What is the Forest Practices Board?

The Forest Practices Board is an independent public watchdog that reports to the public about compliance with and enforcement of provincial forestry legislation. Created in 1995, the board’s mandate has been retained under the new Forest and Range Practices Act (FRPA), which came into force on January 31, 2004.

The Forest Practices Board and FRPA

Under the previous Forest Practices Code, government mandated specific forestry procedures and the board evaluated forest companies for their compliance with legislated requirements. Under FRPA, government identifies forestry and environmental results to be achieved, but allows wide discretion for forestry professionals and companies to decide how best to attain those results.

In this new results-based environment, the board will shift its focus to evaluating the effectiveness of forest practices in achieving, on the ground, the objectives set by government. The objectives set by government need to be measurable so that the results can be measured accurately and transparently. The board is committed to working with all affected parties to support the development and testing of science-based indicators for the forest values identified in FRPA.

2004 Board Priorities

The board will be working on the following key priorities for the rest of 2004:

• Audits: The board will release audit reports on soil and riparian values – the first board audits to use effectiveness indicators for results-based auditing.
• Major Public Issues: The board will be releasing reports on major public issues such as the mountain pine beetle epidemic and rehabilitation of forest sites from the effects of fire control activities following forest fires.
• Species at Risk: The Board will be releasing two special reports on species at risk: one on the threatened Mountain Caribou and a follow-up report on Marbled Murrelet conservation to update a 2003 board report on the same topic.
  

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