A paper by Haley and Nelson (FSC at UBC) discusses the value of understanding forest tenures and ownership patterns beyond B.C.’s borders.
Public ownership in Canada is firmly entrenched with 77 per cent of Canada’s productive forestland being provincially owned with 16 per cent federally controlled (mainly in the Yukon and the NWT).
The western provinces are mostly under provincial ownership (89 to 95 per cent) while the Maritime Provinces are 50 per cent privately owned.
Table two shows the ownership pattern and administration of 12 developed countries around the world.
B.C. and Canada have the most publicly owned forest land (95 per cent), Australia and Brazil have approximately 75 per cent with the remaining countries studied around 20 to 50 per cent.
The number of forest land owners is only 20 in B.C. compared to a high of 11,000 in the U.S. and around 3,000 in France and Japan.
There are more than 40 different kinds of tenures in Canada — most are long-term (20 to 25 year) and are held by relatively few large pulp and fully integrated forest production companies primarily focused on lumber production.
Corporatization has been experimented within a number of countries with mixed results.
The best outcomes seem to come from lands that have been classified as industrial timber production areas like plantations.
The downside of corporations are the lack of financial discipline, corporate bloat and the possibility of political intrusion. Privatization in North America is often thought of as selling off public land to the highest bidder with the loss of any public influence or control.
In some Scandinavian countries the common law right is recognized on private lands. For example, in Sweden, private forest lands must respect public access like the right to hike through the land, camp one night and collect non-timber products in a respectful manner.
Private ownership in New Zealand is restricted to half of the state owned exotic plantations of approximately 1.2 million hectares.
In Australia, a 1993 corporation was set up with the goal of privatizing plantations.
Following privatization, the efficiency and output improved due to decreased harvest age but it was recognized the final product quality was reduced.
The authors summarize by saying that privatization is not likely to be supported by either the forest companies or the bureaucrats because they would want to retain the status quo.
As in corporatization any privatization move would need to be proceeded by satisfactory arrangements with First Nations, careful land use zoning of lands with relatively low conservation values but good potential for timber production.
In 1991, the BC Forest Resource Commission proposed that one third of the most suitable forest land be managed by forest corporations, one third managed under long term area based industrial crown tenure and the last third under small tenures held by individuals, communities and First Nations.
In conclusion the authors state “we do not claim that these alternatives are either exhaustive or exclusive. A restructured tenure system may well draw on elements of all of these and other approaches.”
Jim Hilton is a professional agrologist and forester who has lived and worked in the Cariboo Chilcotin for the past 40 years. Now retired, Hilton still volunteers his skills with local community forests organizations.