| Summary: | The B.C. government’s Protected Areas Strategy (PAS), aimed at protecting
12 per cent of the province’s land base, will affect the old-growth forests
considerably. Based on the Valhalla proposal, at least 0.65 million hectares of old
growth will need to be set aside as wilderness.
Given the nature of multiple uses of the old growth, a Goal Programming
approach is appropriate for the assessment of the preservation plan. For model
construction, six goal items have been identified: the net benefits from old-growth
stands, wilderness expansion, direct forest employment, government stumpage
revenue, sustained yield, and current timber harvesting. Targets have been
determined for each. On the basis of the results from a survey, goals are ranked
in terms of priority, and their achievement is attempted in a sequential order to
seek minimal deviations from the specified levels.
The Goal Programming model indicates that old-growth preservation on the
scale of the Valhalla proposal will cause reduction in the province’s level of direct
forest employment, and the magnitude of the adverse effects is variable,
depending on the intensity of the goal constraints concerned. The goals of net
benefits and Crown revenue from stumpage charges do not appear to be
vulnerable, but the conflicts between the preservation plan and the goals of long
run sustained yield and current timber harvest are serious. === Forestry, Faculty of === Graduate
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