Timber as a Conservation Value: Ontario Sustainable Forest Tenures
by Dirk Brinkman

At the ninth National Forestry Congress in 2006, Bill Thornton, ADM for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, made a short but compelling presentation on timber as a conservation value when sustainable practices are enforced. Bill has permitted us to reproduce this image so we could share a short synopsis of his presentation, which strongly supports the value of the “reforest what you reap” regulation in place across Canada. It also congratulates the strong stewardship accountability of the forest sector and its reforestation supplier, the silviculture industry. Finally, it illustrates very simply the little told story of how timber value conserves forest ecosystem health.

This image is a coarse satellite image from about 200 km up of Ontario’s vegetative cover, and it shows the results of three kinds of land use over 200 years. It becomes clear what the effect of forest tenures has been when we take a holistic look at where forests are and where they are not. The three kinds of land use change are the south urban/rural/agricultural; the middle zone, forest harvest tenures; and the northern unmanaged land now subject to human caused fire and climate change.

The green area is forest, light blue is tundra, and yellow is agricultural and urban land. The area in the north has been unmanaged over the past century. The region in the middle is the “Area of the Undertaking” which over the past half century was managed under various forest tenures. In the last couple of decades all harvest areas were regenerated by the licensee and fire and pest disturbed areas were regenerated from the Future Forest Trust Fund, paid into by the tenure holders.

Look again at the area north of the tenured forests that is marked in green. It is dotted with red patches which shows how much of the forest has burned in the last decade due to warming trends and no management. 

Over the last two centuries most of the original forests in Southern Ontario have been converted to farmland. Today forests only cover 7% of the land, and almost all natural ecosystems are fractured remnants. This is the area where 90% of the people in Ontario live and where about 80% of Ontario’s plant and animal species considered to be “at risk” are located. In response, some environmental organizations like Nature Conservancy of Canada raise money to purchase private lands to conserve their ecological value, and the government is also allocating funds for education, conservation, and restoration. However, much like in the rest of the urban and developed world, it will cost billions to restore the forest and wetland ecosystems of southern Ontario.

It is in the middle region of Ontario where there have been forest harvest licenses for the past half century, and in the last decades, high forest practice standards, including certification like FSC that we have today’s healthiest forest ecosystems. Ontario’s historical land use patterns illustrate the potential for high standards of timber practice to have a distinct conservation outcome.