Policies for Sustainably Managing Canada’s Forests

Book excerpt: With more than three quarters of Canada's forests under provincial control, provincial forest policies are crucial for encouraging the sustainable management of the nation's forests. Forest tenures, which allow private companies to manage public forest resources, are the key policy tool that provinces use to balance the requirements of sustainable management with the economic concerns of the forest industry. By offering an up-to-date comparative examination of contemporary provincial forestry policies, this book provides forest managers, policy-makers, scholars, and students with the information and concepts to critically examine Canada’s complex forest tenure systems. The authors look at tenure, stumpage fees, and other forest practices to assess how well different provincial schemes achieve the goals of sustainable forest management. They identify a number of essential policy attributes that could be used to guide tenure reform, consider potential barriers that could prevent meaningful change, and offer much-needed practical guidance on overcoming these obstacles.