The following draft principles formed the basis of consultation with residents of Haida Gwaii in public meetings during March 2017. These “made on Haida Gwaii principals” guide community forest developments in a direction that benefits communities and citizens.
Stewardship
- Protect the environmental and cultural values in the forest for future generations through implementing sustainable forest practices and adhering to the Haida Gwaii Land Use Objectives Order;
- Provide lasting security and incentives for sound stewardship and long term investments through an area-based tenure that has a good profile of forest age and species and is reasonably proximal to the communities;
- Aspire to high standards in forest management and accountability;
- Manage the forest using innovative silviculture strategies and ecologically based forest management to maintain, enhance, or restore healthy forests;
- Manage commercial access to cedar to ensure its availability throughout the transition to the harvesting of second-growth, including managing for old-growth red and yellow cedar and fire-origin second-growth cedar within the timber harvesting land-base;
- Minimize wood waste and support the utilization of salvageable wood;
- Support an active role in implementing ecosystem-based management to achieve an adaptive, systematic approach to managing human activities, that seeks to ensure the co-existence of healthy, fully functioning ecosystems and human communities;
- Implement forest development that complements community-based tourism values.
Benefits to the Communities
- Use the diversity of resources in the forest to generate economic benefits for communities, and offer employment for Haida Gwaii residents;
- Engage Haida Gwaii residents in broad level community collaboration in the near term and long term forest management planning;
- Ensure respectful integration of Haida and community values into tenure management planning;
- Ensure that the forests are managed using sound business practices whereby profits are managed for the best interests of all communities;
- Develop procurement policies that are cost-effective and provide longer-term opportunities for local suppliers;
- Provide forest access for the public through an access management strategy that ensures infrastructure is;
- maintained to an extent that is appropriate to the scale and activities of the Community Forest operations;
- Explore opportunities for local value-added wood product manufacturing;
- Explore opportunities for education, research and testing innovative forest planning and practices, community resource stewardship, and climate change adaptation;
- Explore opportunities for economic diversification, such as non-timber forest products, forest carbon offsets, tourism, or bioenergy production;
- Build upon and improve community relationships on Haida Gwaii.
Haida Gwaii Community Forest 