Identified Wildlife Management Strategy

Identified Wildlife Letter of Transmittal

Date: 15 February, 1999

From: Larry Pedersen, Chief Forester - Ministry of Forests
Cassie Doyle, Deputy Minister - Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks

To: Regional Managers and District Managers, Ministry of Forests,
Regional Directors and Designated Environment Officials, Ministry of Environment,
Lands and Parks, and
All Staff Involved in Implementing the Identified Wildlife Management Strategy

Volume 1 of the Identified Wildlife Management Strategy has been approved for distribution. It is intended that implementation will occur immediately following agency and staff training which is expected to be completed over the next few months. The Strategy is comprised of two documents: Species and Plant Community Accounts for Identified Wildlife and Managing Identified Wildlife: Procedures and Measures. This Strategy provides certainty to licensees and clarity to statutory decision makers on the:

1. biology of Identified Wildlife;
2. procedures to be followed in designating WHAs; and
3. mandatory forest practices within WHAs

The procedures portion will be subject to a one year trial and review period (see the first 32 pages of the Procedures and Measures document). Government felt it prudent to allow a review period so that parts of the procedures that prove not to be effective can be corrected where necessary. Stakeholders will be involved in the review and revision of the procedures.

An additional letter has been signed off that is associated with this strategy. It is referred to as a Higher Level Plan (HLP) Clarification letter and is intended to clarify the role of HLP recommendations in the Strategy (i.e., why do some species have HLP recommendations whereas others do not, and which species government recommends should and should not be considered by HLP tables).

There is a one percent timber supply impact applied to the strategy as part of the overall six percent impact that was assigned to FPC requirements such as the Biodiversity Guidebook and the Riparian Management Areas Guidebook (See Timber Supply Analysis - February 1996). The one percent impact will be maintained at the district level over the next two years, at which time analysis will be done to determine whether the strategy is having a positive effect on Identified Wildlife species. If it appears that a species requires more efforts to maintain or increase its populations, then adjustments will have to be made such as increasing or re-apportioning the impact, changing the WHA size or modifying the general wildlife measures. Government recognizes the need to avoid cost increases to the forest industry as a whole. To that end, the strategy ensures that all proposals fully consider economic impacts.

Government also wishes to ensure that large cost or timber supply impacts on individual licensees are avoided whenever possible. Because the procedure for establishing wildlife habitat areas is designed to avoid such impacts they should be rare, but where they are unavoidable a variety of local options will be used to mitigate their effect on the licensees.

Upon release of the Strategy, three types of committees will be established. They are:

1. a Stakeholder Technical Review committee;
2. several Regional WHA review committees; and
3. a provincial WHA Technical Review Committee.

Membership for the last two committees has been determined and is listed in Appendix 8 and 9 of the Procedures and Measures document. The stakeholder technical review committee will be comprised of 9 to 11 stakeholders who will have an opportunity, over the course of the next year, to review technical information prepared by the Identified Wildlife government working group. The kind of information to be prepared includes determining Volume 2 species, and reviewing the species in Volume 1 to ensure that they are still applicable. In addition to reviewing this technical information, the stakeholder technical review committee will be expected to canvass comments from their respective organizations on the procedures part of the Strategy for the one year review.

Once the one year review is completed, the expanded list of Identified Wildlife is determined, and the procedures are reviewed, then work can begin on the Measures and Accounts for the second volume.

The Marbled Murrelet account is implemented through the Guide to Landscape Unit Planning (in prep.) and the designation of Landscape Units. Since the Guide has not been released to date, it will be difficult to proceed with establishing WHAs for this species at this time. It is expected that this document will released shortly and until such time as it is released, the only part of the account that can be enabled is interim measures. If the Guide is not released within the next few weeks and delayed indefinitely, a special set of procedures will be released to implement the Marbled Murrelet account that will allow WHAs to be approved.

Attached to this letter is chief forester policy regarding the implementation of interim measures. This information is also available on the internet site.

Interim Measures are designed to minimize the effects of forest or range practices on critical habitat attributes, such as a nest site, and an adjacent area (interim zone) until a decision is made by the chief forester and deputy minister of Environment, Lands and Parks (CF and ADM-MELP) on a proposed WHA. The purpose of this section is to describe how interim measures are to be applied and under whose authority.

It is the opinion of the statutory decision makers (CF and ADM-MELP) that pending the designation of a WHA, interim measures should be applied to maintain those features of a proposed WHA critical to the survival of a species (Table 1). They are a prudent measure to ensure the qualities of a proposed WHA are maintained and provide a protective buffer for those critical features. Interim measures are not mandatory but are provided here for district managers and forest licensees to consider during the preparation and evaluation of operational plans.

Interim measures should be applied to WHA proposals accepted by the RES in step 2 of the procedures for establishing WHAs. It is recommended that the species general wildlife measures be applied within the interim zone. When a WHA is approved, interim measures should remain until such time as the WHA is designated and "known" (as defined in the Forest Practices Code of BC). When a WHA is rejected, maintenance of the interim zone is not required; however, other Code mechanisms, such as wildlife tree patches, may be used to maintain the critical feature. The number of interim sites that can be in place at any one time for some species has been limited (See "Planning thresholds" and Appendix 10 in the Procedures and Measures document)

^a Nest site refers to occupied stands as defined in the Resource Inventory Committee (RIC) inventory manual for Marbled Murrelets.