Forest Management Policy for Old Growth
Contents |
Introduction
For the first 200 years of logging in Ontario, the very best and largest pine trees were harvested. Large tracts of red and white pine were clearcut for lumber and land clearing and not regenerated. Although it is difficult to estimate the amount of red and white pine on the landscape before logging began, studies suggest that a very small percentage of Ontario’s original white pine forest remains, and that these forests are nationally and internationally important.
In May 2003, the Ministry of Natural Resources finalized its Old Growth Policy for Ontario’s Crown Forests. MNR had posted the policy on the Environmental Registry for public comment just two months before the end of the nine-year deadline imposed by the Environmental Assessment Board in 1994. Many commenters accused MNR of producing an incomplete draft policy at the eleventh hour. Indeed, the final document describes further policy development, guideline revision, spatial analysis tools and inventory work that are still to come.
(The long history of the development of the Old Growth Policy, including a 1997 draft policy posted for public comment, is described in the Supplement to this report, pages 157-168.)
MNR’s 2003 Old Growth Policy
The Old Growth Policy builds upon the conservation strategy MNR developed in 1995 for red and white pine, but now covers all tree species. It applies to the area of commercial forestry operations in Ontario’s Crown forests and to the parks within that area, but does not cover southern Ontario nor the far north. The Old Growth Policy sets out a two-pronged conservation strategy – to protect some old growth in protected areas and to allow a sustainable harvest in forest management units.
Parks
The objectives for conserving old growth in protected areas are to protect and/or restore representative forest stands of old growth red and white pine within their natural range, and to allow representative amounts of old growth of other species to evolve. New protected areas may be created, and over several years, plans will be prepared for existing and new protected areas.
Forestry
The objectives in Old Growth Policy for conserving old growth in forest management units are:
- to identify old growth
- consider it in preparing each forest management plan
- provide for the future forest needed to maintain “functional old growth ecosystem conditions” for all tree species and forest communities within their natural geographic ranges
- to maintain no less than the 1995 amount of red and white pine (the total amount in hectares), while permitting a sustainable harvest.
Each forest management plan will identify all old growth forest stands of all species, calculating the old growth as a portion (per cent) of the current and future forest condition. Most notably, forest industry teams will have to develop old growth objectives and targets that will protect or restore the distribution and abundance of each forest community toward their natural geographic ranges.
The objectives in the Old Growth Policy for forest management units must be integrated with the forest management planning process and incorporated into forest management plans. The forest management planning process is carried out under the Crown Forest Sustainability Act (CFSA), in accordance with the Forest Management Planning Manual (FMPM). The FMPM, whose requirements are legally binding, provides the direction for preparing forest management plans. Forest industry-led planning teams prepare 10-year forest management plans for each individual forest management unit in the province. The Old Growth Policy states that “MNR will develop consistent requirements for old growth conservation in forest management planning to ensure minimum standards and effectiveness in old growth conservation objectives” (italics added). The ministry plans to communicate these requirements through a “Forest Management Planning (FMP) Note” that will provide advice during the forest management planning process. Moreover, MNR said, the FMP Note would be revised as necessary.
Concerns about the Old Growth Policy
During the EBR comment period on the Old Growth Policy, both the forest industry and environmental groups expressed concerns about MNR’s proposal to develop further forest management requirements outside the Old Growth Policy without further consultation. Forest industry commenters recommended that MNR, in consultation with industry, develop and incorporate clear direction and requirements either into the policy itself or into the Forest Management Planning Manual, in order to ensure consistent application across the province. Instead, MNR finalized the FMP Note in September 2003, without public or industry consultation. In May 2004, environmental groups were not even aware the FMP Note had been developed.
Moreover, the 2003 Old Growth Policy is less legally binding than the 1995 Conservation Strategy for Old Growth Red and White Pine that it replaces. In its 2004 revisions to the Forest Management Planning Manual, MNR removed some existing old growth conservation requirements from the manual. The earlier manual required explicitly that forest management plans contain objectives for red and white pine old growth within the context provided by the 1995 Strategy, which was included in an appendix to the FMPM.
The 2004 FMPM does require plans to develop management objectives and targets regarding old growth, but does not link them to Old Growth Policy, nor is the Old Growth Policy a mandatory component of planning.
