BC Community Forests Make a Difference

Community forests make a big difference in rural BC

Click to read and/or download the report

A report entitled Community Forests — Community Benefits: The Economic Contributions of Community Forests to Rural BC Communities, recently released by the Southern Interior Beetle Action Coalition (SIBAC), in cooperation with the BC Community Forests Association (BCCFA), underscores the fact BC community forests are playing a very significant — often critical — role in the economies of BC’s smaller rural communities.

Against a pervasive trend of sawmill closures, forest sector job losses, and reduced municipal industrial tax revenues, BC community forests offer rural communities and First Nations an opportunity to directly benefit from the forest sector operations surrounding their communities. As the BCCFA has documented, community forests are also an important source of fibre for small value-added wood manufacturers in rural BC. This is also an important role since many value-added operators continue to indicate that access to fibre remains a major issue for them.

BC community forests are operating in some of the most socially and environmentally sensitive forest landscapes in BC, often immediately surrounding communities. As the past decade has demonstrated, with continuing climate change it will be important to continually manage fire risks in the forest/community interface areas. As several community forests have demonstrated, this is a role community forests are very well suited for. Given the economic implications of corporate consolidation in BC’s forest sector, if BC’s smaller forest dependent communities are to remain economically viable, they will need to be able to create jobs and develop alternative forms of revenue. This important report suggests that creating more and larger community forests for BC rural communities and First Nations is one of the most important rural development policies and actions the provincial government could undertake.