Community forests are woodlots’ younger siblings that were born bigger and bolder! They are area-based tenures created for communities and now the forests are being managed, and re-imagined by their local communities.
The beautiful thing about small and smallish local based area tenures is that solutions for local concerns are being developed by local communities. Gord and I attended the BC Community Forests AGM this week (June 11-13, 2024) held in bright and beautiful Mackenzie, BC. I haven’t been to Mackenzie for a number of years, more like a number of decades and it was a very surprising little town. There were lots of trails, beautiful views, very good food and a great conference center. The traffic was also incredibly polite, every time I tried to jaywalk, vehicles would stop to let me cross.
The agenda was chock full of interesting topics, a field tour and my favourite: an early morning stop at the bird banding station. Over the next couple weeks, we’ll share what we heard and learned at the AGM. Today, we’re going to discuss the Community Forests Indicators 2023 Report. The report is based on the response from 35 community forests. It’s always nice to start a Friday off with a ton of cold hard numbers!
Community Forests are scattered across B.C., with more than half of them either held by First Nations or in cooperative planning with First Nations. This engages both communities in shared planning and shared profits. The Comfor around Mackenzie is the McLeod Lake Mackenzie Community Forest, held by both communities and benefiting both communities.
Since we’re talking about numbers, let’s start with profits. Comfors participating in the report harvested a total of 818,974 m3 in 2023, with an average of over 23,000m3 per Comfor. They supported 342 full time local jobs. After paying all these people for their time and all other expenditures, the net profit is over $31,000,000. What do you do with profits when you are a Comfor? You give it away! Community forests gave over 20 million dollars away to their communities as either dividends, donations, grants, special projects and more.
What are the benefits of a community forests beyond profits? Well, all those extra community pieces such as trails (1,141 km worth) or education. In 2023 Comfor’s invested over $196,918 into community education. Community Forests are becoming outdoor classrooms providing education opportunities related to forest ecosystems and forest management. As an industry, we don’t do a great job in educating the public about forests and forestry. Community forests are working on changing that!
The report has 18 indicators detailed and is an interesting read. It can be found here: Indicators Report – British Columbia Community Forest Association (bccfa.ca)
Community Forests and Woodlots share a lot of the same objectives, the largest being local decisions for the local community. We share some legislation and sit on some of the same committees with the Province. We are both area-based tenures not held by a large-scale milling operation. Most importantly, we’ve both got roots in the community!