Sept 2007. Ecosystem Restoration Program Update. Last October the Ministry of Forests and Range created a provincial Ecosystem Restoration Program funded through the Forest Investment Account.
This new funding has allowed the Rocky Mountain Forest District to hire two people to work full-time on ecosystem restoration in the Rocky Mountain Trench. A team leader was hired in January to coordinate program planning, clarify objectives and track accomplishments. The team leader also consults with First Nations and refers projects to other stakeholders to ensure their interests are addressed.
A second restoration program staffer will be hired later this year to coordinate prescribed burning and oversee the 40 or so contracts required to carry out restoration activities in the District. Restoration plans must meet all the objectives of the Forest and Range Practices Act and the Kootenay Boundary Higher Level Plan.
Restoration of open forests and grasslands on Crown land has been underway in the Trench since about 1997, lead by a unique coalition of government agencies, ranchers, hunting and naturalist clubs, timber licencees and the Columbia Basin Fish & Wildlife Compensation Program.
The East Kootenay’s restoration program has become the model for similar efforts elsewhere and the Ministry’s establishment of a provincial Ecosystem Restoration Program recognizes the leading-edge work initiated in the Trench.
CURRENT ACTIVITY
With major funding from the Ministry and additional funds from the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund and Fish & Wildlife Compensation Program, the District will spend about $1.3 million in 2007-08 on restoration activities. These include:
• Prescribed burns carried out on 187 hectares (ha) in spring 2007 and a further 750 ha planned for fall 2007.
• Completion of 45 restoration prescriptions for potential project sites totalling close to 20,000 ha.
• Completion of follow-up stand tending on nearly 2,000 ha of previously harvested restoration sites.
• Burning piles of debris on 240 ha.
• Planning for 9 prescribed burns on 2,000 ha, scheduled for April 2008.
WALDO NORTH PROJECT
In other restoration news, the Rocky Mountain Trench Natural Resources Society (the Trench Society) is well on the way to completing its demonstration project at the north end of the Waldo Range Unit. At 1,583 ha, the Waldo North project is the biggest single restoration project to be undertaken on Crown land in the Trench.
With about half the site now harvested, the landscape is looking much more like the historic treed grassland that once covered the low elevations of the Trench. Harvesting on the rest of the site is expected to go ahead this fall and winter. Remaining small non-merchantable trees will be slashed, and disturbed areas seeded. Prescribed burns to kill conifer regeneration and re-invigorate understorey grasses and shrubs will follow.
Comprehensive monitoring and reporting are important components of the Waldo North project, the economic and environmental results of which are expected to provide valuable information that can be applied to the overall Trench restoration program.
NEW LOGGING QUOTA
Tembec has been awarded two small forest tenures to harvest 46,000 cubic metres on about 400 hectares. This one-time licence was awarded under a special ecosystem restoration timber quota set by the Chief Forester specifically to help meet restoration goals in the Trench. Logging is the first step in the restoration process.
A HOTBED OF RESTORATION
The restoration program in the Trench will be featured at a provincial conference to be held October 11-13 in Cranbrook. Jointly sponsored by the Columbia Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology and the BC chapter of the international Society for Ecological Restoration, conference organizers describe southeastern BC as a “hotbed for ecological restoration.” Twenty speakers have been invited to address a wide range of land and water restoration topics. Six of the presentations and a field trip will deal with various aspects of fire-maintained ecosystems and their restoration.
PARTNERSHIPS
Finally on the news front, the Ministry of Forests and Range has joined the East Kootenay Conservation Program (EKCP), a partnership of conservation, industry and government agencies dedicated to conserving natural areas for Kootenay communities. EKCP promotes conservation and ecosystem restoration primarily on private lands. The Ministry has become a member to improve coordination of conservation efforts on private and public land.
FIRE-MAINTAINED ECOSYSTEMS
The bottom of the Trench was once a mosaic of dry open forest and grassland. Identified as fire-maintained ecosystems, these ponderosa pine/interior Douglas-fir forests and grasslands were maintained by a regime of frequent low-intensity fire. Natural fires initiated by lightning were supplemented by deliberate fires set by native peoples to improve forage for elk, deer and bighorn sheep, all important First Nations food species.
Without this frequent fire pattern, a landbase that normally would support no more than 400 healthy trees per hectare can seed as many as 10,0000 stems per hectare. The dry soil and moisture conditions that prevail in the Trench cannot support such a crop for long. Without fire as a stand-thinning tool, open forests become dense stands of pole-sized trees susceptible to diseases such as Armillaria root rot and insects such as Douglas-fir beetle, western pine beetle and mountain pine beetle. These thick stands then encroach on grasslands.
FOREST INGROWTH
Without stand-thinning fire, the closed forest canopy chokes out the bunchgrasses that provide forage for cattle and wild ungulates. Wildlife species that depend on grasslands lose habitat. In BC, more than 30% of our at-risk species require healthy grassland ecosystems to survive. This includes the once-abundant Columbian sharp-tailed grouse which has all but vanished in the East Kootenay. The increased volume of trees also creates a hazardous build up of dead and dying wood that can fuel wildfires.
Forest ingrowth and grassland encroachment began in the Trench in the decades following European settlement, then became a really serious problem with the advent of successful fire suppression by the BC Forest Service.
The restoration program aims to mimic the historic fire pattern of the Trench by re-introducing fire in the valley bottom. The goal is to restore 118,500 hectares of Crown land to grassland and open forest condition through initial thinning and follow-up burning.
If the program is able to treat 4,500 hectares of Crown land per year, restoration will be completed by 2030, then maintained permanently with prescribed burns.
A comprehensive description of the ecosystem restoration program, plus background on fire-maintained ecosystems, is available by downloading “Blueprint for Action 2006.”
|
UPCOMING
