The Timber Tenure System

What is the timber tenure system?

The term "timber tenure system" refers to the collection of legislation, regulations, contractual agreements, permits and government policies that define and constrain a person's right to harvest the province's timber. The term "timber tenure" is commonly used to describe the contract between a company and the government which grants the rights to harvest a specified volume of timber. A wide variety of timber tenures are in place, reflecting the diverse objectives for forest use that have been pursued since the early 1900s.

In British Columbia, where 94 per cent of the land is owned by the public, the timber tenure system, and more specifically, tenure agreements, play a significant role in addressing government objectives as outlined in the Forest Act. These objectives include:

• creating and maintaining employment and other social benefits
• management and utilization of Crown timber
• economic development
• generating Crown revenues

Legislation

The current timber tenure system was established as a result of the 1979 Forest Act.

The Forest Act and its associated regulations provide the structure for the tenure system. They set out:

• the forms of agreement under which Crown timber can be sold and factors that must be considered by the ministry when this occurs
• the rights and obligations of each form of tenure rules about administration of the tenures.

Although many other statutes affect the tenure system, the Forest Practices Code of British Columbia Act and its associated regulations (the code) are the most significant. For example, rules about how timber harvesting operations on Crown land must be planned and conducted, which were formerly included in the Forest Act, tenure contracts, or tenure policy, have now been embodied and strengthened in the code. In addition, the code sets out a range of penalties for failure to meet these rules.

History

British Columbia's history and the evolution of forest tenures are closely linked. The modern tenure system is more easily under-stood when we know this history. The development of tenures in British Columbia has coincided with the four distinct periods described below:

1. Pre-1912: Pioneer Days

Prior to 1912, the government was concerned with attracting labor and capital to develop the virtually untouched timber resource in British Columbia. With few inhabitants and no capital infrastructure, the government granted Crown land outright to railways and timber companies as a means of achieving its objective. Much of the six per cent of private land that exists today was granted during this period. Later, the government sold timber through what were then known as timber leases and timber licences while retaining rights to the land.

2. 1912-1947: Resource Development

In 1912, the first Forest Act was introduced, which established a system of "forest reserves." These were officially designated for timber harvesting and were the precursors of the present "provincial forests." The new Forest Act created a Forest Service to administer these reserves. Also introduced was the timber sale licence, a form of tenure that granted a one-time right to harvest a specific stand. These timber sale licences were relied on exclusively to provide access to Crown timber until 1947.

3. 1947-1976: Sustained Yield

In order to address growing concern over the management of the increasing area of harvested land, the Forest Act was amended in 1947 to establish forest management units that would be managed for a long-term sustained yield of timber.

Public Sustained Yield Units (PSYUs) were managed by the Forest Service with harvests shared among several operators. Although long-term area-based timber sale licences continued to be in use, a new long-term volume-based tenure, the timber sale harvesting licence, was introduced. This licence, which has since been replaced by the forest licence, specified the right to harvest an annual volume of timber from within a PSYU, but did not specify the precise areas that could be logged.

Forest management licences (the precursor to today's tree farm licences) introduced the management of private and public forest land by individual companies. This tenure reflected the belief that the long term of the agreement provided both the incentive to practise forest management as well as the security of supply necessary to attract investment in large mills.

In the late 1960s, pulpwood harvesting area agreements were introduced as a means of assuring the secure fibre supply required to support large investments in pulp mills.

4. 1976-the present: Integrated Forest Management

The 1976 Royal Commission on Timber Rights and Forest Policy led to a new Forest Act, introduced in 1978. This act made substantial changes to licence agreements and introduced new forms of agreements. The most significant changes included:

• replacing PSYUs by larger Timber Supply Areas (TSAs) and determining an allowable annual cut (AAC) for each. The AAC was then apportioned to various types of new licences which replaced the former licence agreements. These new licences include the modern replaceable forest licences, timber sale licences, woodlot licences, pulpwood agreements.
• "evergreen" replacement provisions introduced for tree farm licences and forest licences, whereby the licence retained its long term for security, but was replaceable at shorter intervals to allow the insertion of updated contract conditions.

Since the introduction of the Forest Act in 1978, some significant events have affected the tenure system, including:

• in 1980, the establishment of the Small Business Forest Enterprise Program (SBFEP)
• in 1995, the introduction of the Forest Practices Code.

addition, the code sets out a range of penalties for failure to meet these rules.