“Burns Lake wood-lot licensees are being slack.” Forest Practices Board Vice-Chair

It was reported yesterday that 7 wood-lots in the Burns Lake area were recently audited and apparently these reviews didn’t go so well.

Forest Practices Board Vice-Chair Bruce Ralston says it was important to get this message out to the public.

” One thing that stuck out with these randomly selected lots in the Burns Lake area was, licensees, are being a little bit slack on meeting their obligations. Some of these lots had problems correctly following the reforestation guidelines. For example, you must make sure a tree has free to grow status, which some lots failed to do. Also in terms of the Wildfire Act, not only did some licensees abate burning slash piles, but they also struggled with doing consistent fire-hazard assessments.”

The obligations are required by the Government to ensure the industry is not getting out of hand, so why are licensees in the region not complying?

“With all these different small wood-lots, some are being managed by the people themselves and others are being operated by separate forest consultants. In these instances, resources tend to be limited. Larger companies usually have a plan in place but we’ve noticed these smaller operations are struggling to grasp the concept. Just because your cuts are smaller and more periodic, doesn’t mean you don’t have to follow the same rules. It’s a simple case of people not fully understanding what their obligations are as licensees.”

From this point on, the audit process is complete and the report is now in the hands of the BC Government.