The Slocan Valley and Nakusp community forest groups received their letters of invitiation to apply for Community Forest Agreements on November 17.
“We’re pretty excited about it,” said Stephan Martineau of the Slocan Valley group. “Something that has been expressed for the last 24 years in the Slocan Valley is that people want control over their own drinking water. Local control is always a good thing and this is a positive step in the right direction.”
Minister of Forests and Range Rich Coleman said that both groups had submitted good proposals, with the Slocan Valley’s focus on forestry management in their own community watersheds and Nakusp’s focus on supporting a log yard through a community forest. He said that when the focus is on protecting water and the environment, “it works well in most locations where we’ve done that.”
During the initial phase of writing the proposal for a community forest, the Nakusp group determined that an annual allowable cut of 60,000 cubic metres would be optimal in terms of business viability.
“We’ve said 10,000 cubic metres for each group to start,” said Coleman. “Nakusp wants 60,000, but we don’t have it available. I’ve asked staff to do a timber supply review in the area to see if we can find more volume. I think it’s important to get them started, and then if we find more fibre, we can add to it,” he said.
Jesper Nielsen of Nakusp says the group is happy that they’ve been given a formal invitation. “That’s all we can say until we take a closer look at it,” he said, explaining that the quality of the timber in the working area would be the group’s most important consideration, followed closely by the quantity.
The groups have about six months to complete the application process, which will include working with regional Forestry staff to identify the working areas. They are applying for a five-year probationary agreement, which “always gets renewed unless it is abused,” said Coleman.
The opportunity to apply for community forest agreements comes from the provincial government’s timber re-allocation scheme, where 20% of the tenure held by large companies is being re-distributed to community forest groups, First Nations and small business.
The Nakusp group submitted its proposal in the spring of 2003 and the Slocan Valley group submitted its proposal in the fall of 2004. They were both expecting to hear whether or not they would be invited to apply for a community forest license this past spring. When MLA Corky Evans questioned Coleman in the legislature at the end of October about the status of the proposals, the Minister promised to have an answer for the two groups.
by Jan McMurray
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