North Island residents gathered at the Seven Hills Golf and Country Club on April 3 to hear an update on the North Island Community Forest.
The community forest is a small forest tenure that was offered to the towns of Port Alice, Port Hardy and Port McNeill by the provincial government in 2010. These towns then became shareholders and owners of the forest in March of 2011, managing and harvesting it to provide capital for investing in their communities.
The board of directors’ chairperson, Ione Brown, gave a presentation on how the community forest operates as well as some new information.
Currently, the municipalities of Port Alice, Port Hardy and Port McNeill are shareholders of the community forest. In 2019, The Kwakiutl First Nation and the Quatsino First Nation were offered full equity shareholder positions that would bring the ownership to five partners with 20 per cent each. Brown expressed that, with the new Indigenous partners, they will have the strength of the community and the support to possibly further expand the tenure.
There are three operating areas in the community forest: Alice Lake, Marble River and Quatse Lake in the Kwakiutl and Quatsino areas. Brown stated the community forest’s annual allowable cut is 250 truckloads—or 1 per cent of what is normally harvested by other companies on the North Island—making them “very tiny.”
The forest is run as a limited partnership. The shareholders own the business, appoint the directors and set the mandate for the business. The board of directors take care of the day-to-day operations “at arms length, in other words, apolitical, not influenced by the politicians.” Once the proceeds are passed on to the shareholders, the mayors and councillors decide what is to be done with the revenue.
Community forests were allocated to give some communities opportunities to manage forest tenure, whether through bidding on the wood, working in the forest or by owning a contracting company that does work in the forest. The revenue goes directly back into the communities, enabling them to develop a range of community objectives such as recreation, possibly value-added wood products, manufacturing and other business endeavours.
Megan Bose, NICF manager, gave an operational update. She stated the annual allowable cut is 10400m3 per year which equates to 52000m3 for the present five-year cut control period. This leaves 45000m3 left to be logged before the end of December 2025. So far, operations have generated 6.6 million dollars in revenue. 80 per cent of the money that has been generated by the community forests has gone back to the three towns. 20 per cent has been for expenses and other operational costs, including a nominal amount for recreational projects.
The community forest has adapted to the new government regulations with forest operations maps. All licensees are required to post on an online portal a map of their proposed harvest lots and roads for public purview and comment. The NICF has acquired LiDAR imagery, an up-to-date technology that produces colourful maps showing slopes and tree heights.
They have continued with the forestry education program. The two high schools in Port McNeill and Port Hardy have a forestry academy for grades 10, 11 and 12 students. Every year the students come out onto the tenure to contemplate forestry plans and operations.
NICF’s last operation was a windfall salvage that occurred in 2022, and 2023 which salvaged wood from the 2019 major storm event that hit many areas on the North Island. They were able to recover approximately 8000m3 of timber that would have otherwise rotted on the ground. It generated $175,000 in revenue for the three towns. Bose emphasized that work contracts were awarded locally as much as possible.
Wood poaching is an ongoing concern. A few people from the North Island are taking it upon themselves to fall full trees that could “fetch a pretty penny” if they were harvested and sold on the market. Bose commented “who doesn’t love a fir firewood log? I do too, but only when it comes as residue from a slash pile.”
This is also a health and safety issue, as several of these logs have been felled onto logging mainlines, creating hazards for road users.
Complaints about this problem have been forwarded to Compliance and Enforcement with the province. Bose also wants people to share the word with community members, suggesting that if anyone sees people falling trees who don’t have a logging company truck beside them, that they should report it to community forest using the information form through their website at nicf.ca.
Recreation being an important tenet of the program, the community forest is putting a proposal together to add an extension to the Bear Falls trail, aiming for an added section through the community forest tenure.
The presentation was concluded by Brown saying, “I think we have a bright future now.”
She added that they have been doing this for a long time and have provided a lot of revenue to the towns. She says the board is looking forward to the new partnership with First Nations communities and working toward an expanded tenure someday, “because we want more local management for communities.”
