Vision

Our goal is to find a workable balance that supports both our needs and the biodiversity with which we share the forest. We aim to do this using a Stewardship Area focused approach that will support quality jobs and long-term wood supply for local communities, and protect and restore mature and old-growth forest attributes. This attribute management will benefit our wildlife and a wide range of other ecosystem and human values: berries, moose, marten, birds, fungi, fish, carbon sequestration, hydrology, fire control, and the beauty of our landscapes.

Intent - An Umbrella Approach

We intend to use the territory area requirements of the goshawk as our forest Stewardship Areas across the landscape – our Umbrella. This magnificent hawk has lived in these forests for 10,000’s of years, but because of the clearcut area and rate of harvest we are now on the brink of losing her - our ‘canary’ of the forest. By managing the remaining scattered goshawk territory areas (~6,000ha each*) as de facto Stewardship Areas for biodiversity, we can save the goshawk and manage for the multiple other species and values on which we rely, and that rely on us. Within these areas silviculture, harvest can continue but will be balanced to maintain the landscape scale stewardship attributes and values of the forests – we are not the only ones reliant on the forest. Our goal here is to explore and support this path forward, for us and for those who follow in our footsteps.

(* Goshawks are year-round residents in our forests. They are site faithful using the same nesting areas for generations of birds (possibly 100’s to 1,000’s of years), and once adjacent pairs nests were found regularly spaced ~ 5 km apart. They rely on the surrounding forest for food – hunting within 3-5 km of the nests. Each territory is some 6,000ha in size - roughly 7 km across. They are supremely adapted to the natural forest landscape – fire, beetle, blowdown patches, edges and riparian. BUT like many wildlife species they cannot use the clear cuts and tree plantations that follow. From several thousand pairs in the past, only a few hundred pairs now remain across huge tracts of landscape from Haida Gwaii - Terrace – Prince George and beyond.)