Ontario is a recognized world leader in sustainable forestry – balancing environmental protection with resource use and managing the forest as a complete ecosystem to provide economic, environmental and social benefits beyond timber.
Eighty-seven per cent of forested lands in Ontario are provincially owned and known as Crown lands. Ontario's Crown Forest Sustainability Act (1994) covers all aspects of forest management, including planning, operations and silviculture, timber measurement and forest information systems. All forest policies and management practices on these lands must conform to the Policy Framework for Sustainable Forests, which covers harvesting and regeneration, the management of old-growth forests and the protection and conservation of non-timber values.
Most of Ontario’s Crown forests are divided into management units. Before any forestry activities can take place within a unit, a forest management plan must be prepared. The plan is developed by a registered professional forester with help from a multidisciplinary planning team and input from a local citizens committee, as well as input from Aboriginal communities, stakeholders and interested members of the public. The plan must follow the requirements of the Forest Management Planning Manual which includes determining the maximum amount of forest land that can be harvested each year, and assessing criteria and indicators that show if the forest is being managed sustainably.
Forest companies manage Crown forests under 20-year Sustainable Forest Licences (SFLs). These licences are subject to renewal every five years following a satisfactory report by an independent third party audit. Companies are responsible for preparing and implementing the forest management plan, and monitoring compliance with the plans within their licence area. They also pay a stumpage charge fee to the province for the right to harvest timber.
Parks and protected areas
As part of Ontario’s balanced ecological approach to managing our forests, the province has set aside significant areas of productive forest land as parks and protected areas. Logging, mining and hydro-electric development are, for the most part, excluded in these areas.
Finding the appropriate balance between areas set aside for parks and areas available for commercial forest management can be challenging. To address this issue, representatives of the forest industry, the environmental community, and the government signed the Ontario Forest Accord in 1999. This ground-breaking agreement created a process for setting aside more parks and protected areas in the future and promoting studies on ways to increase forest productivity.
Since 1999, about 2,459,400 hectares have been added to Ontario’s system of parks and protected areas. The system now protects 8,987,300 hectares, and forests make up 5,964,400 hectares of that total.