MNR received over 400 comments on the proposal for the Old Growth Policy, most of them form letters asking for a clear minimum requirement for companies to retain natural levels of old growth forests. Many commenters recommended that MNR change the objective for conserving old growth to require restoration of red and white pine levels above the 1995 amount, which represent an already severely depleted amount. The forest industry praised the policy because it didn’t impose quantitative targets and allowed for flexibility at the local level, but did raise concerns about the potential impacts on wood supply. MNR decided to proceed with requiring old growth targets to be set at the local level by the forest industry teams. The ministry determined that the policy was flexible enough to allow for the impact on wood supply to be assessed during forest management planning. (The requirement to develop an old growth policy was also a major issue during the review and renewal of the Timber Class EA; see Environmental Assessment for Forest Management.)
ECO Comment
The ECO has urged MNR in several annual reports over the past few years to finalize the old growth conservation strategy the ministry was developing. It is unfortunate that MNR did not make much progress on the policy until close to the end of the nine years it was allotted for developing it. One consequence is that the policy was unfinished, in that forest management direction was still being developed when the policy was finalized. There was also inadequate time for meaningful public consultation.
The overall direction in the Old Growth Policy – to identify all old growth, and consider historic conditions in setting objectives and targets in forest management plans – is a good conservation strategy. The ECO would be willing to accept MNR’s policy decision to leave the actual setting of objectives and targets to this process, and assume that the policy would be implemented at the local level by the forest industry in good faith – but there is no assurance that the ministry has given adequate direction to industry. The FMP Note does not contain “consistent requirements…to ensure minimum standards and effectiveness,” and it is an inappropriate instrument, as discussed below. It will take careful monitoring of individual forest management plans by members of the public to check whether the policy is being implemented.
The Old Growth Policy does not strengthen protection for red and white pine. It doesn’t introduce new conservation measures for red and white pine, and its implementation is less legally binding than the existing conservation measures for red and white pine. The ECO is very concerned that MNR has chosen in its revisions to the Forest Management Planning Manual to remove some of the existing old growth policy direction and has also failed to incorporate the new Old Growth Policy direction into the Manual. Instead MNR has chosen to communicate its old growth direction through a new mechanism – an “FMP Note” – which has no legal authority under forestry legislation and which can be revised at any time without consultation.
The movement of the old growth policy direction from a regulated manual to a “note” illustrates a creeping loss of transparency, and an abdication of the spirit of the Crown Forest Sustainability Act. The CFSA set out a solid framework for sustainable forest management, accountability and transparency. The Forest Management Planning Manual is approved and revised by regulation, with a regulated process for public consultation. (See pages 149-156 in the supplement to this report.)
The ECO believes that the 2003 “FMP Note” contains new policy and should have been posted on the Registry for public consultation. The Old Growth Policy stated that MNR would develop consistent requirements for old growth conservation. The stakeholders and public who were interested in the Old Growth Policy wanted to see the requirements for forest management planning that were still being developed. But the larger issue is that those requirements should be contained in the Old Growth Policy itself and, where appropriate, should be incorporated into the Forest Management Planning Manual, along with the objectives and direction already set out in the Old Growth Policy.
The ECO also suggests that MNR clarify the unclear language in the Old Growth Policy that the ECO interprets as allowing old growth in parks and protected areas to count toward targets for old growth in areas where forest harvesting is taking place. This should not be used to permit the area of red and white pine in forest harvesting areas to decrease below 1995 levels. MNR should also develop policies, plans and targets to identify and conserve old growth forests in southern Ontario. The pressures on southern Ontario’s vanishing woodlands are immense and urgent, as we report in this annual report (see Southern Ontario’s Forests: Problems on the Landscape?).
MNR recently announced its intention to require all Sustainable Forest Licence holders be certified to an accepted performance standard by 2007. The ECO notes that some forest certification standards for Ontario’s white pine and old growth forests have greater sophistication and are more rigorous than the direction in MNR’s Old Growth Policy.
The ECO will continue to monitor MNR’s progress on revising and implementing the Old Growth Policy. (For ministry comments, see page 201.)
| Recommendation 10:
The ECO recommends that MNR revise the Old Growth Policy and Forest Management Planning Manual to incorporate forest management direction and requirements for conserving old growth forests. The ECO recommends that MNR develop policies, plans and targets for conserving old growth forests in southern Ontario. |
| This is an article from the 2003/04 Annual Report to the Legislature from the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. |
Citing This Article
Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. 2004. "Forest Management Policy for Old Growth." Choosing our Legacy, ECO Annual Report, 2003-04. Toronto, ON : Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. 99-104.
