Introduction and Overviews
About This Report — PDF print versionThe State of BC’s Forests Introduction and Overviews
About This Report — PDF print version
Forests figure prominently in the well-being of British Columbia’s environment, economy and communities.
The purpose of this report is two-fold:
The first three parts following "About This Report" provide an overview of British Columbia’s forests and society, and general discussions of sustainable forest management and indicators.
The indicators used to assess sustainable forest management form the main body of this report. These indicators are based on those found in national-level frameworks, but reflect an emphasis on issues of particular significance to British Columbia. The indicators are grouped into three broad categories: environmental, economic and social, and governance and support.
Six of 24 indicators are addressed in this first of three reports. In 2005, the second report will add 6 more indicators. The third report in 2006 will contain all 24 indicators.
For each indicator, the report provides summary information relevant to several questions, along with links to further information, maps, data, and related international and national indicators. Each indicator ends with the Ministry of Forests’ assessment of what the indicator tells us about sustainable forest management.
The text under each indicator question includes some explanation of the information, but no assessment of implications for sustainability. This is intended to enable readers to make their own assessments of sustainability.
For each indicator, the ministry assessed the state, trend and adequacy of information, as follows:
The symbols used to summarize the assessment are shown in Figure 2.
This report does not describe or assess the Ministry of Forests’ activities, goals, targets or performance, as these are covered in the ministry’s service plans and annual reports. Similarly, it does not examine the activities or performance of individual forest companies. Information about these can be found elsewhere.
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FIGURE 2. Assessment symbols used in this report.
All parts of the report, individual maps and graphs, and related data tables are available in printer-friendly formats so that they can be used for overheads or illustrations for teaching and other applications. Copyright rules apply: be sure to obtain permission before using any of the material in other publications or making large numbers of copies for distribution. To obtain copyright permission, please see the appendix, Contact.
Terms, such as "forest," that have a technical meaning specific to this report are listed in the glossary and are highlighted the first time they occur within each indicator.
Your comments on the information and assessments presented in this report – and especially ideas for improving the report – are welcomed and will be considered as future editions are prepared. The appendix, Reader Comments, suggests some topics for feedback.
The information presented in this report was collected from a variety of sources, each accountable for the quality of the data it provided. Any errors in the presentation or interpretation of those data are, of course, the responsibility of the authors of this report.
Indicators of sustainable forest management cover a scope that is broader than that of the direct accountabilities of any individual government agency or company. While each organization is accountable for specific aspects of forest management, no one organization is necessarily wholly accountable for the states and trends shown by the indicators.
An important goal of this report is to inform the ongoing development of forest policy and management – and thereby to support progress in achieving sustainable forest management.
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