Municipal Forest Reserve Review

Municipal staff continue to engage with the Quw’utsun Nation about the Municipal Forestry Review, respecting the commitments made in the signed Memorandum of Understanding. It is expected that further information and updates will be provided in the first quarter of 2024.

Publicly available forestry related reports can be found on the North Cowichan website under Forestry Reports. The Forestry Interactive Webmap provides a wealth of data related to the forests, including the sensitive ecosystem inventory data. Use the layers feature to toggle this information along with a wide variety of other forestry related information that was used as part of the UBC Groups analysis.

The scope of the UBC Partnership Group scenario examination did not allow for detailed analysis of revenues from multiple recreation sectors/uses. Exploring the wide variety of recreational users and the factors that could affect or influence economic opportunities under each scenario would be a difficult to undertake. Given there was little data readily available to help support the UBC Partnership Group to accurately distinguish recreation revenue among scenarios, they were all ranked the same in the analysis. 

February 1, 2023 follow up question (by email) to this question:

It seems the forestry map isn't informed by the municipality's watercourse and wetlands mapping. Why is this? This seems like a deficiency and leads to misinformation relating to protected areas.

Answer to follow up question:

Thanks for your additional question. The SEI assessments on Mount Tzouhalem were done in 2018 based on the watercourse inventory information, which is outdated. The contractor did field verify the data is some areas and found it to be unreliable so they did the best they could with the information they had available to them. In 2019, our GIS department used LiDAR data, along with other data sources from the Province in an attempt to update the watercourse information throughout the Municipality. This update was meant to show where water courses could be based on the latest information however the data sources used are not definitive nor are they field verified. It is for this reason the SEI data and the current watercourse information on the North Cowichan webmap do not align. As data is improves over time, the SEI and watercourse information will be updated.

The watercourse data is a planning tool meant to highlight areas of potential concern and/or point out areas where further assessment may be required if there is an overlap with a planned activity. As with any activity planned in the Municipal Forest Reserve, an extensive ground review is conducted that would identify any water courses that may or may not reflect the GIS watercourse data and the appropriate actions would be taken. 

Should Council direct staff to include carbon sequestration as part of a preferred forest management scenario, staff would need to explore options and opportunities on how carbon offsets could be marketed, where they could be sold and what agent(s) may be interested in purchasing them. The Forestry budget is presented to Council on an annual basis as part of the Municipal budget approval process. During this process, staff seek Council direction on operating budgets and how they will be funded. Staff will present a recommended budget based on the forest management direction set by Council and seek direction on operational expenses that would include forest maintenance activities.

Any historical or cultural First Nations practices in relation to the forest would be initiated by the Quw’utsun Nation through the MOU process.

Replanting methods were not reviewed as part of the scenario analysis work. Should replanting be part of the future management direction provided by Council, the operational details such as replanting methods will be considered as part of the Forest Management Plan development.

The costs under each scenario are estimated based on $/m³ pricing realized from recent harvesting within the Municipal Forest Reserve. These costs do not include associated operational costs such as layout, future silviculture activities, road works etc. as it would be difficult to predict the conditions that could influence these costs without knowing specific operational details of the directed forest management direction. 

A graph showing the simulated net revenue over the next 30 year time frame for both carbon credits and timber revenue was included in the UBC Partnership Group presentation on page 35. This graph does not include past pricing information.  

A 2% annual increase was applied to the timber net revenue calculations and a startup cost of $175,000 including $20,000 annual maintenance cost was applied with the carbon project revenue calculations. This information is included in the UBC Partnership Group presentation on page 36.

Financial information is included as part of the Annual Forestry Report in Appendix C.

The Passive Conversation rating is slightly higher for visual quality as there is some harvesting considered in this scenario that could influence visual quality objectives. The water services rating and the overall ecological score are the same for both scenarios.

The chosen harvest amount of ~17,500 is derived from averages of past harvest volume. The model program used tends to “over harvest” during simulated runs so the target harvest volume was set lower to account for this.

We recognize that recreation is important to both North Cowichan residents and the people that come to visit, which is why we [UBC Group] initially considered it as one of the criteria and indicators. Exploring the wide variety of recreational users and the factors that could affect or influence each type of potential recreational use under each scenario would be a difficult to undertake. Given there was little data readily available to help support the UBC Partnership Group to accurately distinguish recreation revenue among scenarios, they were all ranked the same.

Any newly available information could be considered as part of the forest management plan development but the scope of the UBC Partnership Group scenario analysis did not allow for detailed analysis of revenues from multiple recreation sectors/uses.