From clear cut to permanent forest cover: Developing cost-effective strategies for a transition towards multi-objective resource management

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In the past, Canada's forests were managed using clear-cut approaches to a large extent. With increasing interest in other goods and services forests provide, alternative management practices, such as partial cuts or continuous cover forestry have slowly started to become more relevant even when not only ecological goals are being considered. With Canada's government and courts affirming the need to respect First Nations land titles communities will be empowered to take more control over their socio-economic affairs. With the management goals that First Nations communities are focusing on, alternative management practices, that ensure the provision of other ecosystem services alongside timber production, such as water, wildlife habitat or visual quality objectives become particularly relevant. While transitioning from "classical" clear cut approaches towards alternative management practices it is crucial to ensure permanent timber supply as well as other attributes that form the basis for a robust forest based industry sector, job security and foster investments. This project aims to build a basis for the development of solid transitioning strategies for this important challenge. While building strong links between industry and University, this work will allow UBC researchers to understand industry research needs and goals that form a basis for a transitioning strategy that is universally applicable. Using data from a typical forest based First Nations community will allow us to ensure a strong potential of transferring our findings to the industry. The outcomes of this project will include the development of a prototype set of goal oriented management scenarios as well as a best practice manual that will serve other industry partners, forest based communities as well as forest managers and provide an example to understand and estimate the economic consequences related with transitioning towards multi-objective forest resources management.