in British Columbia and introduces the concept of beneficial fire, defined as planned or unplanned wildland fire with positive ecological effects and acceptable risk to human communities. It presents a conceptual framework that integrates both ecological dimensions and community dimensions to guide management decisions. The document advocates for a whole-of-society approach to increase beneficial fire, including cultural fire, prescribed fire, and managed wildfire, by accelerating place-based assessments and improving community safety through measures like FireSmart.

This document explores the increasingly severe wildland fire situation in B. C. , driven by climate change and accumulated forest fuels, with an emphasis on the urgent need for a whole-of-government provincial landscape resilience strategy. It is structured to detail the current wildfire context, analyze the significant social and ecological impacts of catastrophic wildfire, and examine the current governmental and non-governmental responses to wildfire governance in the province, including the critical role of First Nations and local governments. Ultimately, the primer The document calls for a fundamental shift toward proactive prevention and mitigation measures, highlighting the need to vastly expand fuel management efforts and adopt a comprehensive, collaborative approach to build lasting social-ecological resilience across B. C.

This document focuses on fire risk reduction in the Coastal Douglas Fir biogeoclimatic zone and synthesizes expertise from a collaborative community to address the escalating threat of wildfires. It highlights the unique challenges within the CDF, particularly the high concentration of human settlements integrated with forests and the prevalence of degraded, homogenous forest stands resulting from historical logging and fire suppression. The document emphasizes the critical need for ecologically-informed active forest management to restore biodiversity and enhance climate resilience, moving away from a zero-fire model. It explores current initiatives, identifies significant inter-jurisdictional complexities and funding gaps, especially concerning privately held lands, and advocates for multi-scale collaboration and the reintroduction of Indigenous land management practices to achieve long-term wildfire mitigation and ecological integrity.

This paper examines how community forests in British Columbia, Canada, are transforming wildfire governance by shifting away from traditional, centralized, and reactive approaches toward proactive, locally-driven management. The authors highlight that CFs, which are long-term forest tenures managed by Indigenous and/or local communities, act as local leaders in mitigating wildfire risk. Their success hinges on crucial factors such as financial and social capacity, particularly the ability to build trust and strong relationships with both community members and government agencies. Despite persistent challenges, the study concludes that CFs are a critical form of local wildfire governance, effectively implementing diverse strategies and fostering a fire lens in forest management to enhance wildfire resilience across various scales.

This document explores the critical and expanded role of First Nations Guardians in Canada's wildfire response and management efforts. The document argues that Indigenous-led conservation and stewardship, particularly through the growing Guardians movement, offers a powerful model for addressing both environmental challenges and reconciliation. The strategy addresses systemic challenges like climate change, the disproportionate impact of fires on Indigenous communities, and current barriers to First Nations participation in fire management, emphasizing the need to integrate Indigenous knowledge and science with Western practices. The doucment outlines a three-pronged approach for Guardians to contribute to emergency response, fire and forest management, and knowledge and science, emphasizing the need for sustained funding, training, and meaningful partnerships with Crown agencies to realize this vision.

This paper analyzes the record-breaking 2023 wildfires in British Columbia, detailing their significant ecological and social impacts, which are seen as the result of a century of altered relationships with fire intensified by climate change. The authors argue for an urgent transformative shift towards coexisting with wildfire, moving beyond suppression to embrace its ecological role and Indigenous stewardship practices. The paper proposes six interrelated strategies to achieve this coexistence: diversifying wildfire response, increasing suppression capacity, mitigating community risk, implementing landscape fire management, transforming wildfire governance, and strengthening expertise. This paper emphasizes the need for a holistic, all-of-society approach involving policy changes, sustained funding, and collaboration to build resilience against future extreme wildfires.

This LMH Document #79 outlines the principles and best practices for silvicultural systems in British Columbia, emphasizing a shift toward complex, multi-value forest management in the 21st century. Its primary purpose is to serve as a central reference and conceptual framework for forest professionals to design and implement silvicultural plans that move a stand from its current state to a desired future condition through planned interventions, known as stand development pathways. A crucial and recurring theme is the growing role of First Nations, including their traditional knowledge, values, and stewardship goals, which are integrated alongside ecological, social, and economic objectives. The document provides detailed guidance on technical aspects, such as managing for biodiversity, mitigating risks like windthrow and pests, and utilizing adaptive management for continuous improvement in forestry practices.

This webinar explores the highly contentious management of old growth forests in British Columbia. The consensus among the presenters is that a radical paradigm shift is essential, replacing the current timber-focused system with one that prioritizes ecosystem health and biodiversity. Key themes include the importance of empowering First Nations to lead local planning processes, intense debate over the true extent of remaining old growth data, and the failure of provincial government intent to implement past strategic recommendations. The discussion stresses that adopting an integrated, land-centric approach is the only viable path to stewardship for future generations.

This document outlines the critical need to braid Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science to create climate-adapted forests in the United States. A primary theme is the historical impact of Euro-American colonization, fire exclusion, and settler colonialism on North American forest ecosystems, leading to the loss of Indigenous stewardship and creating dense, fire-maladapted landscapes highly vulnerable to severe wildfires and climate change stressors. The text defines IK as an invaluable, multi-generational body of systemic knowledge and cultural practices emphasizing kinship with nature and reciprocity, contrasting it with the empirical and objective approach of WS.