Kaslo & District Community Forest Society

A Brief History:

Early in 1996, the British Columbia Ministry of Forests advertised this Forest License as a part of a re-allocation of a timber reserve in the Kootenay Lake Forest District. At a community meeting, the multi-sectoral community-based resource advisory group, the Kaslo and Area Round Table (KART) was asked to proceed with a unified application.

KART subsequently set up a broadly representative Planning Committee to establish an organizational model for the community forest which would best meet the needs and will of the community. The goal of the Planning Committee was to produce a model that would contribute to the sustainability of the community and its resources. Their desire was to include the interests of the community and ensure greater community control.

The operating model which was created for the KDCFS was the result of a consensus-based process of multi-sectoral public consultation which was recognized with an FRBC Community Excellence Award for 1997.

The Licensee:

The Kaslo and District Community Forest is a registered B.C. non-profit organization, incorporated in May 1996.

Our purpose is to hold and manage the Community Forest Licence on behalf of, and with direction from, the people of the Kaslo/North Kootenay Lake community.

The Society is composed of a nine-member Board, including two appointees of local government (Kaslo Village and Regional District of Central Kootenay), and seven directors elected by the membership.

The Forest License:

The Society holds a 15 year, non-replaceable, Forest License, with an Annual Allowable Cut (AAC) of 10,000 cubic metres (m3) of timber. As a requirement of the license, all activities on the chart area must be in accordance with relevant provincial and regional acts and regulations.

Because of the unsustainable nature of a short-term, volume-based Forest License, the Society is exploring the possibility of obtaining a longer-term area based license prior to expiration of this license.

The Forest:

The operating area is 6,100 hectares (ha.), and is located adjacent to the Village of Kaslo. The area covers from Schroeder Creek south to the Kaslo River, Blue Ridge east to Kootenay Lake, the Kemp Creek watershed, Mount Buchanan from Kaslo west to Seven Mile Creek, and northern portions of True Blue Mountain.

The forest is located in the Kootenay Lake Timber Supply Area(TSA). The TSA encompasses approximately 1.13 million hectares of land and is bound by the Purcell Mountain Range on the east and the Selkirk Mountain Range on the west. The TSA includes both moist and wet climatic regions and is commonly referred to as the 'Interior Wet Belt'. A portion of the Community Forest falls in the Interior Cedar-Hemlock (ICH) zone, which has the greatest tree diversity of all the zones in B.C. Ecosystems in the community forest vary from low elevation Fir-Cedar-Hemlock forest at lakeside to alpine Spruce-Balsam types higher up.

The Kootenay Lake TSA supports a great diversity of wildlife. Seventy percent of the bird species known to occur in B.C. and 62% of bird species which breed in the province are known to exist in the Kootenay Lake area. The TSA supports several species of wild ungulate, as well as large mammals such as cougar, wolf, and black and grizzly bear. Five red-listed, endangered or threatened animal species are found in the TSA: towsend big-eared bat; canyon wren; common poorwill; forster's tern; and prairie falcon. Blue-listed, sensitive or vulnerable species include five mammals and 23 bird species. Of the blue-listed species, several require old-growth forest conditions such as large, dead trees or coarse woody debris.