Mapping of the timber harvesting land base for Woodlot 2031 and calculation of exclusions

Notes:

In the map below, use the + or - buttons to zoom in and out. You can pan around the map by clicking and dragging it. Click on a polygon to see the kind and size of area excluded from the timber harvesting land base for this woodlot.

• This map does not include the legally required riparian reserves around Hummingbird Lake and Wolf Lake. The area of those reserves were calculated by measuring the perimeters of the lakes and multiplying that by the required 10-metre width of the riparian reserve.

• The locations of streams are indicated by thin, light blue lines. Fish streams have legally required riparian zones, but those zones are not shown on this map. 

• Areas of lodgepole pine that we have excluded from the THLB are not indicated on this map. We used Econ Consulting’s 2007 inventory of forest types to identify areas where lodgepole pine was the only or leading species and used the areal extent of those areas provided in Econ’s inventory to determine the lodgepole pine exclusion. If Econ judged an area to be 100 percent lodgepole pine, we excluded 100 percent of the area; if Econ judged an area to be 90 percent lodgepole pine we excluded 90 percent of the area.

• If an area of lodgepole pine overlapped with an inoperable area, we did not include the inoperable area in our calculation of the THLB, but did include the area of lodgepole pine.

• The areas outlined with a thin yellow line in the map below are areas the Discovery Islands Forest Conservation Project has determined are either old forest or are areas of significant concentrations of (mainly) Douglas fir vets, both of which are now rare on Quadra Island. None of these areas was included in our calculation of exclusions.

• “Inoperable areas” (indicated by transparent purple areas) are areas where there is a steep slope or cliff and are unlikely to be logged because of the high cost or physical adversity that would be involved.

• Existing roads are shown as thin grey lines or dashed orange lines. Some newer roads have not yet been mapped but can be seen in the satellite image background (which only shows work done up to 2019). We calculated the areal extent of older, currently unused roads and in-block roads based on an 8.4-metre width. We used the Ministry of Forests recommended 19-metre width for operational forest roads.

• The large areas of transparent yellow are areas indicated by Ministry of Forests mapping where visual quality objectives (VQO) have been set to allow “modification”. Adjacent to them are transparent light green areas where the VQO is set to “partial retention”. We did not exclude any portion of those areas in our calculation of the THLB. We excluded 100 percent of the area of the “retention” VQO along Okisollo Channel.

• Areas with red diagonal hatching indicate clearcuts created since 2014 by Okisollo Resources. They are included in the THLB.

• There are a few areas indicated by light green diagonal hatching that are some form of “forest cover reserve”, but since they are discretionary (not legally required) we have not included them in our calculation of exclusions to the THLB.

• As explained in the text of the project’s submission, the legally-required stipulation that 8 percent of the woodlot area be reserved as “Wildlife Tree Retention Areas” can easily be met by the licensee taking any of the legally-required exclusions, like riparian reserves or visual quality objective retention areas, and using those, in combination with inoperable areas, areas having low site index or areas of lodgepole pine, to meet the required 8 percent. To avoid those overlaps we have not included the areas the licensee has mapped as “Wildlife Tree Retention Areas” in our mapping and calculation of areas excluded from the THLB.

The spreadsheet below shows how the smaller timber harvesting land base for Woodlot 2031 was determined.