The following information is necessary to establish and manage a WHA for Identified Wildlife. This information is provided for each species or plant community under the following headings.
The planning objectives refer to the overall purpose of the WHA. An understanding of these objectives will help in the placement of WHAs.
This section describes the limiting habitat, and is considered in regard to the establishment, the size, and the placement of the WHA. It identifies the feature or combination of features that defines a WHA for a particular species or plant community. It also defines core areas and buffers that make up the WHA and are necessary for the protection of these limiting habitats.
This section describes the desired result of the general wildlife measure.
General wildlife measures describe the management practices required to meet the needs of Identified Wildlife. GWMs are legally required and have been displayed in a box format so that they are easily identified.
| These measures must be applied within a WHA approved for the species.
This section describes the management practices within the WHA, under some or all of the following headings: access, range, recreation, restoration and enhancement, silviculture and other. Measures that refer to harvesting techniques or restrictions do not apply to salvage operations. Restrictions on salvage operations are specifically mentioned. Unless otherwise directed, apply the specific practice to the entire WHA. These management practices are designed to ensure the management objectives for the WHA are met. |
Management considerations should be considered when managing the area adjacent to a WHA.
Landscape unit planning considerations are provided for planning purposes and are not mandatory. They should not be interpreted as chief forester direction and must be considered within the context of chief forester policy that guides landscape unit planning.
For some species, critical habitat requirements should be viewed in their landscape context. Protection of a patch of limiting habitat, such as a hibernaculum, may not safeguard a population if the surrounding habitat is not managed appropriately. Similarly, protection of a portion of a species' range may not contribute to the maintenance of populations if surrounding areas are not managed to permit continued dispersal and gene flow. This section outlines suggestions for habitat connectivity where applicable, both within and between landscape units. These should be considered when establishing landscape unit biodiversity objectives.
For those species whose requirements have the potential to exceed the provincial impact targets for Identified Wildlife, recommendations to planning tables that have the ability to exceed Code impact limits (e.g., land and resource management tables) have been provided here. Higher level plans that may exceed Code impact limits must be approved by three ministers (MELP, MOF, MEM). These recommendations are not mandatory, should not be inferred as government direction and are not intended to have application across an entire planning area; rather they outline the best technical information on the species at this time. Respective government agencies will provide information on appropriate areas for application of these recommendations, or a subset of them, as well as the resulting impacts on timber, range, mines and petroleum industries. A range of options may be presented for varying amounts of area and impacts. Planning tables are expected to consider these recommendations along with other proposed timber and non-timber resource objectives.
This section lists other Identified Wildlife whose ecological requirements and management prescriptions overlap with the species or plant community in question. The intent is to indicate how the application of a GWM for one species may reduce or eliminate the need to address others. By examining the potentially overlapping species or communities listed here, it may be possible to design a single WHA that will meet the needs of more than one Identified Wildlife in a given area.
