Forest Act – Timber Tenure

Ninety-four percent of the land base in British Columbia is Crown land, owned by the public and managed by the provincial government.  Acting on the theory that the private use of the timber resources found on much of this public land can benefit the public, much of the Forest Act is concerned with allocating who can have access to which trees.  The Ministry of Forests is responsible for making these allocations. 

 

The Timber Tenure System

The Forest Act sets up a system of legislation, regulations, contractual agreements, policies and permits that allocate rights to forest resources to different private interests.  This system is known as the "timber tenure system."

The Forest Act allows the Minister to offer logging rights over a piece of land through any one of 11 different types of agreements.  The most common are:

·         Tree Farm Licences (TFLs) – Covering a large area, TFLs are “area-based” meaning that the licensee has exclusive logging rights to the entire area, as well as the responsibility for managing that area (including planning operations, resource inventories, road building, cutting, replanting, etc.).  A TFL may include some private land as well as public lands.  A TFL has a term of 25 years, but is periodically “replaced”, so that in effect most TFLs continue indefinitely.

·         Forest Licences (FLs) – Forest Licences guarantee the licensee the “volume-based” right (meaning a right to harvest a certain volume, but not necessarily in a particular area) to timber somewhere in a “Timber Supply Area”.  Licensees are responsible for planning forest operations in the area, following through on those plans, building roads and reforesting cut areas.  FLs are periodically replaced, giving the company long-term rights to an equivalent volume of timber.  Other licences may be granted for the same Timber Supply Area. 

·         Timber Sale Licences (TSLs) – TSLs occur where government (usually under the Small Business Forest Enterprise Programme) does the planning to identify a specific area to be cut, and then auctions or grants the right to cut that specific area.  The company therefore is not responsible for planning or replanting the area, but merely for following the plans. 

·         Timber Licences – Timber licences convey the exclusive right to log a particular area of forest but, unlikely TFLs, there is no right to have a Timber Licence replaced.  The licensee is responsible for planning, road building and reforestation.

·         Woodlot Licences – Woodlot Licences grant the right to log over a small area, sometimes including private land.  Usually held by small scale operators, the Woodlot Licences require the licensee to plan, build roads and reforest the area.  However, planning requirements are less stringent than for the larger tenures.

·         Community Forest Agreements – Community Forests are a new concept in BC’s Forest Act.  They grant a community or community organization the exclusive right to manage and log an area.  However, it may also give the community the right to manage for other forest products and values – not merely timber.

Management under Licences

Because most common licence agreements require the licensees to do planning and management of the licence area, the Licensee has a high level of control over how and where logging operations occur in the area of the licence. 

Government still may do strategic planning – the development of general objectives that should guide planning by the licensee.  But the actual placement of “cutblocks” and roads are determined by the licensee, provided they are consistent with the Forest Practices Code, and only approved by government

Conditions of Licence Agreements

Each License agreement can contain different clauses and give rise to different rights and responsibilities.  Typical clauses include:

·         Requirements to pay “stumpage” – or payment to the provincial government – in return for trees cut.  The government sets the stumpage based on a complicated formula intended to estimate the market value of the wood.

·         Requirements to process the trees cut in a specific mill or community.  However, the government has expressed an intention to remove requirements of this type.  

·         Requirements to prepare inventories, do planning or gather information.  Although much of the requirements about planning are now governed by the Forest Practices Code, some types of licences (notably TFLs) still include some planning and inventory requirements.

Because most of the agreements are “replaceable”, which actually means that the government must offer a replacement licence periodically, these licences provide logging companies with some guarantees for ongoing access to publicly owned trees.  Indeed, the Forest Act sets out a limited number of cases in which replacement licences do not need to be offered, and requires licensees to be compensated if more than 5% of the logging rights guaranteed under a licence are removed from the license.  Environmentalists have often pointed to what they see as an inequity in the public paying large corporations compensation for the loss of profits from public trees, while proponents of this arrangement argue that it is necessary to ensure investment in the forest industry. 

There is no reason that environmental requirements should not be included in the terms of a licence agreement.  To do so the Ministry of Forests would have to include the environmental requirement in a “replacement” licence offered in accordance with the Forest Act.  If the licensee accepted the replacement, it would then be bound by the new licence.  If not, then the old licence would continue for its normal duration (subject to any subsequent “replacements” being offered).  However, this has rarely, if ever, been done. 

Related Guide Pages:

·         Forest Act.

·         Forest Act – Provincial Forest Lands.

·         Forest Practices Code.

·         Forestry.

For more information about the Forest Act and Timber Tenure

·         Electronic Text of the Forest Act.

·         Overview of the Timber Tenure System on the Ministry of Forests website.

·         The Timber Tenure System, an Appendix of West Coast Environmental Law’s Guide to Forest and Land Use Planning.

·         B.C. Coalition for Sustainable Forest Solutions – A Coalition of environmental, labour and First Nations organizations which would like to rewrite B.C.’s tenure system.