TSA Forest Health Strategies and Tactical Plans

Each Forest District office will be required to prepare a forest health strategy for the Timber Supply Area (TSA). This site will describe the intended content requirements of a TSA forest health strategy and the tactical plan.

Overview of Strategy and Tactical Plan

The Forest Health strategy is a document that specifies the forest health conditions, issues and strategies unique to each TSA.  It will serve to guide operational plans and forest health investments by the TSA members and individually through the Forest Development Plan or Forest Stewardship Plan and Forest Investment Account (FIA).  

All TSAs will require a general forest health strategy.  For TSAs with bark beetle management issues, beetle management specific information will also be required.  

At this time, obligated activities other than the submission of a strategy are restricted to bark beetle management.  A proposed level of activity for detection and treatment and the associated costs are submitted to the Ministry of Forests for approval with the forest health strategy. This activity/budget proposal is the tactical plan.   Approval of the strategy and tactical plan will be the basis for the bark beetle management program the Ministry of Forests (or a FIA funded lead licensee) will be expected to deliver in the following year.

Specific Content Requirements - Strategy 

The general strategy requirements will be:

1. A listing of priority forest health agents in the TSA, and an updated description of their status if the most recent provincial overview or other survey information reveals it has changed significantly since the last status report. Locally important pests and a description of their status can be added to the list.
    
2. A ranking of each pest and a descriptions of specific management objectives for priority forest health agents. The district may apply their own ranking and objectives but if they differ from the provincial objectives (as stated in the Provincial Forest Health Strategy), a justification will have to be provided. After a review by the Region, the district forest health strategy will define the local objectives and forest health priorities for the TSA.
    
3. A description of the known extent of the significant forest health agents within the TSA. The extent to which priority pests occur and their implications to forest management must be specified in the strategy. The information that specifies the status is provided by the MOF via the annual aerial overview survey, the TSA's licensees, and by reports from regional, district and branch forest health specialists and stewardship staff.
    
4. For priority forest health factors, specify strategies and measures for dealing with them.  Once the management objectives have been specified, the district will assign specific strategies, tactics and proposed activities to manage the forest health issue and assign a priority for action to meet the stated objectives. The obligation of individual licensees to act upon these priority actions are dependent on the legislated requirement under Forest and Range Practices Act (FRPA) and the Forest Act (FA). The majority of these activities (other than the individual licensee's obligations under the FRPA) would be either the responsibility of the MOF or can be conducted voluntarily by industry as enhanced or incremental activities presently eligible for FIA funding.
    
5. To keep the strategy document concise, the description of strategies, tactics and other measures should be restricted to a citation of information currently available in Forest Health guidebooks, the Provincial Forest Health Strategy or other MOF documents. A full description would only be required if these procedures deviate from commonly available information. A justification for the deviation must be supplied. This will allow for local input into "best practices".

   EXAMPLE STRATEGY

   Kispiox TSA Forest Health Strategy (pdf, 1,124 k, posted July 7, 2003) - This document is an excellent example of a general forest health strategy for a TSA without major bark beetle issues that was prepared by the NIFR regional pathologist and entomologist.   This document goes beyond the minimum requirement because it provides a much more detailed analysis of the state of Forest Health in a TSA, and includes a more detailed current report on the Forest Health and pest management status of Dothistroma (red band needle blight) in the TSA..

For TSAs with bark beetle management issues:

1. List and describe beetle management units and their assigned strategies plus the proposed budget and activities within the suppression BMUs. The BMU strategies will be explicitly described using the parameters MOF currently uses to rank them provincially (i.e., susceptible volumes, number of sites, estimated numbers of current attacks, green:red, etc.). These details will be provided in the Provincial Bark Beetle Technical Implementation Guidelines. Circumstances that may elevate the priority above the biologically based one must be described for each BMU. This will aid in any secondary ranking (i.e., government priorities) that may occur after the primary biological ranking is completed.
    
   The proposed budget and activities constitutes the "tactical plan".
    
2. Priority activities in non-suppression BMUs (e.g., shelf-life studies, TSR related forest health projects, etc.) are not directly eligible for bark beetle suppression funding.  However, individual licensees may be able to contribute to funding a TSA-wide project if it is eligible under the FIA Land based investment program's information gathering and management criteria and if the TSA forest health strategy identifies these projects as a high priority.  

Specific Content Requirements - Tactical Plan 

Cost estimates are required only for detailed aerial and ground detection and single tree treatments (non-harvesting) for suppression BMU bark beetle management. The estimates would be a projection of historic data updated with the most current infestation information provided by the MOF’s provincial aerial overview survey. Currently districts and regions provide Forest Practices Branch with the necessary data to allocate MOF suppression funding. 

The specific information requirements used for the 04/05  budget allocation process will also be followed by the districts for their 2005/06 budget and tactical plans. 

Budget estimates for beetle detection and treatment are done by using historic knowledge of detailed aerial survey costs (these don't deviate much per year), plus an estimate of the total number of current attacks that will require treatment based on the overview data plus an estimated green:red multiplier. It is recognized that this number will always be one year out of synchrony with the beetle population but is the best estimate of workload possible within the budget planning time frame.

There is an opportunity to modify BMU strategies (usually from Suppression down to Holding) when new aerial survey data reveals significant changes in attack levels.  When these changes occur, funds allocated for single tree treatments can be reallocated to other BMUs within the TSA.

This estimated budget for proposed beetle detection and treatments is supplied with other BMU data that are used to rank the suppression BMUs provincially. The process is described in the Provincial Bark Beetle Technical Implementation Guidelines.

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