Forestry Report

By Cheryl Jahn

Forestry Report

Forestry report draws criticism

Feb 17, 2026 | 1:05 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The traditional system of forestry is volume-based, meaning logging firms are granted the right to harvest a certain amount of timber in certain locations. The amount of timber harvested each year is determined with what’s called an annual allowable cut, set by the chief forester.

The report, titled “From Conflict to Care: BC’s Forest Future,” notes:

“This report comes at a pivotal moment for British Columbia’s forests and forest sector. The current instability – marked by boom-and-bust cycles with increasingly deeper declines, ecological degradation, and eroding trust stems from outdated systems misaligned with today’s realities.”

But what’s being suggested, according to one local forester and forestry advocate, is off the mark.

“One of the core beliefs is that people are somehow better at managing nature, than nature is, even though forests have been self-organizing and self-managing for millennia,” says Michelle Connolly with Conservation North. “The lack of self-awareness right up front in that report is troubling, because it means that they’re not aware of their own biases and belief systems that are guiding the things they’re putting in this report.”

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Kiel Giddens, Conservative MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie, says the report overlooks a lot of industry concerns.

“It didn’t have the industry properly at the table,” he says. “So it’s not surprising that they’re focused on governance issues and things like that. The industry knows it is not going to create the certainty that they need. They actually want government to fix the issues that we’re seeing, like the access to fiber challenges, the certainty of fiber supply or permitting and cutting red tape. And that’s what this report fails on.”

The report sets out four objectives:

#1 Objective: Establish a publicly accessible, reliable data foundation to support all land management decisions.

#2 Objective: Shift to a forward-looking, area-based system that empowers regional decision making and aligns with Land Care.

#3 Objective: Create non-partisan structures to support the public service and ensure transition functions endure across election cycles.

#4 Objective: Streamline initiatives to support the transition, eliminating conflicting mandates.

Giddens says, while the report misses the mark overall, he agrees with Objective Number 2 around regional decision making.

“At the end of the day, local decisions matter because this is where people know about the forest and how it works and how the industry works. But at the end of the day, government has to be the statutory decision maker. That’s something that industry has been saying for years, and that’s what they’ve been avoiding. And pass the buck down to Victoria. Well, that can’t happen. We actually have to have those decisions to be empowered to be made locally.”

Connolly agree, one size does not fit all. But notes: “There are vulnerabilities that come out when you create systems where all the decisions are made locally and regionally. Although, in general, I do agree that local decision making, more public input into what’s happening on the ground is extremely important.”

But she says where the report truly hits the mark is over what is seen as a lack of transparency in the decision-making processes.