Water Stewardship Information Sources
| Citation | Tripp, D. 1998. Problems, prescriptions, and compliance with the Coastal Fish-Forestry guidelines in a random sample of cutblocks of coastal British Columbia. In: Hogan, D.L., P.J. Tschaplinski, and S. Chatwin (Editors). B.C. Min. For., Res. Br., Victoria, B.C. Land Manage. Handb. No. 41. |
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| Organization | FLNRO |
| URL | https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/pubs/docs/Lmh/Lmh41.htm |
| Abstract/Description or Keywords | The 1988 Coastal Fisheries-Forestry Guidelines (CFFG) were developed to help forest companies and regulatory agencies integrate with consistency the needs of the coastal fisheries resources with those of forest harvest and silviculture activities. While most Forest Districts had some form of guidelines, they varied from district to district. Other earlier guidelines or handbooks for protecting fish habitat were available, but these were either not specific enough to coastal operations or in need of some updating. In particular, new information was required on such issues as: the importance of large woody debris in streams; the processes that influence water temperatures and the emergence, growth, survival, and migration patterns of juvenile fish in streams; and the effect of upslope events on fish resources downstream. As with any guidelines, it was anticipated that the CFFG would require regular revisions as our knowledge of fish/forestry interactions continues to increase, and our ability to successfully integrate fisheries and forestry resources improves. Until then, however, apparently few people were comfortable that the level of fish habitat protection implied by the 1988 guidelines was being achieved in the field, with or without the continued input of site-specific recommendations by the regulatory agencies on road locations, cutting boundaries, leave areas, or harvesting techniques (Moore 1991). Indeed, there was some question about whether or not sitespecific prescriptions themselves were effective in mitigating some of the negative aspects of logging on streams. Problems continued to occur in the field, though there was no consensus as to what the main causes of the problems were. Summarized here are the types of site-specific prescriptions provided by the agencies to help reduce or eliminate the effects of logging on streams in cutblocks in coastal British Columbia. Also provided is an assessment of how effective the prescriptions were, how well logging companies in coastal British Columbia applied the CFFG generally in cutblocks logged between 1988 and 1992, what the principal impacts were on streams, and what problems caused the impacts. The findings are based on a series of field audits initiated in 1992 on 126 randomly selected cutblocks in eight different Forest Districts or regions (Vancouver Island) of coastal British Columbia. They include work on 26 cutblocks that was in progress when this paper was originally presented, though few of the results changed with the additional cutblocks. Since all of the cutblocks inspected were logged before mid-1992, the findings presented here reflect logging as it was practised from 1988 to 1992, and not necessarily as practised today. |
| Information Type | Article |
| Regional Watershed | Coast Region |
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| Comments | |
| Project status | complete |
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